Jazz & Improvisation / All styles

*2022 stock* Around Again - The Music of Carla Bley presents a collection of composer and pianist Carla Bley´s compositions in new interpretations by pianist Iro Haarla, bassist Ulf Krokfors and drummer Barry Altschul. While the recording continues the longstanding collaborations of Iro Haarla and Ulf Krokfors, it also introduces in the mix Barry Altschul, who originally recorded many of the featured compositions with pianist Paul Bley´s trio more than 50 years ago.

Tip! *2022 stock* 'Recorded in 1997, Wadada Leo Smith's N'da Kulture has created a music that transcends all forms by integrating many of them into an amorphous yet deeply moving whole. This sextet, which uses Eastern and Western instruments, authors into being a kind of folk music for the emerging century, one that relies deeply on poetry, improvisation, subtleties in tone, timbre, and rhythm. The six pieces here reflect Smith's ongoing concern with marrying the vanguard jazz tradition he comes…

Tip! Groovy, spiritual, and oh so, rare, this live album by drummer Roy Brooks is one of the best to ever come out of the spiritual jazz scene. With a career spanning over 50 years and collaborations with artists like Horace Silver, Stanley Turrentine, Yusef Lateef, and Charles Mingus, Roy Brooks was a foundation and leading force of the jazz scene throughout his entire storied life. As one of the most talented drummers of any generation, Brooks would lead his own group, the Artistic Truth, and …

Following his trio debut ‘Triptych’ last year, trumpeter Matthias Lindermayr presents his duo record ‘Sequence’ with long-time companion and ECM Recording Artist Matthieu Bordenave on tenor saxophone. In contrast to its technical title, ‘Sequence’ is a very lyrical record, sacral at times. Like two figure skaters, the voices gracefully glide along and whirl around in perfect synch, always sensing where the other one is going. A fitting comparison also, as the recording session was equally exhaus…

Neil Ardley's visionary bridge: 1976's Kaleidoscope of Rainbows fuses British jazz-rock with Balinese gamelan scales. Seven Rainbow compositions built on pelog and slendro patterns, featuring Ian Carr, Paul Buckmaster, Tony Coe. Final part of Ardley's trilogy, pointing toward 1979's Harmony of the Spheres. Minimalist counterpoint meets exotic structures.

A rare document of the 1960s Black Arts Movement featuring Albert Ayler, Amiri Baraka, Milford Graves, Sun Ra, Cecil Taylor, and many more, The Cricket fostered critical and political dialogue for Black musicians and writers. Edited by poets and writers Amiri Baraka, A.B. Spellman, and Larry Neal between 1968 and 1969 and published by Baraka's New Jersey–based Jihad productions shortly after the time of the Newark Riots, this experimental music magazine ran poetry, position papers, and gossip al…

Tip! *Repress with new obi-strip* Japanese label P-Vine sure know how to pick out the essential spiritual jazz reissues. This is another gold standard that came originally on Strata East in 1974. Vocals feature throughout and often soar to the highest of heights and make it a charismatic album. Sample hounds and hip hop lovers might well recognise the track 'Optimystical' which has been pillaged by Detroit great Andres before now. Elsewhere there is real freeform magic on 'Music Is Nothing But A…

Labyrinth is dark, brooding, beat-heavy, melancholic mood music courtesy of Ian Carr and the Nucleus crew. A favourite of Madlib, it goes without saying that this is one magnificent record. Originally released on Vertigo in 1973, Labyrinth was never re-pressed and of course those original copies are now very tricky to score. Like all the Nucleus records, it’s aged ridiculously well and this Be With re-issue, re-mastered from the original analogue tapes, shows off just why this deserves to be bac…

Under The Sun is the follow-up to the astonishing Roots and contains yet more absolutely essential Nucleus material. Originally released on Vertigo in 1974, Under The Sun was never re-pressed and of course those original copies are now very tricky to score. Like all the Nucleus records, it’s aged ridiculously well and this Be With re-issue, re-mastered from the original analogue tapes, shows off just why this deserves to be back in press. Under The Sun opens with the crisp, medium tempo “In Proc…

Come for the leopard, stay for the stone cold jams. Yet another thrilling, funky-prog jazzy-rock fusion beauty from Ian Carr’s Nucleus. Originally released on Vertigo in 1975, Alleycat was never re-pressed so those original copies are now very tricky to score. Like all the Nucleus records, it’s aged ridiculously well and this Be With re-issue, re-mastered from the original analogue tapes, shows off just why this deserves to be back in press. Alleycat was the last Nucleus album recorded for the V…

Temporary Super Offer! 'The Miles Davis Quintet of early 1960 was an endangered, embattled entity. Davis and his frontline foil John Coltrane had been drifting apart stylistically and temperamentally for months. United in the embrace and exploration of modal devices on the trumpeter’s seminal Kind of Blue album released the previous summer, bandleader and sideman were increasingly at odds as to where to go next with the celebrated innovations.' - Derek Taylor

Impossible-to-find gem from 1969 finally reissued in a deluxe edition. ULTRA RARE South African Jazz from District Six with legendary musicians Clifford Moses, Richard Schilder, Basil Moses and Basil Coetzee.

American jazz bassist, composer and producer Jaco Pastorius was a member of Weather Report during the Seventies and also recorded albums as a solo artist. As of 2017, he is the only electric bassist inducted into the Downbeat Jazz Hall of Fame and has been lauded as one of the best electric bassist of all time. He recorded five albums in total with acclaimed drummer Brian Melvin, including the 1989 Jazz Street. This body of work is one of Pastorius' last studio dates and features session musicia…

*In process of stocking. 2022 stock* The Brooklyn-based noise-jazz violinist Sana Nagano often finds herself at the center of the storm. As other instruments crash and careen around her, her assuredly melodic violin works to ground and stabilize the overall sound. And nowhere is this better heard than on Smashing Humans, her new quintet album coming March 19th on 577 Records. Featuring Peter Apfelbaum on sax, Keisuke Matsuno on guitar, Ken Filiano on bass, and Joe Hertenstein on drums, it’s an L…

A superb Jazz Flavoured Latin Funk Soul album recorded in 1977 by Grammy Award Winning Carlos Franzetti when he was a struggling musician trying to get his first breaks in a tough New York Jazz scene. With a Top Notch grouping including Percussionist Ray Mantilla, Victor Venegas on Bass and Dick Meza from the Tito Puente Orchestra. Carlos played all the Keyboards, wrote the numbers and was also responsible for all the arrangements. Released by Guiness Records (No relation to the Drink) and swift…

Wewantsounds present the first retrospective on vinyl of Saravah Records, one of the most influential French labels founded in Paris by singer, songwriter, and producer Pierre Barouh in 1966. Featuring Brigitte Fontaine, Jacques Higelin, Alfred Panou, and many rare tracks reissued on vinyl for the first time, the set gives a glimpse of the free-form, groovy sound of the label between 1965 and 1976. Supervised by Pierre Barouh's son and Saravah historian, Benjamin Barouh. Pierre Barouh became an…

Altercat proudly presents the definitive reissue of one of the crown jewels of South American jazz. Essentially the brainchild of Argentinian jazz’s leading figure Jorge López Ruiz, the project Viejas Raíces marked Lopez Ruiz’s departure from the traditional forms of jazz.

Cosmic jazz from the Canary Islands, recorded by Argentinian pianist Luis Vecchio.

*In process of stocking.* Two masters of wind instruments blowing in from the Windy City. In 2003, as part of the seventh annual Empty Bottle Festival of Jazz & Improvised Music, Joe McPhee and Evan Parker squared off for a round of intimate dialogues. The resulting recording is just the second time they had played as a duet, the previous also being in Chicago, at a studio in 1998, where the limited their instrumentarium to tenor saxophones, resulting in the Okka Disc classic Chicago Tenor Duets…

Often affectionately referred to as the "Godfather of British Latin music" Robin Jones was truly one of the great performers on the international Latin scene. Denga, his first recording from 1971 is a scintillating fusion of Afro-Cuban and Afro-Brazillian rhythms laden with heavy Fender Rhodes sounds and no less than three Afro-Latin Percussionists. The hard-to-find album has now been reissued by legendary London jazz DJ Paul Murphy's Jazz Room Records imprint. It should be an essential purchase…

Favorite Recordings and Charles Maurice proudly present a brand new compilation series: Fusion Global Sounds. 9 rare and hidden tracks produced between 1970 and 1983 in various parts of the world. As a fine collector of Jazz-Funk and Fusion for many years, Charles Maurice selected some of his favorite forgotten productions, as he previously did for the AOR Global Sounds, French and Brazilian Disco Boogie Sounds compilations series. This time, recordings come from Sweden, Switzerland, South Afric…

The world is more elusive than simple cause and effect imply, more typically, life circumvents causation in favor of an unknowable correlation. It seems like the more we know, the less we know. On this first volume from Zoh Amba and Francisco Mela, the duo brings their regional traditions, from Tennessee and Cuba respectively, and musical inclinations to the cause and effect behind their own life stories. Causa y Efecto, Vol. 1 is an ode to the unknown, transporting audiences between the New Yor…

Saxophonist, flautist Chip Wickham takes us to Cloud 10 with his most soulful and lyrical album to date Chip Wickham is a jazz musician and producer who divides his time between Spain, UK and the Middle-East and who has made a name for himself with a series of beautifully crafted solo albums that draw equally on the hard swinging spiritual jazz of Roland Kirk, Yusef Lateef and Sahih Shihab, alongside the music of British jazz legends such as Tubby Hayes and Harold McNair and the more contemporar…

SSWAN presents their first outing "Invisibility is an unnatural disaster" a raucous jaunt of free jazz on the premiere fire music label 577 Records. The music is rooted in the Black American art form of jazz, stemming into the branches of free improvisation, noise and experimentalism while pushing to the edges of each idiom. The idiosyncratic playing of guitarist Jessica Ackerley starts off the album's title track and jumps headfirst into a Hendrix-tinged duo with drummer Jason Nazary. Patrick S…

Comet Records present the new reissue out of the Comet new reissue series, Dilijans by Ayizan. A mind-blowing session of spiritual jazz recorded in NYC in 1984 led by Haitian genius Alix Pascal blending traditional Ra Ra elements with modal/spiritual melodies. The result was like nothing else coming out of Haiti or the Haitian exile community in the US at the time. Dark, mystical, lyrical and abstract, with its otherworldly shifting rhythms, Dilijans came off like a Haitian version of Bitches Br…

Comet Records present the first release out of the Comet new reissue series with this cult French Free Jazz LP from 1974, Crowded with Loneliness by Full Moon Ensemble was produced by Claude Delcloo, check the classic ‘Samba `Miaou’, like a lost Pharoah Sanders tune mixed with politically-engaged French poetry! The whole LP is varied, avant-garde and spiritual and now available as Vinyl LP with Gatefold cover, set to become collectible as the original is impossible to find.

Comet Records present the new release out of the Comet new reissue series, Noel McGhie’s only full-length LP, released in France in 1975 at cult private label Disques Esperance! A true rare groove classic, a one-of-a-kind spiritual jazz funk record with a fusion touch. Includes ‘Trapeze’, ‘Dancer’ and ‘Mademoiselle Tuloch’.

*In process of stocking* An international trio (USA/FR/IT) recorded live in Italy during their 2017 European tour.

Previously unpublished live recording, under exclusive license from the Horace Tapscott Family. The first opportunity to listen to Horace’s working quintet from the '90s! Includes a 16-page booklet with liner notes by the original producers of those recordings: Don Snowden and David Keller, photos by Warren Berman and some rare documents.

*In process of stocking* 'Volumes II—Fiction Musicale et Chorégraphique is an ambitious, large-scale composition by the French double bassist/composer Benjamin Duboc for orchestra, voice, and physical movement. The composition unfolds in a long sequence of highly disparate parts, beginning with ambient noises and a spoken prelude before moving into more overtly musical passages. The orchestra commences with a sustained, droning chord marked by a slowly developing, internally unstable drift of pi…

* 180 gram yellow audiophile vinyl* This is a much better album than the title might suggest. Wilen still has the blend of tasteful restraint and inventiveness which marked his memorable duet with Miles Davis for the soundtrack of L’Ascenseur Pour L’Echafaud and the second track here reprises some of that music. The sixth track seems to offer more but the Generique credited to Davis is actually the Benny Golson composition which ope­ned the Jazz Messengers’ sound­track for Des Femmes Disparaisse…

*In process of stocking* The well-known 1962 performance by the celebrated Ahmad Jamal Trio with Israel Crosby and Vernel Fournier at the Blackhawk Club in San Francisco. This formation of the group wouldn't last long, as Israel Crosby died in mid-1962.

George Russell was one of the most advanced composers and arrangers in the history of Jazz. A theorist and innovator who worked extensively between the 40's and the early 2000's. Originally released by Decca in 1960, "Jazz in the Space Age" was Russell's third effort under his name. A visionary work including music composed and arranged by Russell for various lineups featuring the likes of pianists Bill Evans and Paul Bley, trombonist Bob Brookmeyer, drummer Charlie Persip and others. This is ad…

Lampen is Kalle Kalima and Tatu Rönkkö. Kalle plays guitar, Tatu plays percussions and sampler. Together they're Lampen, a duo making highly addictive "post jazz" with a musical heart far beyond genre. Call it what you will, but the main point is listening, and there's a high season for that coming as Lampen is set to release their debut album on We Jazz Records on "Kintsugi Gold" vinyl and digitally. Kintsugi (金継ぎ, "golden joinery"), also known as kintsukuroi (金繕い, "golden repair"), is the Japa…

Available for distribution for the first time! The new album by drummer producer Teppo "Teddy Rok" Mäkynen continues where his trio 3TM was last spotted: "Atonal Drums", out on Helsinki's We Jazz Records, lives someplace in & around the new spots where acoustic jazz and electronic music spill into each other in ways previosuly unheard. Each vinyl copy is unique and comes "edited" by Teddy Rok with personalized signatures and extra bespoke stickers glued in.

Ode To O is the second release by the OGJB Quartet that features four leaders in their own right, saxophonist Oliver Lake, cornetist Graham Haynes, bassist Joe Fonda and drummer Barry Altschul. As with their first release, Bamako, each member has contributed compositions to the new recording which also features two collective improvisations. The album combines tracks based on gutbucket rhythms with others full of exploratory abstractions. The album title, Ode To O, refers to Ornette Coleman and …

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…

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…

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…

OGJB — Oliver Lake, Graham Haynes, Joe Fonda, and Barry Altschul — characterize themselves as a “leaderless” quartet. In that spirit, the compositions featured here serve as sketches to be built and elaborated on (and often entirely reconfigured), not as templates or structural frameworks. Unison passages are tightly executed, yet with just enough raggedness to their edge that the individualism of each man’s expression remains paramount, reflecting the overarching theme of this project: the kind…