Jazz & Improvisation / All styles

Why some artists achieve the recognition they deserve while other equally talented ones don't depends on many things. But one thing is clear, that obscurity does not always mean lack of talent. Regardless, it is always a pleasure to discover little known but immensely gifted musicians and it is really a great pleasure to hear the reissue of The Diamond Five's Brilliant!. The Diamond Five, a Dutch quintet led by pianist Cees Slinger, was founded in 1959 and lasted until 1965. They were based at t…

Temporary Super Offer! It is surely significant that both Lovens and Stoffner use all four limbs to control their instrument. Lower limbs used principally to play bass drum and hi-hat in the case of Lovens, volume control and effects pedal for Stoffner. Right and left limbs, right and left brain hemispheres  It is not surprising that there is plenty going on in their music. “Whatever happened to the Art of the Individual?!” Han Bennink once asked rhetorically to a crowded backstage.  Well here i…

Together, ‘Spirits Rejoice’ and ‘Bell’s encapsulate a four month period where long-gestating ideas of Ayler’s were birthed, helping to usher in a conception of music unlike virtually anything else extant, paving the way for his own adventures of the next several years and, perhaps more importantly, providing an extremely fertile bed for a generation or two of musicians to come. – Brian Olewnick Albert Ayler’s recording career was a short one, spanning only the years 1962 – 1970, yet he went thro…

Classic Cool/Bop session from 76, and regarded as one of the finest Norwegian jazz live recordings of the seventies featuring an impeccable performance by alto sax player Carl Neumann, playing mostly original songs by pianist Christian Reim, Bjørn Kjellemyr on Bass and Ole Jacob Hansen on drums. First time on vinyl format and with great sound quality, new pictures, new notes.

* Edition of 500 * An amazing loft tape find of a Norwegian Jazz concert suite taped at Molde Jazz Festival 1973, Christian Reim’s sextet Mona Lisa features Norway's top jazzmen at the time and it’s a rollercoaster post-bop showcase with influences from modal and spiritual jazz with folk undertones and pop psychedelia, one of a kind, never previously released and in great sound quality!

In 2002 Misha Mengelberg was invited for the second time to the AngelicA Festival in Bologna. That edition, the twelfth, took part entirely in a squatted social centre of the city, and, in collaboration with Tristan Honsinger, was conceived as one large opera lasting six days – an opera within which the performances of many national and international artists fitted in like individual mobile “modules”. Especially for this occasion and on the festival director’s suggestion, who had attended a perf…

In the year 2000, when Bologna was European Capital of Culture, AngelicA Festival, then in its tenth edition, invited Cecil Taylor to hold a concert at the Teatro Comunale - Opera House of Bologna: solo, with his piano (and his dance and his poetry readings) he opened an evening that ended with a rendition of the luminous piece Coptic Light by Morton Feldman performed by the Orchestra del Teatro Comunale di Bologna, conducted by Jurjen Hempel. This unusual juxtaposition (not in the history of th…

On October 14th 1989, Horace Tapscott, founder of the Pan Afrikan Peoples Arkestra, performed alongside his close friend and musical partner Michael Session at the Théâtre du Chêne Noir in Avignon, France. This was during a tour in which they traveled across Europe. The duo presented compositions by Leimert Park musicians Jesse Sharps, Nate Morgan and Tapscott himself. The stark instrumentation of this concert led to minimal arrangements of compositions typically performed by much larger ensembl…

Dale Gorfinkel is a multi-instrumentalist, improvisor, instrument creator, installation artist, educator, and community builder. His work aims to reflect an awareness of the dynamic nature of culture & the value of listening as a mode of knowing people & places. He is interested in finding fresh ways of presenting and making music, bringing creative communities together & shifting perceived boundaries of scenes, styles & artforms. His first solo release reflects this diversity of interest…

The International Nothing is the Berlin-based duo of clarinet players Kai Fagaschinski and Michael Thieke. The two have been working together since 2000, refining a highly personal language focused on introspective, microtonal textures through stasis, patiently investigating timbre, multiphonics and extended techniques, with a commanding intensity spiced with a dry sense of humor (reflected also in the cover art by Japanese Masae Tanabe). This duo has released three albums on the Japanes…

Killer 1973 Solo album from the percussionist of kraut band Can. A boiling cauldron of polyrhythmic grooves and jazz improvisations with a strong early 70ies prog touch, haunting Exotica jazz passages with “jungle” feel. For fans of Osibisa, Fela, Ginger Baker Airforce, Miles Davis… all around 1969 to 1973 This is the 1973 solo album by Ghanaian percussionist Anthony Kwaku Bah, who was given the nickname „Reebop“ by American  jazz legend Dizzie Gillespie. He passed away early at the age of 39 in…

The dramatic act of this performance draws a deamhulatory line colouring each phase in the sound of the required instrument; large discursive logic intensity in the atmosphere appropriate to each segment. After his entry "City of Lyon"which sets the happening hic et nunc, the second piece "Art Dance"on alto clarinet is heard as a twirling questioning with changes of mood from anger to melancholy: bal(l)ade autumnal de Dakka Du Boo Yu", again on the clarinet,"Music is Sound, Sound is Music"thunde…

Recorded live at the Palais des Glaces, Paris in 1977

Vinyl edition of this joyous improvised music drawing on South African roots and European free jazz from Chris McGregor and a group including Evan Parker, Louis Moholo, Barre Philllips, &c.  This album only had a few test pressings at the time of recording and this is therefore the first vinyl release of this classic work. In 1969 the Chris McGregor Group were riding high on the London jazz scene, playing and hanging out with all the rising stars of British free jazz. Sessions for the previously…

"Moon Piano" is the second in Laraaji's trilogy of piano albums, and follows the spiritual "Sun Piano", released earlier this summer. The piano was the first instrument the esteemed ambient idol learned, and his return to the keys feels generous and open-hearted. Laraaji's focus here is more melancholy and contemplative than on the album's predecessor, and while the same process was used - “I’d sit down, touch the piano and through free association, also blending it with my prepared mental state…

The immaculate mess of Blunder originates from a three-piece impro group consisting of Mads Forby (drums), Kristian Poulsen (guitar) and Lars Greve (saxophones and clarinets). Their debut album Blunder presents a music that's hazy and patient, struck by a disarming sense of attentiveness. It's a slow dance around a malformed energetic forcefield, it's the pull of the vortex, sucking the listener into an elastic sound world of repetitive rhythmic structures and shamanistic summoning.

**2020 repress** Born Alice McLeod into a musical Detroit family, Alice Coltrane began playing piano at age seven and later studied with Bud Powell in Paris. Upon returning to the States, she joined vibraphonist Terry Gibbs' group and eventually shared a bill with the John Coltrane Quartet. In 1965 the two wed in Juárez, Mexico, and played alongside one another until her husband's last performance in May, 1967.A Monastic Trio, created in the year following her husband's passing, is Alice Coltran…

**2CD version** «My favorite albums have always been the ones that take the listener on a journey. I aim to do that, to create worlds with my albums - universes. I wanted The Other Side of Time to unfold like a story and I've continued that process with The Shadows and The Light. I'm influenced by so many different styles of creative music and I like to try and bring all those influences into harmony on these records. There is long-form and short-form composition. You have groove and you have fr…

The latest chapter in the unfolding musical story of Bill Wells finds the Scottish jazz outsider’s compositions played by a trio of tuba players with contributions from young brass players from his adopted hometown of Glasgow.  The results, The Viaduct Tuba Trio Plays The Music Of Bill Wells, are alternately ruminative, playful and profound, ranging from the cyclical opener Fanfare For Three Tubas to a mischievous interpretation of The Midges, a comic tribute to the entomological scourge of the …

Recorded, mixed and mastered by Marc Schots in January 10th 2018 at Splendor, Amsterdam. Performed by Hupata! : Ada Rave - tenor saxophone, clarinet, Marta Warelis - piano, Yung-tuan Ku - percussion + objects, preparations, voices; featuring Marc Schots on track no.8. All compositions by Marta Warelis, Ada Rave, Yung-Tuan Ku. Special thanks to: Michael Moore.

Recorded at Static Age Records in Asheville, NC, June 10, 2018 by Dylan Jordan. Performed by Tatsuya Nakatani - percussion, Shane Parish - nylon string guitar, Zach Rowden - double bass. Mixed by Tatsuya Nakatani in Truth or Consequences, New Mexico, Summer 2019.

Icepick is the super-power trio of some of the busiest musicians on this planet – American, Brooklyn-based trumpeter Nate Wooley, Norwegian, Austin-based bass player Ingebrigt Håker Flaten, and American, Upstate New York-based drummer Chris Corsano. «Hellraiser» is already the third album of this trio and was recorded live in February 2018, on the occasion of a gathering supporting the Option series at Experimental Sound Studios (ESS) in Chicago. Originally, this performance was slated for anoth…

"Back in 2018, I was invited by Dave Rempis to participate in the Exposure Series at Elastic Arts in Chicago. The Series was for me a shining example of artist-lead organizing of different yet connected communities around the Music. From my standpoint, it is yet another in the continuum of such actions, specifically in Chicago, and has been a major inspiration for my work as an artist and for the material on this recording. The ensemble was assembled by Mr. Rempis, and was the first time the gro…

After "Divertimento for tenor saxophone and small ensemble" (Alien Transistor) and "The Anatomy Of Melancholy" (Disko B) the two members of the Tied & Tickled Trio, Johannes Enders and Carl Oesterhelt, now publish their third collaboration Heart Of Darkness (Themes and Variations). 16 compositions, variations / improvisations for duo or chamber music ensemble; "Extremely interesting blend of jazz and non-jazz; Great ad hoc jazz improvisations on jazz-informed patterns " - Thomas Meinecke

Distinguished Los Angeles-based jazz pianist Horace Tapscott is probably best-known as the founder of the Pan-Afrikan People’s Orchestra of PAPA, also known as The Ark, though he began his career as a trombonist, working with Lionel Hampton and others during the late 1950s. The 1978 solo album, Songs Of The Unsung, released in small number on pianist Toshiya Taenaka’s Interplay label, features Tapscott alone on piano, delivering a superb set of freely interpreted jazz tunes, including an unfette…

Superb performance recorded in Paris, March 1967, and broadcast on French radio station ORTF.From the very beginning, Los Angeles-raised Don Cherry (1936) displayed an anti-virtuoso attitude that contrasted with the ruling dogmas of jazz music. Cherry shunned both acrobatic exhibitions and radical experiments in favor of humility and pathos (thus appealing more to the rock crowd than to the jazz crowd). His style focused on the idiosyncratic timbres of his pocket trumpet and on languid phrases t…

Pat Thomas is one of the most extraordinary pianists of our time. In a first time duo with saxophonist Matana Roberts, the lyricism of his distinctly dexterous and curious approach to the piano paints pathways for Robert’s poignantly vocal saxophone. Together the two speak; locked grooves and neat switchbacks on the keys form dialogue with long deliberate lines on the alto, punctuated by Roberts’ ecstatic vocalisations.  The trio of improvised pieces which make up the record’s first side are ric…

Reissue, originally released in 1973. The only LP featuring a band under Peter Kowald's name, Peter Kowald Quintet comes from a vital moment in the German bassist's career. A close colleague of Peter Brötzmann's in their formative years, including the saxophonist's debut For Adolphe Sax (1967) and the classic Machine Gun (1968), Kowald had by 1972 broadened his circle of collaborators, eventually working with a who's who of global creative music. Recorded live in Berlin, released on FMP, this da…

Reissue, originally released in 1985. Gentle, incisive solo music for violin and electronics by one of the unsung giants of free improvisation. Philipp Wachsmann emerged in the fertile mid '70s underground free music scene in London, playing with everyone from Simon Mayo to Barry Guy to Derek Bailey to Evan Parker, starting a band called Chamberpot, making albums for the collective artist-run label he managed: Bead Records. These LPs, 26 of them in total, were made in tiny batches and are now ra…

A special bundle that includes the latest 4 CD releases published in late October 2020 by Belgian label A New Wave of Jazz. Includes works by John Russell, Stefan Keune, Kris Vanderstraeten, Colin Webster, AndrewLisle, Rubicon Quartet, Cath Roberts, Dirk Serries, Martina Verhoeven, Tom Ward. This bundle includes the following CDs: - John Russell, Stefan Keune, Kris Vanderstraeten "On Sunday" (NWOJ036) - Colin Webster, Andrew Lisle "New Inventions" (NWOJ037) - Rubicon Quartet "Crosscurrents" (NWO…

Performed by Cath Roberts (bariton saxophone and objects), Dirk Serries (acoustic guitar), Martina Verhoeven (piano), Tom Ward (flute, clarinet and bass clarinet) on July 18th 2020. This music was recorded simultaneously in two locations - Brockley and Sint-Lenaarts - using the JackTrip software to transmit/receive the live sound via the internet. The musicians could hear each other at studio quality in near-realtime, despite the physical distance separating them.

* Edition of 300 * Performed by Patrick De Groote (trumpet, bugel), Cel Overberghe (alto sax), Dirk Serries (acoustic guitars), Martina Verhoeven (piano). Recorded, mixed and mastered at the Sunny Side Inc. Studio, Anderlecht (Belgium) on December 14th 2019.

Two certifiable Sun Ra classics refreshed and renewed and rolled into the perfect package. First released on the French label BYG/Actuel in 1971, the companion volumes of The Solar-Myth Approach were essential in introducing Ra's monumental program to an international audience. As with many Arkestra records, the information on these gatefold packages was dubious at best. Here they appear with corrected lineups and dates, showing that the music actually stretches back to the early 1960s, but was …

* Edition of 300 * Performed by Colin Webster (alto saxophone), Andrew Lisle (drums) at Shrunken Heads Studio, London on 24th May 2019. Recorded and mixed by Senor Al Funklinos. Mastered at the Sunny Side Inc. Studio, Anderlecht (Belgium).

* Edition of 300 * Beautiful registration of a 2010 concert by this exceptional trio, 3 musicians renowned in the world of free improvisation: John Russell (guitar), Stefan Keune (sax) and Kris Vanderstraeten (percussion) at L'Archiduc in Brussel (Belgium).

Tip**Edition of 300 copies. Remastered reissue, released in conjunction with the artist**  James Tatum's stunning, spiritualised Contemporary Jazz Mass is one of the only true jazz masses ever released. Inspired by Duke Ellington's Sacred Concerts, Tatum's masterwork was recorded on its first ever performance at St Cecilia Church in Detroit, and released on his own private label in 1974. At the time Ellington’s Concerts were quite controversial. Whilst they contained scriptural references they d…

Long out of print, few copies available. Edition of 500. Includes photos, posters, in a hardboard flip top box containing 10 x 45s in their original artwork along with a bound 28pp booklet. The immense output of Sun Ra and his many backing bands, coupled with the limited production of many of his releases has long defied dedicated collectors. Parallel to a vast list of LP releases, Sun Ra released numerous 45 RPM singles; one-off meteorites from his prolific cosmic journey. Working closely with …

Jaco Pastorius was widely acknowledged for his skills as an electric bass player. He died in 1987 at age 35 following a violent incident at a Fort Lauderdale drinking establishment. This self-titled album was Pastorius' solo debut and was originally released in 1976. The bass pieces are excellent and a good showcase of how skilful and talented Jaco was. His virtuous solo's heading off in different directions, what makes it a glorious debut album. The fact that he was only 24 years old when he re…

The debut album by post-punk/funk group, Pigbag - Formed from creative jam sessions in punk’s aftermath, the young group gathered steam after convincing Simon Underwood to join the fun following his departure from The Pop Group. Mixing punk, funk, jazz, ska, reggae and afrobeat into a bewitching brew, this vinyl reissue is the first time this album has been on wax since 1982.

Taking their name from a Thelonious Monk quote, I Like To Sleep are three young Norwegian musicians, all 22 years old. "Nicolas and Øyvind first met in high school in Trondheim before they joined up with Amund in a youth big band. It soon became apparent that they shared the same musical background centered around 70s progressive rock, jazz, improvisation and classical music. Soon after the trio was formed, first for fun, but soon with higher ambitions, they won the prestigious "Young Jazz Music…