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A Love Sonnet For Billie Holiday
A Love Sonnet For Billie Holiday brings Wadada Leo Smith, Jack DeJohnette and Vijay Iyer together for the first time in this meeting of creative giants. Smith first met and played with DeJohnette in the late 1960s and the two have collaborated with increasing frequency since DeJohnette participated in the first recording of Smith´s Golden Quartet more than two decades ago. Smith´s and Iyer´s first collaboration also goes back almost two decades. This recording marks the first time these three un…
Ancestors
Despite the fact that they've shared several stages over the past 40 years, Ancestors marks the first occasion that trumpeter Wadada Leo Smith and drummer Louis Moholo-Moholo have ever recorded together. Smith, one of the true progenitors of creative improvised music, has made numerous duo recordings with drummers, among them Ed Blackwell, Jack DeJohnette, and percussionist Adam Rudolph. Moholo-Moholo, a founding member of South Africa's Blue Notes, has also made duo recordings, usually with pia…
Rosa Parks: Pure Love.
Acclaimed trumpeter, multi-instrumentalist, composer, and educator Wadada Leo Smith has released an oratorio of seven songs inspired by the iconic civil rights leader Rosa Parks. In his own words, Rosa Parks: Pure Love. An Oratorio of Seven Songs is "concerned with ideas of freedom, liberty and justice, a meditation centered around the civil rights movement." Looking at Smith's more than 50 years of creative and artistic vision, this release is yet another inspired organic musical direction that…
Celestial Weather
With Celestial Weather, Wadada Leo Smith and John Lindberg employ a spare, conversational approach. Smith whispers on the mute and issues plaintive cries with the open horn. Lindberg bows and goes pizzicato. Smith searches for and finds very un-trumpet-like sounds-squawks and squeaks and whistles. Unlike Smith's large scale offerings, that often feature massive cacophonies, space is a major facet of the sound. It is music that is reflective and serene. The disc's centerpiece, the five part "Cele…
Solo: Reflections And Meditations On Monk
Wadada Leo Smith comes to the music of Thelonious Monk from a childhood admiration of the artist. As a pre-teen he was already playing trumpet and composing and instinctively knew that Monk's understanding of music and sound would influence his own creativity. Smith believes that the quintessence of Monk can best be found in his solo work. The same can be said for Smith who has produced two previous solo collections including Creative Music—1 (1972) and Solo Music: Ahkreanvention (1979), both on…
If We Could Hear
"If we could hear. Wenn wir hören könnten… dann ? Who Hears It All. Als würde das etwas ändern - Noise in thermodynamics - an average low level warmth. Let`s go back to the pre-orthodox world, the ancient one, which gave us mythology, extreme experiences, congealed in stories. Echo was a storyteller herself, distracting from what was going on around her, up to the point when she got punished, and from then she was only able to repeat the last words spoken to her, to her, to her… A loop is a loop…
Your Soft Absence
"Your Soft Absence is a suite of processed sine waves and sampled wind instruments. It’s a narrative of a particular feeling of absence that’s haunting me; perhaps best described as the longing for a childhood emotion, a feeling of unconscious wonder, a state of simply being without an essence or perhaps like a memory continuously receding whenever I try recalling it, seemingly closest and most present at a certain distance, with a certain absence." - øjeRum
Electrons
*200 copies limited edition.* As the theory of the atom, quantum mechanics is perhaps the most successful theory in the history of science. It enables physicists, chemists, and technicians to calculate and predict the outcome of a vast number of experiments and to create new and advanced technology based on the insight into the behaviour of atomic objects. But it is also a theory that challenges our imagination. It seems to violate some fundamental principles of classical physics, principles tha…
Anthology Of Experimental Music From Japan
Modern-day noise music has escaped the preserve of academics and avant-garde thinkers, uniting conservatory-trained and untutored participants from the worlds of punk, jazz, metal, contemporary classical, electronic music, and sound art in an exuberant and egalitarian collision. While noise conjures up the image of a cacophonous maelstrom of sound, contemporary improvisers utilize a much broader tonal palate, often offsetting abrasive textures with environmental sound, field recordings, and even…
Anthology of Contemporary Music From Indonesia
**200 copies** "For many centuries Indonesia, from the Malay Peninsula throughout the vast archipelago, has been subjected to successive foreign cultural invasions which have left their deep imprint on the indigenous way of life. Among the first was the Mongolian intrusion from central Asia. A later cultural wave came from India when Hindu merchants and immigrants introduced Hinduism and Buddhism into the islands. Subsequently, about the 13th century A.D. Islamic influences penetrated the archip…
Anthology of Persian Experimental Music
**2020 small repress with slightly different tracklist and artwork** "After more than three years, the Unexplained Sounds Group releases a CD version of the previously only digital “Persian experimental underground survey”, one of the most recognized anthologies focusing on experimental and alternative music from Iran. It includes 4 digital bonus tracks, a new cover artwork and was re-mastered for the CD version. Initially, the compilation was released under the banner “Iranian” experimental mus…
Distant Voices
Aguirre Records present a reissue of Distant Voices, Steve Lacy's rare Japanese collaboration album, originally released in 1976. Renowned for remarkable solo concerts that confirmed his mastery of the soprano horn and that carried its instrumental language into previously unexplored regions, Lacy also loved to collaborate with musicians who could inspire him to stretch the boundaries of his own artistry. During the summer of 1975 Lacy toured Japan, and on June 24th he entered a Nippon Columbia …
Trois Mémoires Discrètes
*300 copies * 'Another fantastic Af Ursin release. Af Ursin is Timo van Luijk’s solo project. The first piece, Sylphide, is a side-long wonder. Long drawn out brass tones with some other accompaniment. I could listen to this music all day. The closest parallel I can think of is Davide Mosconi’s divine LP of foghorn recordings. But Sylphide has a bit more of a musical element. This will be my go-to last side of the night for my (rare these days) late night Salons. The second side features two tra…
Sphæra
A 16-channel piece inspired by astrophysics, the mystery of the pre-Big Bang era and some of the uncanny motions of the unconscious mind, where strangeness meets the ordinary.
The Shape of Jazz to Come
As jazz's first extended, continuous free improvisation LP, Free Jazz practically defies superlatives in its historical importance. Ornette Coleman's music had already been tagged "free," but this album took the term to a whole new level. Aside from a predetermined order of featured soloists and several brief transition signals cued by Coleman, the entire piece was created spontaneously, right on the spot. The lineup was expanded to a double-quartet format, split into one quartet for each stereo…
Losing Circles
** Edition of 200 ** Marcia Bassett and Thomas Dimuzio create a mind-bending synthesis of sound and place on their debut LP Losing Circles. Get ready for a head trip, the album is a sublime manifestation of sound interference, texture, and ultra, low-end synth waves that literally penetrate the listener's body. The pair bonded over their Buchla systems, first meeting at Thomas's radio show, Frequency Modulation Radio at KFPA, Berkeley, California where they had their initial improv jam. Their se…
Night Spirit Masters
Remastered vinyl reissue of this 1990 Bill Laswell / Richard Horowitz production of local Gnawa musicians, recorded in the Medina of Marrakesh. According to Allmusic.com "a must for fans of both African and Middle Eastern music” and voted one of the "10 essential Gnawa albums” by Songlines. The Gnawa are an ethnic minorityin today’s Morocco, descendents of slaves from West Africa who were brought to Morocco in the 16th century and who (although they quickly converted to Islam) nevertheless broug…
Live at IUCC 2/25/79 - Series Subscription 2-11 (10 CD Set)
**333 copies, one-time pressing** The Los Angeles based pianist, band leader, and composer, Horace Tapscott, always stood apart from the pack. A true visionary who was fiercely principled and independent, across the 1960s, '70s, '80s, and '90s, leading his legendary Pan-Afrikan Peoples Arkestra, he produced a tour de force of sound, seeded by social, political, and community-based action. For the entirety of their run together, Tapscott and his Arkestra, which continues to this day, were among t…
Now's The Time - Solo Drums
If you have a chance to celebrate, take it. Drummer Fredy Studer, one of Switzerland’s top percussionists, has good reason to celebrate. This year he will be 70, he’s playing Willisau Jazz Festival for the 27th time (making him the musician who has played this festival the most) and is publishing his very first solo recordings! He has recorded these with a total absence of overdubs and electronic effects. “Now’s the Time – Solo Drums” is issued as a superb box set by Everest Records und Maniac P…
Nothing Left Behind
*200 copies limited edition* Tomotsugu Nakamura is a musician and graphic designer residing in Tokyo, Japan. His primary artistic practice is to compose music with some fragments of minimal acoustic and electronic tones and some field recordings. In Concert, he has played with various genre of musicians and his works have been released by Kaico, Audiobulb Records, and more recently by the recent label LAAPS. ’’Nothing Left Behind’’ is his second release on LAAPS after his well acclaimed album "L…