Jazz & Improvisation / All styles

Poppy was pianist Masaru Imada's second album for the Three Blind Mice label. Imada brought the idea of playing slow ballads by himself to the TBM producer Takeshi Fujii, who greenlit the project but requested Imada to perform his original compositio…

"Otomo is an alto player from the Jackie McLean school of tone and the Art Pepper institute for improvisation. In other words, his tone has an edge, but he always phrases and improvises melodically. With Tsuyoshi Yamamoto leading the rhythm section, …

Kaoru Abe was an influential Japanese free jazz alto saxophonist, who is often regarded as being the greatest abrasive sounding saxophonist.  He generally performed solo, and died young from a drug overdose, and has since been immortalized in the ja…

One of the most compelling albums Steve Lacy recorded during the 80s – a spare set of duets with Japanese percussionist Masahiko Togashi, who really helps shape Steve's style on the record! Togashi approaches his instruments with a very introspective…

Jinya Disc presents Three Improvised Variations On a Theme of Qadhafi. A live recording board that includes live performances of improvisation by Action Direct, which was performed on the theme of "personal image" of Muanmar al-Gaddafi rather than id…

Mass Hysterism: In Another Situation, a 1983 record by the late Japanese noise-guitar hellion Masayuki Takayanagi (1932–1991) is one of those albums that always going to be lurking in my attic, so to speak. I can put it away for a while, but it never…

Further distanced in time from John Coltrane's spiritual new-jazz and the influential second Miles Davis quintet, Doug Carn showed a close affinity with R&B when recording his fourth and final Black Jazz album Adam's Apple. Sharing his interest in R&…

John Butcher, saxophones. Michael Duch, contrabass. Jazzfest Trondheim, Trondelag Senter for Samtidskunst, 9th May 2015. Recorded in concert by Jonas Krossli and mastered by Karl Klaseie. Thanks to Ernst-Wiggo Sandbakk and Randi Martine Brockmann. 'I…

Masayukia Takayanagi, electric jazz guitar. Nobuyoshi Ino, contra bass. Hiroshi Yamazaki, drums. Recorded live at Yokohama Airegin on August 26, 1984. Remastering and remix by Yukio Kojima from Takayanagi's private tapes. Linernote (in Japanese) by K…

Masayuki Takayanagi, electric jazz guitar. Nobuyoshi Ino, contra bass. Hiroshi Yamazaki, drums. Recorded live at Yokohama Airegin on August 26, 1984. Remastering and remix by Yukio Kojima from Takayanagi's private tapes. Linernote (in Japanese) by Ka…

that includes bonus CD, edition of 500. Fire! is a Swedish trio comprising Mats Gustafsson (The Thing), Johan Berthling (Tape), and Andreas Werliin (Wildbirds & Peacedrums), which came together with the idea of a fresh approach to improvised music …

rec. 1973 live at the Funkhaus, Hamburg, Germany - ltd/numbered 1/69, with paste-on cover (front & back with notes) "two sides long pieces, available here for the 1st time, top sound quality/pressing" punzmann

A vibrant Sun Ra recording session held in NYC at Variety Studio in 1973, ltd/numbered 1/79, with paste-on cover (front & back with notes) "meager, raw and totally oblique Arkestra rec. available here for the 1st time. very difficult record to do, ca…

Cultures Of Soul compile a selection of music culled from rare private press Jazz LPs, pressed in small quantities of a few hundred for band members and the local jazz community. This group existed in the creatively fertile, Boston jazz scene at t…

**2016 revised edition** Utterly essential!!How did Free Improvisation, aka Free Music emerge? And how has this most arcane of musical forms survived so long and gained such loyal adherents? Trevor Barre seeks to answer these questions in Beyond Ja…

Begun as a temporary project in 2014 by Mats Gustafsson(The Thing, Fire!), Brian Chippendale (Lightning Bolt), and Massimo Pupillo (Zu), this trio soon evolved into a band project. They're now releasing their first album on Trost Records, with a tour…

A five part suite evoking the memory of Jimmy Guiffre and Giancinto Scelsi. Alex's brilliant clarinet playing perfecty complements Coxon's musical experiments in which the listener's spatial perspectives are constantly being challenged-extremely vivi…

In the only studio recording of this duo, John Tchicai and Evan Parker improvise a set of pieces at once reflective and joyful, introspective and responsive by turns. Recorded in 2005 during John's visit to London at the invitation of John Coxon and …

The extraordinary improvising duo of John Edwards and Mark Sanders have recorded together in countless groups, but only once as a duo [Nisus Duets Emanem 2002]. For this recording, Mark uses an unorthodox kit setup with horizontal orchestral bass dru…

Giovanni Di Domenico (piano, Rhodes), With Norberto Lobo (acoustic guitar), Tetuzi Akiyama (acoustic guitar) and Jim O'Rourke (electric guitar). Recorded during the course of 3 years (from 2011 to 2013) in various locations in Brussels and Tokyo, thi…

Delivery Health is the highly idiosyncratic trio of Giovanni Di Domenico, Jim O'Rourke and Tatsuhisa Yamamoto. The recording was done in Tokyo's great GOK Sound, directly on 24 tracks tape recorder, and was mixed at Steamroom, Tokyo, by Jim O'Rourke …

"In the late 1950s, Ornette Coleman set the jazz world on fire. From his own unique playing style to his fundamental deconstruction of harmony and complete rethinking of group performance, Coleman at once confounded critics and inspired a new gene…

Vladimir Tarasov - drums, percussion, cimbalom and hunting horn, Eugenijus Kanevicius – bass and electronics, and  Liudas Mockunas - soprano and tenor saxophones, clarinet and bass clarinet. Recorded at Vladimir Tarasov home studio in Vilnius, June 2…

This limited edition LP documents a collectively birthed exploration spread across the two sides by the visiting German pair of reedman Thomas Borgmann and long time associate drummer Willi Kellers, who team up with NYC bassist Max Johnson. The conce…

Lerner – Filiano – Grassi have been featured at the Guelph Festival, Canada (2010) and the  Hurta Cordell Festival in Madrid, Spain (2012). They have also performed at venues throughout the Northeast including The Stone, NYC, The Bop Shop, Rochester,…

All compositions by Jean-Luc Cappozzo, Didier Lasserre. Recorded live at la Maison Peinte, Labarthe-sur-Lèze, December 19th, 2014. Jean-Luc Cappozzo was born in Belfort, France, in 1954. He started playing the trumpet in the local orchestra of his na…

**2006 release, long out of print, very few copies available** Trumpeter Itaru Oki Trio's landmark debut album from 1970 reissued, a flamed out free jazz masterpiece. Itaru Oki (trumpet), Yoshiaki Fujikawa (alto sax), Keiki Midorikawa (cello, bass, p…

"one night i was surfing the net and i can't remember exactly how i arrived at that youtube Rakka video ?! but i saw some friendly faces (Janne from Rakhim and Ville from Black Motor) and i'd immeditaly feel the special vibes... so i wrote them and h…

"Finland has always been a place of original charachters... well Rakka are 101% original cats (they learned the lesson/s and went their OWN way/s) and in this so amazing and so exciting today music world, that's already something ! most (if not nearl…

Otomo Yoshihide's Guitar Solo "LEFT" was released last summer but "RIGHT" is completely different from "LEFT". the 123 short fragments of Otomo's guitar sounds are run by computer programming at random so no one know how the sound played. This CD is …

German reedman-composer Peter Brotzmann is, despite an immense catalog spanning over forty years of activity in free music, criminally underrepresented in the format of a "standard" piano-less quartet. From reed-heavy octets and orchestras to the win…

"From New York" is a musical jouney into the street of New York divided into three splendid albums:  DAVID MURRAY - Live at the Lower Manhattan Ocean ClubNew Year's Eve 1977 gig with Lester Bowie, Fred Hopkins and Phillip Wilson, originally released …

"Berlin Box vol. 1 " is a musical journey divided into three splendid volumes that give the listener the best of recordings made by the label Jazzwerkstatt in Berlin. The first cd "Live in Berlin" (JW 22) proposes the fabulous duo of Steve Lacy (sopr…

The first volume of the box "FMP - Free Music Production Box" brings the listener back to the 1977 into the FMP studio in Berlin where Alexander von Schlippenbach recorded the album "Piano Solo '77" (FMP 129): a fascinating album of music improvisati…

With their debut album, Backer & Strid tell both short and long stories through sound improvisations that includes the rich spectrum from more serious expressions, to humoristic passages and parts. Tracks range from minimalistic and quiet nuances, …

The newly formed quartet is making its debut performance at the gallery. Alan Wilkinson (alto saxophone), Olie Brice double bass,Dominic Lash (double bass), Mark Wastell (cello). Mark Wastell Quartet is combining the unavoidable and reverential infl…

"Free-improv CDs sometimes turn up in the record-business equivalent of fish-and-chip paper, but this handsome book-form package encloses three audio CDs, a DVD, a raft of colour photography, and a thoughtful essay from Richard Williams. It docume…

Amazing and strong vintage synth and keys duo improvisations by free jazz pioneers Alan Silva and Burton Greene, still exploring and pushing boundaries after half a century of no compromise careers. Burton Green says: “It’s not about the latest (e…

Helios is typically credited for our solar well-being, but let's not forget that his four horses have been the ones doing the heavy lifting day in and day out all these years... They must have bailed on the bossman somewhere above Connecticut beca…

2014 Release. It has been eight long years since we've had a new duo album by Paul Flaherty and Chris Corsano. The two have played together in other configurations, but we all know there has always been something special and telepathic about their …