Music from United States

Masahiko Togashi was a pivotal figure in the development of the Japanese free jazz scene in late 60s. Percussionist and composer, he lost the use of the legs in an accident which nevertheless didn’t not prevent him from continuing an astonishing career that includes long and established collaborations with figures of the likes of Steve Lacy, Charlie Haden, Mal Waldron and Paul Bley. This session, recorded in Paris at the Ramèse Studio Du Village in 1979, sees an explosive collaboration by the t…

Every day over the course of a year starting in June, 2020, in something she refers to as a "domestic ritual," Zeena Parkins recorded solo electric harp performances in her home studio. The brilliant improvisor and composer had, like most of her peers, been sidelined by the pandemic; unable to tour, she spent the end of each day at the harp, playing until sunlight waned, inventing and discovering new soundscapes, keeping her musical self together while the world seemed poised to crumble. Parkins…

Glacial Movements brings bvdub and Netherworld together for their first official collaboration... but more importantly, a testament to a friendship that has endured and grown for well over a decade - and the pinnacle of the GM catalogue to date. Quite simply, the "equilibrium" of a glacier is the point at which its mass of snow and ice that comprises its mass is forever in balance - neither advancing nor receding... the frozen and slightly less-so forever in balance. Cold depths below freeze all…

* Gatefold sleeve. 2022 small repress* By 1971 Pharoah Sanders' playing essentially alternated between two moods: ferocious and peaceful. This live record gives one a good example of how the passionate tenor sounded in clubs during the early '70s. Sanders is joined by an impressive group of players: trumpeter Marvin "Hannibal" Peterson, flutist Carlos Garnett, Harold Vick on tenor, pianist Joe Bonner, the basses of Stanley Clarke and Cecil McBee, drummers Norman Connors and Billy Hart, and percu…

The jazz giant Thelonious Monk is here featured in this live recording in New York. Monk is in his best form during this ‘Village Gate’ gig, along with famed session men accompanying him here and forming this solid Quartet - namely, Charlie Rouse on Tenor Saxophone, John Ore on the bass and Frankie Dunlop on the drums.  The album features three Monk’s originals (“Rhythm-A-Ning”, “Evidence”, “Jackie-ing”) and two jazz standards (“I’m Getting Sentimental Over You” and the immortal “Body And Soul” …

Temporary Super Offer! Johnny Griffin came to Thelonius Monk with a reputation as a speed demon – double-timing the tempo was his default mechanism, elaborating melodies with a mixture of mellow swing and complex bop phrasing. Their contrasting nature – Griffin’s fluid extravagance and Monk’s percussive dissections – intensified by Roy Haynes’ forceful divisions of the beat, generate a tension unlike any of Monk’s subsequent groups' – Art Lange

*In process of stocking* The cabalistic duo Ak’chamel strikes again with a second record called A Mournful Kingdom of Sand. Following the publicly and critically acclaimed The Totemist (AKU1023) released in 2020, this album sucks the listener into another esoteric journey which - according to the band - is a perfect soundtrack for the desertification of our world. Ak’chamel, The Giver of Illness is an enigmatic duo from a border state. Fourth World Post-Colonial Cultural Cannibalists Circumcisin…

Jackson C. Frank’s eponymous album is the embodiment of folk legend. Issued in late 1965 on the UK Columbia label, it was for many years more famous for its producer (Paul Simon) and the musicians who would go on to cover its songs (Nick Drake, Bert Jansch, Sandy Denny) than for the hauntingly beautiful music contained inside. Frank’s backstory certainly adds to the legacy: born in Buffalo, New York, he used the settlement from a childhood accident to sail to London where he quickly became a fix…

*300 copies limited edition* Forged alone in a cave on the island of Java, and recorded in a fortress in Poland, Antonina Nowacka’s “Lamunan” is an intimate exploration of a mysterious darkness and the earliest of musical forms. Nowacka has co-created raw electronics and audiovisuals as half of WIDT and the enigmatic Mentos Gulgendo, but her solo practice focuses solely on the voice’s inherent connection to mental states, its ability to speak wordlessly, and the apparatus of speech itself – lead…

'When he performed in Germany, they called him the "black devil violinist," his frenetic playing wrapped in a gyrating, trance-like state. For Billy Bang, who believed he had schizophrenia, the epithet bore a resemblance to his inner turmoil. He was born William Walker in Mobile, Alabama but grew up in the South Bronx. He studied violin and classical music, and his talent earned him a hardship scholarship to the Stockbridge School in Stockbridge, Massachusetts. Bang felt out of place in the pred…

*Blue vinyl limited edition* In 1973 the Blue Note Records label landed at the Montreux Jazz Festival, showcasing some of the showcasing some of the top artists of those years under the banner of the soulful and muscular jazz of which the blue label was then the standard-bearer. Muscular jazz of which the blue label was then the standard-bearer. This resulted in several albums entitled Live: Cookin' with Blue Note at Montreux (by Bobby Hutcherson, Ronnie Foster, Bobbi Humphrey, Marlena Shaw), bu…

Tip, sold out at source! After more than 45 years forgotten in the personal archives of Jean Schwarz, Transversales Disques is very happy to release this previously unpublished recording which brings together the great Don Cherry and his friend, composer Jean Schwarz, pioneer in electro-acoustic music and member of G.R.M. This concert was recorded in 1977 at the Paris MIX festival (Théatre Récamier) organised by G.R.M and hosted by director François Bayle. An elegant mix of spiritual jazz and el…

In Nov. 1987, a three-concert Ed Blackwell Festival was held in Atlanta. The festival served as a good excuse to reunite the members of Old And New Dreams (trumpeter Don Cherry, tenor-saxophonist Dewey Redman, bassist Charlie Haden and drummer Blackwell), a quartet comprised of Ornette Coleman alumni. The unit interprets three rarely-performed Ornette Coleman compositions and a tune apiece by Blackwell and Redman. All of the musicians are in top form on this no-changes music, creating fresh and …

** Edition of 213 ** 36 and Zake follow up the epic work of Stasis Sounds For Long Distance Space Travel Part 1 with another eighteen chapters "of aural anesthetics" which "continue their journey through the outer reaches of space in hypersleep." The album comes in different coloured versions and this yellow copy boasts the sort of grainy and immersive ambient that immediately takes you out into the farthest reaches of space. It's widescreen and cinematic and makes for the sort of journeying alb…

** original copy ** Recorded in Italy in 1986, this solo set by Mal Waldron draws from a rich range of sources and traditions. Update songs An inventive composer, arranger and player, these six pieces combines melodic directness with percussive harmonic support. Update album for sale Opening with his own "Free for C. Update CD music T., " he moves into the realm of standards for most of the set, visiting works by Dizzy Gillespie, Sammy Cahn, and Frank Loesser, among others. His "Variations on a …

** original copy ** 'The music is one of two tracks that make up the entire album, one on each side as it was originally released as an LP, and each over 20 minutes long. The other side is the titled “Psalm”. The recording was made live to two track at Studio Henry, later known as One Morten Street. The trio was put together just for this gig, and features Butch Morris on cornet, William Parker on bass, and myself on piano, some kind of crummy organ, and electronics-including an Aries synthesize…

*In process of stocking.* In 1957, Miles Davis is in Paris for an engagement at the ‘Club Saint-Germain’ and a wonderful concert at the Olympia Theatre. Once in Paris, Miles came into contact with many members of the modern existentialist cultural environment in the neighborhood of Saint-Germain-des-Près. These include the director Louis Malle who had just finished his first movie : ‘Ascenseur Pour L’échafaud’. Jean-Paul Rappeneau, a Jazz fan and Louis Malle’s assistant at the time, suggested as…

Temporary Super Offer! Allow me to expand on a much restated quote from Albert Ayler: "Coltrane was The Father, Pharoah was The Son, and I was...The Holy Ghost.” If we remain with the Christian iconography, that makes Archie Shepp, Simon Peter, or the Apostle Peter whom Jesus called the rock upon which he built his church. Christened by his tenure in the early 1960s with Cecil Taylor, Shepp was baptized into what we now call a modernist approach. In meeting Coltrane, a man always searching for a…

*300 copies limited edition* Los Angeles artist Eddie Ruscha aka Secret Circuit hooks up with Downtown minimalist Peter Zummo for 'Thinking A View'. The duo take listeners to uncharted meridians of the mind through imaginary zones, realized via synthesizers, keyboards, drum machines, vibes, tapes, and clarinet from Ruscha. Meanwhile, Zummo helps paint these psychedelic Fourth World ambient zones utilizing various wind instruments; trombone, cornet, euphonium, and tuba which takes things into a k…

Tip! * in process of stocking * Discs Of Death is a 4xCD collection of all new Teeth Of Glass material. A triple feature of death & doom capped off with an imagined score to a wild post-apocalyptic video adventure. The 4 CD's are: 1. They Like To Kill (48:56) 2. Hippie Witch Killers (43:31) 3. Monster Of Florence (45:54) 4. 2031: Colorado Frontier Rangers (41:12) They Like To Kill is about the concentration of serial killers located in the Los Angeles area in the 70's / 80's. Hippie Witch Killer…