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Live At Cafe Montmartre 1966 Volume Two
"Don Cherry, more than any other artist in the jazz of his era, pioneered the music's internationalist nature that has now come to be commonly accepted as an integral part of its character. The individuality of Cherry's contribution to the history of jazz has often been unfairly obscured by his admittedly important association with the music ofOrnette Coleman. While the (pocket) trumpeter's position as Coleman's front line partner in the altoist's first revolutionary quartet was indeed a major o…
Live at Café Monmartre 1966
First release of this 1966 recording from the ESP-Disk vaults; featuring: Don Cherry (trumpet); Gato Barbieri (tenor saxophone); Bo Stief (bass); Karl Berger (vibraphone); Aldo Romano (drums). Live performance from the legendary Café Montmartre in Copenhagen, Denmark, recorded in 1966. Digitally remastered. Also included: the ESP DVD-audio sampler, featuring selections of almost every ESP artist. Over 12 hours of music! Digitally remastered. "Don Cherry, more than any other artist in the jazz of…
Concert for the Comet Kohoutek
Recorded on December 22, 1973 in New York City at the famous Town Hall, this eclectic ESPDisk-sponsored celebration of the Comet Kohoutek featured a fire eater, talking drums, and dancers in platform shoes, in addition to Sun Ra's Arkestra. After taking the stage ninety minutes late, the band expertly navigates its way through cosmic free playing, big-band romps, and didactic vocal numbers. Compared to the original pressing, this re-issue is digitally remastered by Joe Phillips and includes brie…
Live at Café Monmartre 1966 Volume Three
Live At Café Montmartre Volume Three features more great music from the Don Cherry Quintet. Recorded in March 1966, Don Cherry joins forces with Gato Barbieri, Karl Berger, Bo Stief and Aldo Romano for two exciting, extended performances of "Complete Communion" and "Remembrance". A recording that will surely be known as classic, Volume Three is essential music for all fans of improvised music.
Black Beings
This version of Black Beings contains of 15 minutes of additional material thought to have been lost. When he started out on ESP-Disk', Frank Lowe was one of those hard-blowing tenor saxophonists we think of when we heard the phrase "free jazz." Born in Memphis, he moved to San Francisco and, while visiting New York, began playing with Alice Coltrane (on whose album World Galaxy he made his recording debut in 1971), Sun Ra, Rashied Ali, and Noah Howard, and eventually moved to the Big Apple. On …
Cave Rock
Already commercially successful as tune-smiths for teenyboppers,Austin Grasmere and Brian Elliot approached Bernard Stollmanlooking to focus their talents on something more original and unrestrained. Stollman asked, “What would be your theme?” and Elliot replied: “Everything is one.” Bernard said, “Go do it.” What followed was Cromagnon's (Grasmere, Elliot and the Connecticut Tribe) non-linear journey through the subconscious, weaving together bizarre instrumentation and meter with a psychotic b…
The Forest and the Zoo
"In 1966, the late Steve Lacy visited the new ESP-DISK office at 156 Fifth Avenue with a master tape of his concert in Buenos Aires with his quartet... He offered to sell the master for what I thought was an exorbitant price. I bought it. ... In 1992, the master tape was brought to engineer Ken Robertson at the Sony Studio, who observed that it had been recorded out of phase, and he corrected the phasing." - Bernard Stollman
"Soprano saxophonist Steve Lacy's impressive career was filled with man…
Contact High With The Godz
2025 stock Coming from the same Lower East Side scene that had already delivered the Fugs to ESP-Disk’, when the Godz went into the studio in 1966, there was no precedent for what they did. The first albums of the Velvet Underground and the Stooges lay in the future. The title Contact High with the Godz might suggest psychedelia, but even that freewheeling style, still yet to blossom, would come nowhere near the freedom and sheer avant-gardeness of the Godz' first LP. They were not afraid to sou…
Turn On, Turn In, Drop Out
This CD release of Dr. Leary's Turn On, Tune In, Drop Out is the first ever reissue of the ESP-Disk' vinyl edition originally released in 1966. This unadorned spoken word recording of the '60s icon, Timothy Leary ("the most dangerous man alive"), was recorded at the famous Millbrook, New York estate just before his famous residency was ended by repeated raids and arrests by G. Gordon Liddy. Though the album title, Turn On, Tune In, Drop Out, became a clichéd rallying cry for a whole generation, …
Straying On The Watch
The noted west coast composer makes his ESP debut accompanied by his then wife, Barbara Donald, on trumpet, Teddy Smith on bass, John Hicks on piano and Marvin Pattillo on percussion. Recorded August 1966, Staying on the Watch is an important infusion of straight-ahead and avant jazz. Barbara Donald is a superb trumpeter who has made a stern contribution to the legacy of women performers and has been widely written about. Also, pianist John Hicks, who makes his New York debut on the record, went…
The East Village Other
2013 reissue; originally released in 1966. The first North American CD release of the "electric newspaper," an archetypal '60s counterculture "happening" from August 6, 1966, this is also the first edition anywhere since the original vinyl to include the lengthy closing track, "Interview with Hairy." A legendary all-star cast of performers got together to make an anti-war collage of words and sounds that defies mere track listings -- one of the elements is "Silence" by Andy Warhol, which, contr…
The Call
It has occasionally been assumed that Henry Grimes got this recording date as a reward for his long service in the avant-garde of jazz. Having already honed his musical conception with a varied range of players, from Benny Goodman and Arnett Cobb to Lee Morgan, Gerry Mulligan, and Sonny Rollins to McCoy Tyner, Steve Lacy, Albert Ayler(including ESP 1020, Spirits Rejoice), Don Cherry, and Cecil Taylor (to name just a few), the service was certainly there, but he got this gig fully on his merits. …
Explosions
Probably the first recording (1965!) of improvised jazz combined with electronic music, as well as playing inside the piano and other new music techniques. Bob James (piano); Barre Philips (bass); Robert Pozar (percussion). Also including Bob Ashley and Gordon Mumma (electronic tape collage). The recording is made of an assembly of estranging electronic sound effects, trite sports commentaries, and the music of a beautifully improvising jazz trio. Bob James has, through this convulsion of out-of…
Eikon
Two years following his work 'Monumento Fiume', Giovanni Lami returns to Kohlhaas with a new release, once again investigating the intricate relationships between memory, the sonic medium, and decay. 'Eikon' originates from a series of acoustic cello recordings, subsequently disassembled and transformed by Lami, resulting in a unique deconstructed and layered object, lying somewhere at the intersection of soundtrack, decomposed ambient and video game music, shaped through the use of samplers, a …
Transference
In the ever-expanding constellation of transnational electroacoustic collaboration, Marja Ahti and Manja Ristić present Transference, a profound investigation into the movement and transformation of energy between distant practices and places, arriving August 8, 2025 via Erstwhile Records. Transference emerges as what the artists describe as "a dialogue of sonic gestures and traces of visits to places and the spirit that occupies them." This collaboration transcends geographical boundaries to cr…
Touch This Fragrant Surface of Earth
Tip! Marja Ahti is a Swedish artist living in Turku, Finland. She works with found sounds, objects and electronics, creating auditory assemblages that reveal a profound sensitivity to sound’s tactile potential. This new record sees her palette expand to include more recognisable acoustic instrumentation, albeit working in collaboration with musicians who are already reconfiguring how those instruments can sound.
Touch This Fragrant Surface of Earth has its roots in a tape piece presented at Lamp…
Sheer Hellish Miasma II
Nearly sold out at source - Kevin Drumm - electronics, tapes, microphone, computer assistance and Greg Kelley - trumpet
recorded 2023-2025 at Full and Empty in Chicagomastered by Taku Unamidesign by Yuko Zamaproduced by Jon Abbey
Dangerous Women: Early Works 1985-2005
Laetitia Sonami's Dangerous Women: Early Works 1985-2005 traces twenty years of fearless electronic innovation. From her studies with Eliane Radigue in France to mentorship under Robert Ashley and David Behrman at Mills College, this 2CD collection captures her evolution from analog experimentation to pioneering digital performance with her legendary "lady's glove" interface.
City Lights
Throughout their legendary, decade-long run, The Shadow Ring were an enigmatic force on the international musical sub-underground. Before their disbandment in 2002, this shambolic rock outfit, formed by a group of rowdy teenagers in southeast England, left behind a mighty run of eight LPs, a handful of 7"s, and a spate of raucous live shows and cryptic zine appearances on both sides of the Atlantic, all which have bolstered their enduring word-of-mouth mystique. Beginning this year with the firs…
Houdini
2025 stock Signed to Atlantic Records in the hubbub after Nirvana's Nevermind (1991) exploded, the Melvins' fifth album Houdini was a conscious attempt by the band to make a record that wouldn't alienate their fans but that the band members themselves would also enjoy. Their best-selling release by a country-mile, this album crested at number 29 on the Billboard Heatseekers chart. Houdini would be most folks introduction to the band and songs like 'Honeybucket' received MTV airplay. First time o…