Jazz /
Standards
In early 2002 Derek Bailey astounded the free music community with his gorgeous album Ballads, a radical and steely interpretation of the standard repertoire. It became an instant classic, hit a dozen best-ten lists and remains his best selling cd of all time. The recordings here were made just weeks after the idea was first born at an intimate Christmas gathering in New York—and two months before the recording of Ballads. Here Derek is working out his personal approach to the standard song repe…
Pieces For Guitar
Private recordings of incredible historical importance (practically the holy grail to fans of free improvisation), Pieces for Guitar presents the earliest known solo recordings of guitar innovator Derek Bailey. Dating from 1966 (possibly 1965) these pieces were recorded for personal study during a transitional period and include some of the only instances of him performing his own written compositions!! Under the influence of the music of Anton Webern, Bailey began working through a variety of t…
Simulacra
A rhythm-driven, analog-leaning record built from hypnotic basslines, warm synth textures, and layered percussion, "Simulacra" is the debut LP from Venetian bassist and producer Eric Demuro, a fully realized studio statement that brings his compositional voice into focus. The album moves through hazy jazz-funk, ambient passages, library psychedelia, and Brazilian rhythmic language without settling into revivalism. Fender Rhodes figures, hand percussion, and vintage keyboards drift through spacio…
Ntsano
On Ntsano, Mara & Naná Vasconcelos weave Québécois avant‑garde jazz into Afro‑Brazilian ritual: berimbau, winds and drums circling through slow‑burning themes that feel at once meditative, mysterious and fiercely alive.
Wigmore Hall 1968 + John Tchicai Quintet, John Tchicai Peter Kowald Duo (2LP Bundle)
This 2LP bundle includes the two latest Formalibera albums: John Tchicai "Wigmore Hall 1968", and John Tchicai, Peter Kowald "John Tchicai Quintet, John Tchicai Peter Kowald Duo".John Tchicai "Wigmore Hall 1968" (LP)* Edition of 300 copies. High thickness cardboard with opaque laminated cover. Comes with a printed insert.* John Tchicai (1936-2012) was one of the most visionary free jazz saxophonists of the 20th century - a rare artist whose voice stood apart even among giants. Born in Copenhagen…
1970s Jazz Fusion (Book)
In 1970s Jazz Fusion, critic Matthew Reed Baker reassesses a once‑derided hybrid, showing how the electric experiments of Davis, Hancock, Corea, Mahavishnu and others reshaped jazz, rock, soul and hip‑hop from the 1970s to today.
As Serious As Your Life: Black Music and the Free Jazz Revolution, 1957-1977 (Book)
In As Serious As Your Life, photographer and historian Val Wilmer chronicles the free jazz revolution as a Black cultural vanguard, situating Ayler, Coltrane, Coleman, Sun Ra and others within the struggles, hopes and solidarities of 1960s–70s America.
Cosmic Music: The Life, Art and Transcendence of Alice Coltrane (Book)
In Cosmic Music, Andy Beta traces Alice Coltrane’s journey from Detroit church pews to avant‑garde bandstands and ashram altars, revealing a visionary composer, bandleader and spiritual teacher whose work radically reshaped the possibilities of Black American music.
John Tchicai Quintet, John Tchicai Peter Kowald Duo
*Edition of 300 copies. High thickness cardboard with opaque laminated cover. Comes with a printed insert.* John Tchicai was extraordinarily prolific during the late 1960s and early 1970s, and this second archival release from Formalibera captures two essential, previously undocumented chapters of his story. Side one takes us to Danish Radio House, Copenhagen, October 1969, where Tchicai leads a remarkable hybrid quintet fresh from a European tour: Danish collaborators Hugh Steinmetz and Pierre …
Wigmore Hall 1968
*Edition of 300 copies. High thickness cardboard with opaque laminated cover. Comes with a printed insert.* John Tchicai (1936-2012) was one of the most visionary free jazz saxophonists of the 20th century - a rare artist whose voice stood apart even among giants. Born in Copenhagen to a Danish mother and a Congolese father, his path to New York came through a chance encounter at a socialist youth festival in Helsinki, where Bill Dixon and Archie Shepp heard him play and urged him to make the mo…
One Atmosphere
An original member of the legendary Black Artists Group (St. Louis' counterpart to the AACM), and founder of the World Sax Quartet, Julius Hemphill was one of the most important composer/performers in creative music. His work is marked by a sharp, edgy melodicism steeped in the blues, contrapuntal complexity and a striking formal logic. One Atmosphere presents the full range of his compositional talents: a long, epic work for seven woodwinds (one of his greatest compositions, here receiving its …
The Straight Horn Of Steve Lacy
Originally released in 1962 on Candid Records, The Straight Horn of Steve Lacy finds a young Steve Lacy stepping forward with quiet confidence and a sound unlike anyone else at the time. Stripped of excess and focused on tone, space, and intent, these sessions reveal a musician already thinking beyond convention. The soprano sax cuts clean and direct, moving between sharp angles and lyrical calm, with a small group that listens as closely as it plays. Nothing here feels rushed or ornamental, jus…
The Best Of John Coltrane
The year 2026 marks the hundredth birthday of John Coltrane, whose groundbreaking artistry as a saxophonist, composer, and bandleader made him one of the most influential musical figures of the 20th century. To honor his immeasurable impact, Craft Recordings looks back on Coltrane’s early years as a bandleader with a carefully curated collection of original compositions and standards. Produced with the full support of the John Coltrane Estate, The Best of John Coltrane draws from the saxophonist…
Future Present Past
Future Present Past is the second Impulse! Records album by the free jazz collective Irreversible Entanglements. The album was largely recorded at the historic Van Gelder Studio and showcases how the quintet fuses atmospheric jazz, world music traditions, and spoken word with the story of our collective existence: a future full of possibilities, a present with all its uncertainties, and a past as a source of ancestral wisdom.
Irreversible Entanglements, formed in Brooklyn in 2015, consists of p…
Flirty Ghost
Flirty Ghost is an evocative LP by Rachel Kitchlew, a jazz and contemporary harpist known for pushing the boundaries of her instrument. A blend of jazz, ambient, and experimental sounds, the album was crafted in a spontaneous, deeply personal atmosphere, recorded late at night in the cozy, smoky setting of SFJ headquarters.
Inspired by everything from Henry Mancini to Dorothy Ashby, this LP captures an eerie, playful essence, like a ‘flirty ghost’, while celebrating exploration and self-expressi…
Live at Bau 4
Gerry Hemingway Live At Bau 4 features a profound collaboration among Gerry Hemingway, Izumi Kimura, Frank Gratkowski, and Christian Weber, creating a vibrant interplay of rhythms and melodies. Recorded live at Bau 4 in Altbüron, Switzerland, where Hemingway has lived since 2009, the album opens with “Slivers,” a 20-minute exercise in sound that resembles a kaleidoscopic landscape of textures and colors. This piece pays tribute to Bau 4's founders, Hildegard and Walter Schaer, celebrating their …
Nafs At Peace
On Nafs At Peace, Jaubi turn a Lahore jam into a spiritual suite: North Indian raga, hip‑hop pulse and modal jazz woven into a journey from turmoil to stillness, as if Coltrane’s quest had been reimagined on tabla, sarangi and MPC‑haunted drums.
Grzybnia
On Grzybnia, Błoto return from a three‑year silence with their most concept‑driven set yet: a darkly glowing, mycelium‑inspired tangle of jazz, house and techno pulses, where four players improvise like a single underground network branching in all directions.
Grzyby
On Grzyby, Błoto complete their mycelium cycle with a compact blast of medicinal‑and‑toxic club jazz: five mushroom‑named cuts of broken beats, sub‑heavy low end and live improvisation that argue for dialogue and interdependence in a world addicted to walls.