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Lucus
*2024 stock* Norwegian drummer/composer Thomas Strønen presents a revised edition of his acoustic collective Time Is A Blind Guide, now trimmed to quintet size, and with a new pianist in Wakayama-born Ayumi Tanaka. Tanaka has spoken of seeking associative connections between Japan and Norway in her improvising, a tendency Strønen seems to be encouraging with his space-conscious writing for the ensemble, letting in more light. As on the group’s eponymously-titled and critically-lauded debut album…
An Acrobat's Heart
A ravishingly beautiful album by one of the most mysterious, elusive and beguiling figures on the fringes of jazz. "An acrobat’s heart" features the unique vocals and piano playing of singer-songwriter Annette Peacock, performing her own compositions with the acclaimed Cikada String Quartet. If you like An acrobat’s heart, then you’d probably like: Marilyn Crispell, Nothing Ever Was, Anyway Paul Bley, Paul Bley with Gary Peacock Arild Andersen, Hyperborean Bent Sørensen, Birds And Bells Norma Wi…
Oriental Jazz
Born in 1938, and raised in Glendale, California, Lloyd Miller has had one of the most unusual careers in all of jazz. By age 12 he had declared an intent to make his living as a jazz musician, and by high school he had already begun to experiment, shunning swing music's mechanical perfection, and chafing at his parents' desire for him to nurture his talents with formal training. This tumultous relationship with his parents would eventually lead to a stint in a psychatric hospital, before reunit…
fLuXkit Vancouver (i̶t̶s suite but sacred)
Tip! A radiant manifesto of artistic freedom, fLuXkit Vancouver (i̶t̶s suite but sacred) brings together a composition in four movements written and performed by Jones on alto saxophone, long-time collaborator Gerald Cleaver on drums, and four Vancouver-based string musicians: violinists Jesse Zubot and Josh Zubot, cellist Peggy Lee and bassist James Meger; with original artwork by Stan Douglas and liner notes by poet Harmony Holiday. Commissioned by Western Front, an artist-run center for multi…
Skala
*2024 stock* Mathias Eick’s intensely melodic trumpet occupies the centre-stage in this album of self-penned tunes which will appeal to an audience beyond “jazz”. Against the powerful backdrops offered by his sleek, modern band, driven by two drummers, he delivers richly lyrical soliloquies.
Midwest
*2024 stock* Mathias Eick reflects on distances travelled in this intensely melodic set of original compositions, which makes an imaginative journey from Hem, the tiny Norwegian village where the trumpeter grew up, to the vast plains of Dakota in the American Midwest. It was to the Midwest that hundreds of thousands of Norwegians travelled by sea in the 19th and early 20th centuries – and naturally they took their music with them. In similar spirit Eick, a Norwegian improviser-composer strongly…
Friday Night
Livy Ekemezie’s Friday Night is widely recognised by DJs and afro-funk aficionados as a UFO (Unidentified Flying Object) grail record. It is one of those rare dance music albums that sounds like a record of its’ time but also has a timeless quality that makes each listen an immensely rewarding experience. Fueled by teen spirit, every track slaps leaving little or no opportunity to skip. The song concepts circle around sweaty, afropolitan nightly excursions into the nightclubs of Aba, Port Harcou…
Ghost Notes
1998 release ** "This CD represents the pinnacle of IST's achievements so far. Phil Durrant's Sowari For Ist, concentrates upon texture and timbre as opposed to pitch and rhythm. The resulting music is detailed, fragile, abstract and beautiful, pushing acoustic instruments further into a sound-world more often associated with acousmatic forms. In Mark Wastell's Ritmico the emphasis is upon rhythm and the particular sonorities produced by the percussive possibilities of the wooden parts of each i…
crows of the world vol 1
2007 release ** "First entry in an on-going 'annual report' style compilation, programmed with the same sensibilities as 2005's Invisible Pyramid compilation by label guru Chris Moon. This entries' line-up includes: Keijo's Free Players, Brad Rose's North Sea, Western Automatic, the Ilya Monosov / Preston Swrinoff duo, Andrea Belfi (previously heard on the Invisible Pyramid comp), Paper Wings (Antony Milton + Anthony Guerra), Northern Cross (new Geoff Mullen + Kris Lapke duo), Brasil & the Gallo…
Entupadas
1988 release ** "Sometimes with a touch of disdain, but it’s merely poetic, political reflection on an incomplete world—the only one we know. Beauty and cruelty, joy and sorrow. The piano, mastering every language, responds to the glowing voice of the singer: Romansh, German, English, French. Sweet, strict, harsh, thrilling, playful."
Wave Of Sorrow
*2024 stock* "An evocative, lyrical recording.... The two draw heavily on Slavic folk influences, even as they mine the kind of airy, contemplative jazz harmonies associated with the ECM school." - David R. Adler, AllMusicWave of Sorrow is an album by Soviet-Norwegian jazz pianist Mikhail Alperin and Russian brass player Arkady Shilkloper recorded in July 1989 and released on ECM the following year.
Winter Canabinol Essence
2009 release ** ""Winter Canabinol Essence" is the debut album to be released by the Moscow based label Nihil Art. The Russian project Obozdur, unknown for us'till this release, offers here six tracks at the cross between "old-school" harsh noise, cut-up noise and experimental music. Using radio-waves transmissions, tapes, rythm'n box, processed vocals or tape-voices, processed guitar or bass, various analog effects, all used in a "non-musical" way, Obozdur creates long tracks of cut-up dada noi…
Up And Coming
*2024 stock* Guitarist John Abercrombie – who has recorded as a leader for ECM since 1974 – returns with a second album by his quartet featuring Marc Copland on piano, along with longtime rhythm partners Drew Gress and Joey Baron. Extolling 39 Steps, the group’s 2013 album, the Financial Times said: “The emphasis is on subtle intrigue, flowing lyricism and the interplay between the leader’s warm, cleanly articulated guitar and Copland’s piano… with bassist Gress and drummer Baron equally supple …
Morituri Te Salutant
2004 release ** "Mariae Nascenti is the solo-project of Angelo Visone, a native of Milan, Italy. Morituri Te Salutant is his first proper CD release, following a number of self-released CD-Rs. On Morituri Te Salutant he enlists the assistance of Black Sun Productions, Larsen and members of Sadomarta and Gullinkambi. There role here is to provide vocals to his surreal atmo-soundscapes that range from post-industrial greyness to dark ambient. Mariae Nascenti's palette involve electronic drones, an…
The Journey Like Never Before
2008 release ** "The atmosphere ranges from ambient, meditation and transcendence to sound experiments and rhythmic madness. A clash of acoustic explorations by the Hati group with modern, rhythmic electronics by Lal (2nd Hand Beatnix, Wiedźmin). This is one of the most electronic projects ever realized by Hati, which – as a band that performs a lot – uses mainly acoustic instruments."
Music of Georges I. Gurdjieff
*2024 stock. Deluxe packaging* Fascinating and highly attractive project which returns the music of Gurdjieff (c. 1866 – 1949) to its ethnic inspirational sources. To date Gurdjieff’s compositions have largely been studied, in the West, via the piano transcriptions of Thomas de Hartmann. Armenian composer Levon Eskenian now goes beyond the printed notes to look at the musical traditions that Gurdjieff encountered during his travels, and rearranges the compositions from this perspective. Eskenian…
Dolmen Music
Meredith Monk and her vocal troupe cut a line between experimental theatre and music, marking a passage through the Ancient Greek tragedy, the opera, world-music, the archaic ritual and the mystical chant. It started with "Gotham Lullaby", presenting a contralto over a desolate and stark piano sonata. Then "Travelling" set a feverish gypsy dance, a wild ritual stirring the primeval forces at play. The sonata returned in "The Tale", as the backbone to an offbeat pantomime/ theatrical performance.…
Nouvelle Vague
This is the complete soundtrack – music, dialogue, sounds – of Jean-Luc Godard’s Nouvelle Vague, premiered at the Cannes Film Festival in 1990. "In making this film," Godard said at a press conference later that year, "I heard a great deal of music; music produced by Manfred Eicher. I can well imagine how musicians are inspired and influenced by these sounds. And I too have immersed myself in this music, and I have felt,in my work, like a musician." Interviewed at the Toronto Film Festival of 19…
Tabula Rasa
The 1984 ECM album Tabula Rasa was the vehicle that introduced the revolutionary music of Arvo Pärt to audiences outside Eastern Europe and initiated what was to become one of the most extraordinary musical careers of the late 20th century. Like many of the first generation American minimalists, he limited himself to diatonic harmonies and generated pieces by setting processes in motion, but the radical simplicity he achieved was the result of religious contemplation that was at least as, if not…
There’s nothing better than producing sounds
2011 release ** "This album is Gianluca Codeghini's return to his origins, and the 14 tracks were recorded after long improvisation sessions which inspired each musician with unpredictable scores, visual stimuli and stories. The starting point is "Coffee-table book" (2011), a collection of quatrains by Alessandro Broggi published by Transeuropa edizioni, and the poet actively collaborated in the composition of a few tracks and in the production phase. The sequence of the tracks lines up the rhyt…