Jazz & Improvisation / All styles

2023 repress. 180-gram black vinyl. Volume two of Sun Ra's classic Heliocentric recordings from the 1960s. The astonishing sessions that went light years beyond "free jazz" improvisation to create a music of deeply-felt, explosive and gentle gesture made from sound itself without reference to previous notions of melody or harmony are now reissued on 180 gram vinyl with Sun Ra's original, self-created cover art. Recorded by Richard Alderson on April 20, 1965, this set of tunes finds Sun Ra breaki…

*300 copies limited edition* "This is the first LP (following a cassette) released under Drew Gardner’s name and it’s a doozy. Drew is a guitarist, probably best known as a founding member of Elkhorn (although his musical partnerships with Jesse Shepard go back way further than that), and his recent work with Jeffrey Alexander’s Heavy Lidders has also been noteworthy as hell. The band here is a trio with Andy Cush (Garcia Peoples) on bass, and the extremely well documented Ryan Jewell on drums. …

2025, 180gram vinyl. The Ethio Jazz album by Mulatu Astatatke is a jewel of the modern Ethiopian music.  Essential. An incredibly groovy Ethiopian record, originally from 1969-1972. Amazing orchestral 'Ethio-groove' filled with US soul, jazz, sometimes Latin and the deepest Eastern rhythms, even including some great nasty and dirty fuzz guitars. A true gem of Ethiopian modern instrumental music, which illustrates perfectly this symbiosis of strong rhythms and quality arrangements of subtle yet d…

The reputation of members of the AACM (Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians), of which Abrams is a founding member, has long been one of adventurous, dangerous, and difficult music. But in fact, much of the music created out of this organization shows enormous appreciation of the blues and earlier jazz forms. Sightsong is a splendid case in point. The album opens with four duets (two dedicated to Chicago legends Wilbur Ware and Johnny Griffin) which have a swing, a groove, and a…

Bush Brothers & Space Rangers sees Oneness Of Juju at the peak of their powers in 1977. Oneness had enjoyed two fruitful years with Black Fire prior to these recordings, breaking through with the African Rhythms and Space Jungle Luv albums. “When we recorded African Rhythms we didn’t use a guitar,” explains bandleader Plunky Branch. “So, when vocalist Jackie Eka-Ete and guitarist Ras Mel Glover came in around ‘75, that moved our sound into a more soulful direction. The drummer on this album, Ton…

Recorded in Stockholm on October 25th, 1962, this session marks one of Ayler's earliest recordings, featuring a European backing group he assembled during his brief stay there, before returning to the States in 1963 and beginning his legendary run with ESP-Disk and Impulse! Though his genius was not yet fully formed, one can easily hear he's headed that direction, and this rare and long out of print recording is an essential piece of the history of one America's most uniquely lyrical voices on t…

** ltd 700 copies on black vinyl housed in reverseboard printed sleave with printed inner sleave. Comes with lyric booklet, poster and postcard inserts  ** Formed in 1968, The Plastic People Of The Universe – named after a Mothers of Invention song and heavily influenced by Frank Zappa and The Velvet Underground – were iconic figureheads of the Prague Underground, a loose collective of Czech poets, philosophers and artists considered a threat by the Communist government. Banned and jailed under …

*2023 stock. 300 copies limited edition* For the kids (6+) & family play MaiTé, the girl and the bird, Bruno Vansina was inspired by the famous exotica of Martin Denny and Les Baxter. His compositions, rearranged by colleague Pierre Vervloesem, remained true to the originals, but have a very contemporary feel to them as well, and soon started to lead a life on their own. This resulted in a new band - the 7-piece Orchestra Exotica - that performs the playful and multicolored music of Denny and Ba…

*2023 stock. 300 copies limited edition* The cooperation between Bruno Vansina (saxes - see also ORT007 Vansina Orchestra) and Teun Verbruggen (drums - see also almost all on Rat-Off) makes the pivot of this trio that was formed at the conservatory of Brussels in 1996. They got their initial inspiration from the trio recordings of Sonny Rollins 'Live At The Village Vanguard'. The music of Miles Davis Sextet with John Coltrane and Canonball Adderley, and the music of Chet Baker had it's influence…

*2023 stock* Machine Mass started out in 2011 as an idiosyncratic MoonJune power duo made of longtime collaborators American drummer Tony Bianco (Elton Dean, Paul Dunmall, Evan Parker) and Belgian guitarist Michel Delville (The Wrong Object, Vegir). Hailed as a « feisty and rebel rousing exhibition that contains a surfeit of diametric contrasts and smoldering exchange » (All About Jazz), it has since then morphed into various forms and ventures involving guests such as Dave Liebman (Inti, 2014) …

When the best American sax player of the moment ( grammy, pools, magazines) James Brandon Lewis meets one of the most interesting French fretless bass electronic visionary Floy Krouchi and French avant-garde drummer Benjamin Sanz and they spend a week improvising in the south of France, they come with one of the best contemporary jazz album of the year!

Adrian Lim-Klumpes and Nick Calligeros originally met 15 years ago under the dynamic of teacher and student, respectively. After finishing school, Adrian became a mentor to Nick and 15 years on from originally teaching him the fundamentals of improvisation, they have formed this group together. This album was conceived in one take, with only one simple, predetermined structural element guiding them. Everything you hear on the album is completely improvised. Nick says: "I feel my musical approach…

This special bundle collects the recent reissues on Superior Viaduct of two seminal albums originally released on Vortex records: Byard Lancaster "It's Not Up To Us" (LP, 1968)Sonny Sharrock "Black Woman" (LP, 1969)"Warren 'Sonny' Sharrock died of a heart attack at the age of 53 in 1994. At the time of his death, many writers noted that he had recently landed a contract with a major label (RCA) and was perhaps 'destined for big things.' In my opinion, these writers missed the point. Although Mr.…

Limited edition One Drop color vinyl Cape Town, South Africa-based drummer Asher Gamedze explores relationships of time between music and history on his new album Turbulence and Pulse, out May 5th 2023. Gamedze’s critically-acclaimed debut album Dialectic Soul was released at the height of the Covid-19 pandemic in July 2020. Around the release of that record, with friend and writer Teju Adeleye he organized and participated in a joint online discussion “Poesis,” with historian Robin D.G. Kelley …

Tao Forms is chuffed to present this exquisite new solo bass work by young maestro Brandon López.On moving to NYC a little over a decade ago, López began making himself indispensable within many creative music scenes, from the New York Philharmonic to the DIY basements of Brooklyn. As with all bass players of great skill & commitment, López has been prolifically active because he has been in high demand & has made himself available. The Cleveland Review of Books noted: “This is virtuosity as vo…

** CD Edition ** This previously unreleased album by the Horace Tapscott Quintet was unearthed from master tapes in the Flying Dutchman archives. Recorded in 1969 and was intended to be a follow-up album to the classic "The Giant Is Awakened" which was released that year.The iconic pianist and composer Horace Tapscott was one of the most unique and important figures in LA’s jazz world. This lost recording was produced by one of the pivotal figures in jazz, Bob Thiele, a leading behind-the-scenes…

Big Tip! Basil Kirchin, a forgotten genius of post-war British music, was an influential jazz drummer, creative free-spirit and pioneer of Musique Concrète. He spent most of his life living and working in Hull, the 2017 UK City of Culture, which is honouring him as part of their celebrations. Kirchin wrote a number of albums for the de Wolfe Music library, working with fellow composers John Coleman & Jack Nathan to create some of the most sought-after and cult recordings.

Peace Flag Ensemble are a free jazz collective from Saskatchewan. Their sophomore LP, Astral Plains, arrives July 18 via We Are Busy Bodies.

Latin music, with all its spirit, all its intensity, and all its magic, expresses itself in the decade of the seventies as a cultural revelation. Europe recognizes, listens, and dances to our music, the United States jumps to the sound of it. Latin America is letting its roots be felt. Elegua is a part of this happening. It originated in Boston as a result of the collective efforts of musicians concerned about the direction to be taken by the Latin American musical forms. Elegua essentially deal…

Temporary Super Offer! When Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie went into the recording studio together on 28 February 1945, they had already served a shared apprenticeship in the big bands of Earl Hines and Billy Eckstine, had jammed informally exploring their common interest in adventurous extensions of swing harmonies and reconfigured rhythms, and were, individually and collaboratively, prepared to redirect the course of modern jazz. That session shouldn’t in any way be considered the public “…

Temporary Super Offer!  "This one was working. This one always had been working. This one was always having something that was coming out of this one that was a solid thing, a charming thing, a lovely thing, a perplexing thing, a disconcerting thing, a simple thing, a clear thing, a complicated thing, an interesting thing, a disturbing thing, a repellant thing, a very pretty thing. This one was one whom some were follow-ing. This one was the one who was working.” Gertrude Stein’s 1910–11 descrip…

Edition of 400, on black vinyl. This is pure gold for the electro-Miles Davis’s lovers.  The great saxophonist Gugliemo Pagnozzi directs his band in compositions built on improvisation flows that unfold starting from a minimally organized accompanying rhythmic cell in continuous transformation and in the making, which in turn is developed and modified during the executive-improvisation flow chasing instant dialling. Pressed at Optimal Media.

Super Tip! 400 copies, black vinyl. 1968 was a crucial year for Volker Kriegel's career, as he released "With A Little Help From My Friends," his first solo album, and signed with American vibraphonist Dave Pike, joining what would quickly emerge as one of the most popular and influential jazz fusion combos. This precious document reissued for the first time by Cinedelic Jazz with bonus tracks highlights all his qualities that enabled him to become one of the most acclaimed and innovative guitar…

The singular Norwegian percussionist Ingar Zach, a long-time member of paradigm-shifting experimental ensembles like Huntsville and Dans les arbes, delivers his eighth solo recording, and his first on the superb Belgian imprint Aspen Edities. The percussionist digs even deeper into his sonic research, transforming a massive bass drum used in orchestral music, as a resonant surface for otherworldly, texture-rich excursions that mix-and-match rhythm and color in ever-shifting combinations.

* 250 copies, hand numbered * On Nils Vermeulen’s first solo album, the sound of the double bass is the  main variable. Recorded at the empty Ghent Opera, where every note, attack and vibration comes through, including the creaking of the wooden floor.  There is no hiding in reverb, nor in easy playing. The strings Vermeulen uses on this recording (‘Tempera’ strings by Gerold Genssler), are inspired by traditional gut strings, and have lower tension to let the instrument resonate freely. The pie…

*150 copies limited edition* Music For Zoe is the result of the encounter between two masters of free improvisation, Edoardo Ricci (soprano saxophone and bass clarinet) and Lucio Bonaldo (drums) with Gianluca Favaron (computer), a prime mover of electronic sounds often pushed beyond the limits. What emerges from this encounter is a kind of European-style free music, with open structures, sometimes close to radical contemporary improvisation. The acoustic sounds of percussion and wind instruments…

"Gorgeous quintet improv space explored at Chicago's ProMusica studios. Long-time partners Przemyslaw Drazek (trumpet, strings, percussion) and Brent Fuscaldo (voice, guitar, percussion, harmonica) join up again with Hamid's percussion, Tatsu's bass & shamisen, and Thymme's piano & various, just as they did on last year's amazing Ourania (FTR513). The sounds now are spacious, comfortable explorations of unknown sonic turf. There may be a bit less of the aggressive edge that marked their earlier …

Ebalunga!!! is coming back with a new long-awaited reissue of LP by the famous Hungarian guitarist, originally released in 1969.  Gabor Szabo exploded onto the American jazz scene in the early sixties. His unusual approach and unique sound brought something startling and new to jazz. With Chico Hamilton, Charles Lloyd and Gary McFarland, Szabo offered something few in jazz had ever heard before: guitarist as enchanter and conjurer and musician as storyteller and mesmerist. Once Szabo declared hi…

The second instalment of a landmark session by one of the most unique figures in black music is a shower of sounds that have come straight from another world.  Sun Ra and the various groups he led were as prolific as they were innovative. By conservative estimates they produced around 200 recordings over a fifty-year period, and the early 70s was as fertile a time as any. In a typical burst of creative energy Ra and an ensemble he dubbed The Solar Myth Arkestra produced enough material to be spr…

*2023 repress* "Meditation / Resurrection is a double-album presenting a bounty of beautiful new William Parker compositions performed by two of his flagship ensembles, the Quartet -&- In Order To Survive. It was recorded & mixed live during a one-day studio session in late 2016. With the tone of the pieces & performances reflecting our current moment, this is Parker & the groups' follow-up to 2013's epic Wood Flute Songs box (2013). At the core of both groups is Parker's foundational bass toget…

Recording in Brooklyn's Seaside Lounge in 2014, these five previously unreleased collective improvisations bring together West Coast reedist Vinny Golia, performing on clarinet, saxello, sopranino, baritone saxophones with double bassist Max Johnson and drummer Weasel Walter, an absolutely impressive example of free playing intent and well-balanced conversation.

"Every gesture and nuance of [Dickey’s] percussive pronunciation is telling.” –Thomas Conrad, JazzTimes

** High Quality reissue. Remastered using pure analogue components only, from the master tapes through to the cutting head ** On The Blue Yusef Lateef (1968), listeners get an amazing chapter from the late '60s, an amazing period when everything in the world of Jazz was changing. Yuseef Lateef was big on concept recordings. This album examines all the different ranges of emotion contained within the blues genre. With a band that included Detroit Jazz gods Roy Brooks on drums and Kenny Burrell on…

2026 stock. * This quality LP reissue was remastered using pure analogue components only, from the master tapes through to the cutting head. * Released in 1976, Eternity was Alice Coltrane's first album for Warner Bros. after eight wondrous records on Impulse! Combining the drones and textures of India, the gospel and R&B of her Detroit youth and the dissonance of modern classical composition, Coltrane's music in the '70s would become increasingly difficult to categorize. Having moved a few year…

Allen Lowe writes: In the Dark is a commemoration (sic) of the worst time of my life – a period of time during which, having been operated on to remove a cancerous tumor in my sinus, I slept for only brief periods of time. Sometimes I made it as long as two hours continuously, but most often I dozed off for 20 minutes, 30 minutes, maybe an hour – encamped as I was on my couch, trying not to wake my wife as I wandered in the dark contemplating the long night ahead. Sometimes I turned the televisi…

Allen Lowe writes: "America: The Rough Cut is my statement not only on American music and American song, but also my commentary on the way American musicians of all styles handle that old-time music and those old song forms . . . The old things -- not just the blues, but gospel music and pre-blues shouts and language, plus hillbilly/minstrel song and medicine show irony -- reflect a disinterest in the polite trappings of (primarily but not only white) society, an implicit rejection of basic tona…

ESP is proud to present a new William Parker album in collaboration with his wife Patricia Nicholson. No Joke! is unapologetically political, facing down injustice and inequality and other “in”s with artistic integrity and “outside” music.

Throughout his long and prolific career, Matthew Shipp has presented several different and impressive trio formations. Among the featured members have been bassists William Parker, and Joe Morris, and drummers Guillermo E. Brown, Whit Dickey, and Susie Ibarra. In 2015, two other premier players, bassist Michael Bisio, and drummer Newman Taylor Baker stepped in as the rhythm section on The Conduct of Jazz (Thirsty Ear). Their fourth album as a unit, World Construct makes the group the most enduri…

Another legendary one out @Superior Viaduct, the super rare (and amazing) debut by sax / flute player Byard Lancaster on Atlantic's subsidiary label Vortex dedicated to avant-garde jazz. Featuring Sonny Sharrock on guitar. Quoting the Andy Beta's brilliant review on Pitchfork "When John Coltrane succumbed to cancer in 1967, free jazz/fire music was sucked into a giant vacuum along with him. A patron of music and patron saint to so many of its players, there was a crossroads left in his wake. Ele…

An extraordinary piece of energy music that goes way beyond jazz. A legendary album produced by Herbie Mann and originally released in 1969 on the Atco subsidiary Vortex. Sonny Sharrock (and his wife Linda) recorded these tracks with a cast of New York free jazz all-stars including pianist Dave Burrell, drummer Milford Graves, trumpeter Teddy Daniel, and bassist Norris Jones among the others. A radical album with uncompromising blasts of atonal electric guitar, free-form sonic explorations, ecce…