Jazz /
Landet Er Gitt Oss
**CD version** Improvisation, truth, joy, jazz and doubt. These are but a few of the elements that frequently emerge in the universe of Filosofer, and on their debut Landet Er Gitt Oss. Using the Norwegian version of a term used for people who spend most of their time pondering over life's big mysteries, one is lead to believe that their music is rooted in complex concepts and theoretic academia. So it is not. Filosofer focuses more on guts and feel rather than analyzing and thinking. Their basi…
Forms & Poses
**CD version** Forms & Poses is Norwegian bass player Christian Meaas Svendsen’s second solo album, and features four compositions / improvisations which explore the physical connection between the human body and the double bass. Although recorded in two entirely different settings, it is clear that Svendsen’s mind-set on all these tracks are one and the same, and the release shines as a condensed representation of his creative diversity. The CD version comes with a 24-page long booklet with lin…
Troposgrafien
Kasper Skullerud Værnes and Andreas Wildhagen has played together for ten years as of 2018. They formed a duo shortly after meeting, and quickly realized that the power and subtleness of the sax and drums duo format was worth further explorations. Through the years and in various ensembles and projects such as KNYST! (trio with bassist and Nakama founder Christian Meaas Svendsen,) and Paal Nilssen-Love Large Unit, the duo has grown and developed a highly flexible and telepathic interplay. This i…
Before the Storm
Before the Storm features four original compositions by Nakama’s leader Christian Meaas Svendsen. The album is the group’s first recording, and can be summed up as an investigation of sound related to silence through a minimalistic approach to both written and improvised material. The tracks on the recording are four attempts to define the nature of what we normally define as silence, and present at the same time a musical idiom of a band that operates on the outside of conventional borders."The…
Cepi Meets Hic
"Cepi is a solid reality located in the south of France. It’s Barre Phillips’ vision about improvisation. It can be flexible about the team but not about the idea above it all. Hic stands for Hidden Improvisers Consort; it’s a study group under the guide of Claudio Lugo. This meeting has been organized and strongly desired by Barre Phillips and Tommaso Rolando. We made a big circle, we played with the fire."The Cepi Nomads: Barre Phillips - Contrabass / György Kurtag - Electronics / Laurent Char…
My Point of View
Rearward presents Eraldo Volonté, “My Point of View” – remastered. All the tracks, recorded - from May to November 1963 - at Durium Studios, Milan are now released with liner notes by Arrigo Polillo.
Synchrotrony
"A synchrotron is a particular type of cyclic particle accelerator, descended from the cyclotron, in which the accelerating particle beam travels around a fixed closed-loop path. The magnetic field which bends the particle beam into its closed path increases with time during the accelerating process, being synchronized to the increasing kinetic energy of the particles.Synchrotrony are a trio who take their inspiration from free improvisation, sound search and simple folk melodies. The band consi…
Free Jazz | Ornette!
Pressed on 180 gram vinyl, housed in a gatefold sleeve. Original recordings remastered. 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. Th…
Trio, Quartet, Quintet
Legendary Modern Jazz album from Germany and the true holy grail of European LPs. First session recording by the internationally awarded pianist Walter Strerath and his brilliant sidemen from 1969, originally released with a beautiful silk-screen printed cover on the tiny Jazz Groove' label in an edition of a few hundred copies only. Outstanding self penned tunes by the trio and Hans Thomas (trumpet/ fluegelhorn) plus Christian Lindner (saxes).
Modern Jazz will never die and it doesn`t smell f…
Goes To Santander
First reissue of a great piano trio album, originally released in 1963 on the private 'Soulside' label from Zurich/ Switzerland with only a handful of copies known to exist. First and last recordings of unknown jazz pianist Red Bahnik, with John Treichler on bass and a young Mani Neumeier on drums, including unique versions of Les Mc Cann`s 'Vacushna' and 'Fish This Week', Horace Silver`s 'Sister Sadie', plus original material like the oriental-tinged 'Fata Morgana Altamira' or the Latin tune 'S…
Zeuhl Jazz
**250 copies, 2020 stock** Sonata Islands is a cultural association, born from an idea of Emilio Galante, that promotes and performs new music and jazz. They organized many concerts and festivals in Italy. After Sonata Islands goes RIO (dedicated to the music of Univers Zero, Fred Frith and Thinking Plague) and Nippon Eldorado Kabarett (with the same musicians, dedicated to Japanese RIO music of the '80s with pieces by After Dinner, Wha Ha Ha, Kiyohiko Semba and Haniwa All Stars), here they pay …
Where Future Unfolds
Where Future Unfolds is a new work spirited by Chicago-based sound & visual artist Damon Locks. Starting as a solo sound collage piece (where Locks pulled samples from Civil Rights era speeches and recordings to create an improvisational pallet for performance on his drum machine), over 4 years the project has blossomed into his 15-piece Black Monument Ensemble – featuring musicians (including Angel Bat Dawid on clarinets and Dana Hall on drums), singers (alumni of the Chicago Children's Choir),…
Food for Thought
**Edition of 200** Texts by Joshua Abrams, Paal Nilssen-Love, Jim Sauter, Mike Watt, Guy Peters, Mette Rasmussen, Dave Rempis, Bruce Ackley, Sandrine Verstraete, Laurens Smet, Ken Vandermark, Koen Vandenhoudt. The idea for this publication started with a request made by photographer, reviewer and overall music enthusiast Hans van der Linden to document the Oorstof series behind the scenes for a whole year. In addition to his unique photographic impressions, we asked graphic designer Marijke Looz…
The Swiftest Traveler
**CD version** An exciting new international trio initiated by Scandinavian saxophonist Torben Snekkestad, accompanied by two esteemed international players in the field of improvised music – the Spanish pianist Agusti Fernández and the British double bass player Barry Guy. The music they create together is situated somewhere between free improvisation, free jazz, and contemporary classical music and executed with lightning fast interaction and explorative, innovative sounds and textures. Record…
Gowanus Sessions II
Gowanus Session II was seven years in the planning. Thollem McDonas, Nels Cline, and William Parker convened at Peter Karl Studios in Brooklyn on January 3rd, 2012 and recorded two complete albums. The first was Gowanus Session I, released by Porter Records in April of 2012. GS II was put aside to eventually complete the five-album palindromic cycle of trio albums Nels and Thollem ambitiously set out to realize. The albums in between include Radical Empathy with Michael Wimberly (Relative Pitch,…
Threnody, At The Gates
This trio is on to something extraordinary; full on furor brushed w thin melodic lines or rage contained in a certain kind of drunken beauty and bliss - all stumbling on towards the heard and the unheard - in a whisper, in a shriek, forces joined and disjoined....This trio is the whole in the never ending audible crack Johan Berthling: double bass; Martin Küchen: tenor and soprano saxophones, retardophone, flute; Steve Noble: drums and percussion. Recorded by David Carlsson at Gula Studion, Malm…
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…
Battle Pieces
Battle Pieces uses trumpeter Nate Wooley's "social music" system, where each piece is constructed for a soloist who improvises with no score while the remaining player choose at will from over 75 compositions over which the soloist must find their path; here at Roulette in NYC with Nate Wooley, Sylvie Courvoisier (piano), Ingrid Laubrock (saxophone), and Matt Moran (vibraphone).
Felis Catus and Silence
Felis Catus and Silence is a breakthrough release for Tokyo composer-guitarist Leo Takami, following the milestone albums Children’s Song (2012) and Tree of Life (2017). Takami counterpoints the soothing aesthetics of prime-era Windham Hill New Age guitar-heroism with meditative, intellectual compositions comprised of ambitious, process-oriented arrangements. While Takami largely wears his genre influences on his sleeve -- jazz, classical, Japanese gagaku -- the influence of ambient music is a t…
L'homme à la Caméra / La Glace à Trois Faces
"Un Drame Musical Instantané were founded in 1976, featuring Jean-Jacques Birgé, Bernard Vitet and Francis Gorgé. Their aim was to promote collective musical creation, co-signing their albums, which they consider as artworks in themselves, or their live shows which they tried to renew every time they played. Their sound was created with many influences: they borrowed their sources from rock (synthesizer player Birgé and guitarist Gorgé, both authors of the album, Défense de); jazz (trumpeter Vit…