Jazz & Improvisation / All styles

*All tracks previously unreleased. Stereophonic sound.* Featuring the classic KTG frontline of Marc Charig, Nick Evans and Elton Dean with rhythm section appearances by British jazz luminaries Jeff Clyne, Trevor Tomkins, Roy Babbington and Bryan Spring. These six previously unreleased live studio tracks were recorded for broadcast purposes in January and August of 1970, between the group’s two now seminal British jazz/rock releases for the Polydor and Vertigo labels respectively, 1969’s ‘You Are…

Tip! This record shows two special musicians - drummer Steffen Roth and guitarist Konni Behrendt - in battle as well as in close embrace with their instruments. Exploring, struggling, enjoying, finding their way off the beaten path. Steffen Roth and Konni Behrendt, both living in Germany, studied music together and have maintained their friendship ever since. This joint solo project follows their bands PALAWA and Groundfields. The A-side belongs to Steffen Roth. His style of playing music is cha…

Our Swimmer present a reissue of Albert Ayler's The Hilversum Sessions, originally released in 1980. "Recorded in the Dutch city of Hilversum, The Hilversum Sessions presents Albert Ayler in all his blowzy, testifying glory, fronting a quartet that includes trumpeter Don Cherry, bassist Gary Peacock, and drummer Sunny Murray. The repertoire includes five Ayler originals, notably his signature tunes 'Angels,' 'Ghosts,' and 'Spirits.' It's easy to forget how starkly original Ayler was, given the u…

This fourth record by the long-standing improvising ensemble Rempis/Abrams/Ra, and the third featuring now-regular band member Jim Baker, was recorded in a watershed moment for these musicians during a pandemic that had gutted lives across the planet. After 15 months of being closed to the public, the band's home base Elastic Arts had re-opened for live events. And Rempis decided to relaunch his weekly Thursday-night concert series, a hub of the Chicago scene since 2002, with a performance by th…

*In process of stocking. Edition of 200.* Recorded live in Accord, New York, this recording stands not only as Notice Recording’s 70th album, but also the first release to document an event organized by Notice as well. June 6th was one of the hottest days of that summer, and the wooden platform on which the performances occurred was on the top of a small hill on Deer Creek Farm. Many sweaty trips up and down that hill carrying gear ensued. Luckily, the performance and audience space was nestled …

Patrick Shiroishi returns with his second Notice album, a duo with double bassist Kyle Motl. “Apparitions” opens this album of the same name, and we are greeted with wispy and amorphous trails of wind-blown textures, as if the very first layer of an abstract painting fell to the floor of an old house and followed the contours of the walls and door frames, under shafts of light and in-between the fine cracks of floors. This is an album full of expressive and poetic phrasings, jittery movements an…

"As such, the music succeeds in maintaining a balance between cohesion and surprise, occasionally coming close to the jazz tradition, but always on its own terms. It gives the album a refreshingly unconventional approach, a counterpoint of ideas that consistently marches to the beat of a different drummer. " - Guy Peters

"The most striking thing about it all is how these four people with four different nationalities (Kroatian, Swiss, Portuguese, Dutch) and backgrounds turn VISTAS into something wholly convincing. It is a rich, bold and rewarding statement that not only betrays a healthy disregard for genre conventions, but also creates a strikingly refreshing balancing act, and as such also offers a new shade to the steadily expanding New Wave Of Jazz-catalog, where improvisation, minimalism and various other st…

*In process of stocking* "Onno Govaert. Now here is a guy who deserves to be in the spotlights.  Verhoeven and Govaert form a beautiful musical partnership that thrives on abundant dynamics and colourful interaction. Whether it is the subtle ripostes or the unanimous cadences that develop throughout their improvisations, there is always a crisp and natural affinity at the core of their partnership. With Dirk Serries, Govaert alters his approach. The combination with the amplified acoustic guitar…

"Today and all the tomorrows is one of those releases that sounds like cinema for the ears, despite the fact that the ‘song’ order might seem random and that it might be hard to find a general arc. Verhoeven firmly stands at the center of this music, flanked by two guitarists that get caught up in six three-way conversations. There is no agreed method or set of expectations and fixed ideas, but listen carefully, and you will notice how each piece has its own characteristics and turns the combina…

Tip! *In process of stocking.* Adrianne Munden-Dixon and Leo Chang’s “Some Time” presents stuttering physical exchanges between Munden-Dixon’s violin and electronics and Chang’s amplified piri. These pieces are tense and tightly-woven, yet constantly unraveling and reforming. Chang’s “ampiri” is a Korean double reed instrument running through electronics and played in unconventional and non-traditional ways. Recontextualising the instrument “quasi-autodidactically” aligns with Chang’s approach t…

** 80 coloured copies on white/blue marbled vinyl. Includes insert and obi. ** Recorded in November 1969 at Teichiku Kaikan Studio, Tokyo, "Speed ​​and Space - The Concept of Space in Music" is one of those landmark works in which Masahiko Togashi is accompanied by talented musicians who possess a unique style and innovative approach. The album is an exploration of Togashi's notion of the “Time Law" and can be seen as a study of how texture, rhythm and differing rates of change effect our percep…

** 80 coloured copies on golden vinyl. Includes insert and obi. ** The quintessential album by Takayanagi Masayuki. Considered the 'Lochness monster' of Japanese free jazz records due to its incredible rarity, this album was the debut recording of Takayanagi Masayuki as leader with The New Directions, a trio consisting out of bassist Yoshizawa and drummer Toyozumi "Sabu" Yoshisaburo. Recorded at the Teichiku Kaikan studios on 18 September 1969 (released in 1970), "Independence – Tread on Sure Gr…

*In process of stocking* The trio Kalma Zolli Sinigaglia is coming out from the experiences of the duo “Scosse Elettriche” (Zolli-Sinigaglia) playing with other musicians like Trio Cavalazzi and Ariel Kalma. Riccardo Sinigaglia is a well-known Italian composer, electronic musician and improviser; he played keyboards and flute in groups like Futuro Antico, Correnti Magnetiche, Doubling Riders, and collaborated with many musicians in Italy and abroad. Davide Zolli has been the drummer of Italian n…

Running counter to the monopoly of white representation in music, Radio Diaspora translates the African diaspora through free jazz experimentalism and free improvisation. The musicians in the duo, Romulo Alexis and Wagner Ramos, reverberate the signs of blackness through zones of sonorous intensity, giving new meanings to the Afro-descendant musical experience. In ‘Negro Humor’, their tenth album, the duo investigates the dichotomy of humor to again reverberate their struggle through music again…

Acoustic Sounds Series edition  Karma is a jazz recording by the American tenor saxophonist Pharoah Sanders, released in May 1969 on the Impulse! label. A pioneering work of the "spiritual jazz" style, it has become Sanders' most popular and critically acclaimed album. It is among a number of spiritually-themed albums released on the Impulse! label in the late 1960s/early 1970s. The album's main piece is the 32-minute-long "The Creator Has a Master Plan," co-composed by Sanders with vocalist Leo…

In 1954, during his first trip to Paris, the adventurous pianist and be-bop pioneer Thelonious Monk recorded a handful of songs for French radio, later issued as The Prophet. Unencumbered by bass, drums or other a companiment, Monk gives us all we need in left-hand rhythms and right-hand melodies; ‘Round About Midnight’ and ‘Reflections’ di play masterful command and there’s a one-off take of ‘Smoke Gets In Your Eyes.’ Highlighting his capabilities in full, this is required listening for Monk fa…

Pioneering be-bopper and unorthodox pianist Thelonious Monk was largely underacknowledged for the role he played in changing jazz forever. The Unique Thelonious Monk, the second of his LPs for Riverside, was recorded in 1956 with bassist/cellist Oscar Pettiford, who Monk had bonded with in Coleman Hawkins’ band, and the wildcard drummer, Art Blakey, pushing things farther into the realm of experimentation, despite the set being comprised of jazz standards. Thus, ‘Tea For Two’ becomes a hard-bop …

*In process of stocking* In Motions, Vol. 1, Francisco Mela and Shinya Lin create an album of improvised textures and thrilling exploratory sounds. Using drum sets and prepared piano, they create a lush soundscape of textures, imagining a scene reminiscent of a jungle, full of life, resources, and possibility. “It was a huge pleasure to have Mela’s presence and his mentorship was amazing, free of selves, the music came out just naturally from our souls,” says Shinya about their first collaborati…

*In process of stocking* Super groups are not a riskless endeavor—but when they’re made up of longtime friends and master improvisers, they tend to work. On their collaboration, simply titled Volume 1, up-and-coming American saxophonist John Dikeman (When The Time Is Right, 577 Records, 2021) is accompanied by a group of UK-based music masters: pianist Pat Thomas, a 577 Records mainstay (Shifa Live at Cafe Oto 2019, BleySchool 2019, Shifa Live in Oslo 2020, Educated Guess 2021), bassist John Edw…

*In process of stocking* How do you welcome adventure? Longtime comrades, legendary Daniel Carter, Matthew Shipp, William Parker and Gerald Cleaver investigated this in their first album, Welcome Adventure, Vol. 1, resulting in 577 Records’ best-selling release in the 20 years we’ve been operating. Now, the group is trying the question again with their second astonishing volume, taken from the same historical recording session. Daniel Carter (Saxophone, Clarinet) has been collaborating with Will…

'Amiri Baraka (LeRoi Jones) spoke the truth (and the truth under his tongue was sometimes a hammer, sometimes an anvil, sometimes a sickle, sometimes just a breath or a blast). Baraka had no tongue in cheek. Sometimes he drew his language (his thought) and in the barrel of his language (his thought), there was the cartridge of criticism, the cartridge of ranting, the cartridge of analysis, the cartridge of sedition, the cartridge of poetry, the cartridge of music. Heroes Are Gang Leaders have th…

If 577 Records had a house-band, this would be it—a group of longtime friends, collaborators and established jazz musicians who are mainstays of the 577 Records’ catalog, here playing together. The Telepathic Band named themselves after the sort of improvisational style that can only be accomplished with a decade or two of collaboration, playing a signature, boundary-pushing music between friends. Now, with their fifth album, Daniel Carter (Saxophone, Clarinet, Trumpet), Patrick Holmes (Clarinet…

'The Uproar in Bursts of Sound and Silence is a sort of emergent collage that came together over four years of composition, improvisation, and production. The foundations for this album were initially recorded in 2018 by producer/engineer Jack Endino (Nirvana, Soundgarden, Mudhoney, Skinyard) at Soundhouse in Seattle, WA with myself (Evan Strauss, electric bass and upright bass), 5-Track (Guitar) and Sheridan Riley (Drums). The initial foundations of this music consisted of my long-form graphica…

Originally from Kingsport, Tennessee, New York-based Zoh Amba is a notable rising star in the avant-garde music scene. Growing up in the Appalachian mountains, Amba practiced saxophone to the forest that surrounded her home before she later traveled to study with David Murray in New York, and also at the San Francisco Conservatory Of Music & New England Conservatory in Boston. Today, her music is full of folk melodies, mesmerizing refrains, repeated incantations and powerfully executed Free Jazz…

In Flower, In Song is the debut album from Trio Xolo, an improvising group composed of Mexican-American bassist Zachary Swanson, Baltimore-based saxophonist Derrick Michaels, and Lithuanian percussionist Dalius Naujo. With a telepathic ear toward musical interplay, Trio Xolo performs free-flowing stream of consciousness improvisations. The result is true, in the moment composition. The trio moves together dynamically as their voices simultaneously overlap and converge into one. In Flower, In Son…

*2022 stock. In process of stocking.* 'The bands Atomic and School Days share the same rhythm section : Ingebrigt Haker Flaten on bass and Paal Nilssen-Love on drums. Atomic further consists of Magnus Broo on trumpet, Fredrik Ljungkvist on tenor sax and Bb clarinet, and Havard Wiik on piano. School Days has Chicagoans Jeb Bishop on trombone and Ken Vandermark on baritone sax, Bb and bass clarinet and Norwegian Kjell Nordeson on vibraphone. After "Nuclear Assembly Hall" this is the second release…

*2022 stock. In process of stocking.* "The 3rd release by Ken Vandermark's School Days is a double CD of studio material recorded with the Oslo quintet Atomic. Both bands have the same rhythm section of Paal Nilssen-Love on drums and Ingebrigt Haker Flaten on bass. The group includes Magnus Broo: trumpet, Jeb Bishop: trombone, Fredrik Liungkvist: reeds, Ken Vandermark: reeds, Hevard Wiik: piano & Kjell Nordeson: vibraphone. 9 new compositions 1 each by all the members (2 by Mr. Liungkvist)." - S…

*2022 stock. In process of stocking* 'Fred Anderson is from Chicago, a city like Detroit known for the strength of its music scene. High time that he was shown in the light of this great quartet session, Birdhouse. Anderson’s association with Hamid Drake has germinated here with Anderson’s quartet giving a searching performance of his [Anderson’s] compositions. Birdhouse reflects that kind of powerful play where the roots are so strong, the music can evolve farther without losing the thread of i…

*2022 stock. In process of stocking* 'Recorded live during the “Women of New Music” festival in Chicago, [this] OkkaDisk set is marred — Crispell-wise — only by having the piano mixed down too low and occasionally swamped by saxophone and percussion. Otherwise it finds her in thoroughly sympathetic company. Anderson’s diction is Coltrane-influenced but generously... This seems like a relationship written in the stars, and it allows them to build up whole areas of interaction in which the exchang…

*2022 stock. In process of stocking* Fred Anderson & DKV Trio is an excellent jazz album that captures the high level of musicianship possessed by these top Chicago players. Heard here are saxophonist Fred Anderson (founding member of the AACM), percussionist Hamid Drake, bassist Kent Kessler, and reeds man Ken Vandermark. With this group, there is no "warming up"; they're hot from the opening notes. "Planet E" is the first cut, and within no time the fire is stoked and the musicians move, wail,…

*2022 stock. In process of stocking* AALY Trio (Gustafsson, Nordeson, Flaten) on left channel; DKV Trio (Vandermark, Kessler, Drake) on right channel.Recorded September 23, 1999 at Airwave Studios, Chicago.Track 2 is a long performance with an index point at the start of the Awake Nu theme.

Bill Dixon's last large ensemble concert, at Victoriaville on 22 May 2010, weeks before his death: trumpets and cornets with Taylor Ho Bynum, Rob Mazurek, Graham and Stephen Haynes, with Glynis Lomon, Michel Côté and Warren Smith.

Barre Phillips on double bass, Catherine Jauniaux on voice and Malcolm Goldstein on violin, live at Victoriaville on 22 May 2010: three veteran improvisers in a delicate, conversational trio.

Iva Bittová, Gyan Riley and Evan Ziporyn as Eviyan, live at Victoriaville on 16 May 2013: violin, voice and kalimba, acoustic guitar and clarinets in songs between Moravian folk, minimalism and chamber music.

Anthony Braxton's septet live at Victoriaville on 21 May 2011, performing Echo Echo Mirror House music, where each musician plays an iPod loaded with Braxton's recorded history alongside their instrument.

*2022 stock* "The rhythm section is thunderous in general with Nilssen-Love providing polyrhythmic barrage fire to Brötzmann’s assaults. It is a vortex of sounds – some shrieking, others almost torn, spat, even puked – owing credits both to hardcore and to Dadaistic sound poems, sharing their free rhythms, their devoted declamation and their rejection of conventional form and content. Trio Roma is a supremely passionate and committed group." -Martin Schray, Free Jazz Blog

The great Malcolm Earl "Mal" Waldron makes his debut on Naked Lunch with a collection of his own compositions recorded in New York City during the early '60s in a trio formation with George Tucker on bass and Al Dreares on the drums. The composing skills of Waldron as a post-bop key figure are here on full display on both sides, although pieces like "Modal-Air," "Summerday," "Ollie's Caravan," and "Quiet Temple" really demonstrate the creativity of the trio's playing, with Tucker and Dreares lay…

*300 copies limited release* In 1963 Eric Dolphy recorded some sessions in New York with producer Alan Douglas, the fruits of which were issued on small labels as the LPs Conversations and Iron Man. They've been reissued a number of times on various labels, occasionally compiled together, but never with quite the treatment they deserve (which is perhaps why they're not as celebrated as they should be). In whatever form, though, it's classic, essential Dolphy that stands as some of his finest wor…

*In process of stcoking* Ethereal, sensual, subtle. Maria de Fátima is that new favourite singer you think you just discovered, but had actually always been there. This Brazilian muse from Tijuca (Rio de Janeiro) has worked and recorded with artists such as Milton Nascimento, Gilberto Gil, Arthur Verocai, Airto Moreira & Flora Purim, Chico Buarque and Lincoln Olivetti amongst many others. We're immensely proud to bring you a deluxe reissue of her only solo album Bahia com H. Recorded in 1981 in …