Jazz & Improvisation / All styles

Masterful ‘60s pop by a jazz guitar guru! Not many jazz artists were interpreting popular songs in the late ‘60s, but Hungarian-born Gabor Szabo looked past the oft-covered standards to put his trademark jazz transformations on a set of fashionable tunes on 1969, including major hits for the Left Banke, the Beatles, and more songs that his contemporaries neglected. Guitar master Szabo’s 1969 platter of folk and pop music touchstones is highlighted by the rock’n bossa spin on Sealed With a Kiss! …

Edition of 300 copies. Lovely archival recording by this incredible due comprised of Midori Takada - percussion and Kang Tae Hwan - alto saxophone. Recorded live on the 14nd March 1995 at Café Amores, Hofu, Yamaguchi, Japan by Takeo Suetomi. Concert produced by Takeo Suetomi. Mastered by Arūnas Zujus at MAMAstudios. Photos by Akihiro Matsumoto. Design by Oskaras Anosovas. 

**300 copies** NoBusiness Records delivers the newest Albert Beger album recorded on May 31st and June 1st, 2017 at Alt Studio, Afula, Israel. Beger is a veteran of the Israeli impro scene; on this release he plays saxophones and shakuhachi and his Quartet includes Milton Michaeli - piano, Shay Hazan - bass, Ofer Bymel - drums.All compositions by Albert Beger. Recorded and mixed by Yoram Lev and Itay Alter, mastered by Arūnas Zujus at MAMAstudios. Cover art by Anat Beger, back cover photo by Ita…

**300 copies** A solid and distinguished work by two talented musicians coming from the lively Lithuanian jazz scene: Jan Maksimowicz – soprano saxophone, Dmitrij Golovanov - piano.All compositions by Jan Maksimowicz and Dmitrij Golovanov, except Dienda by Kenny Kirkland. Recorded on 13th, 16th and 26th September, 2018 at InTegra House, Trakai, Lithuania. Engineered and mixed by Artūras Bieliauskas. Mastered by Arūnas Zujus at MAMAstudios. Design by Folk Science.

**300 copies** Whit Dickey - drums, Kirk Knuffke - trumpet. All compositions by Whit Dickey (BMI) and Kirk Knuffke (BMI), recorded on January 12th, 2018 at the Studio 2, Brooklyn, New York. Sound engineer - Max Ross, mastered by Arūnas Zujus at MAMAstudios. Design by Oskaras Anosovas.

**300 copies** Original, limited LP-only edition released as Super Secret Sound (3SLP010) in 1997. Sunny Murray - drums, Bob Dickie - bass, bass clarinet, Robert Andreano - guitar, bass. Recorded 30 May, 1994 at 816 South St. Philadelphia, PASpecial assistance - Cowboy Keith Thompson. Artwork - Wayne Hamilton (1966-2009).Engineered and mixed by Robert Andreano - Photographs of Sunny and Robert taken 11th June, 1994 at St. Stephen’s Church 19 S. 10th Street, Philadelphia, PA by Thomas V. Hartmann…

Recorded 3rd June, 1971 at the Jazz Workshop, Boston. Sam Rivers - tenor and soprano saxophones, flute, piano, Cecil McBee - bass and Norman Connors - drums. "Musician discographies are like icebergs. Commercially released recordings often only represent a surface-visible and procurable fraction of actual output; a reflection of those comparatively few instances when resources, fortitude, and good fortune aligned to yield salable product. Samuel Carthorne Rivers situation was no different. Despi…

Recorded by Nick Symons at Summer Bummer Festival, DE Studio, Antwerp, August 26th, 2018. Rodrigo Amado - tenor saxophone, Gonçalo Almeida - double bass, Onno Govaert - drums. Festival curated by Koen Vandenhoudt & Christel Kumpen with production by Sound in Motion.

Recorded at Staccato Studios, Stavanger, Norway on 12th October, 1982 by Kjell Arne Jensen - with Frode Gjerstad - tenor and soprano saxophones, Johnny Mbizo Dyani - double bass and John Stevens - drums. Re-mastered by Arūnas Zujus at MAMAstudios. Cover drawing by Tora Fredrikke Helle, photos by Judith Sørvik, liner notes by Frode Gjerstad.

**300 copies** Pull Ninja, the second album of the chameleon quintet Punk Kong is relesed by Mr. Nakayasi / El Negocito Records. Edgy guitar, powerful drums and three hyper dynamic saxophones, a special instrumentation that creates a unique sound. Pull Ninja continues the story telling of Lonely Cedar - Punk Kong's first album released back in 2016 - with songs that blend Jazz, Psychedelic rock, African Blues and improvised music into a remarkable amalgam. Viktor Perdieus: tenor & baritone saxGr…

**300 copies** Hōryū-ji, or else, the Learning Temple of the Flourishing Law is one of the powerful Seven Great Buddhist Temples in Japan. Hōryū-ji is built with entasis, which - in architecture - is the application of a convex curve to a surface for aesthetic purposes. It also serves an engineering function regarding strength, the key word of this collaboration that brought together Sakata, Yermenoglou, Di Domenico and Damianidis in a two-days live concert meeting in Duende jazz club at Thessal…

**300 copies**  Mr. Nakayasi releases the Don Kapot debut album. The group consists of baritone saxophonist Viktor Perdieus, Giotis Damianidis (this time not as a guitarist, but as a bassist) and drummer Jakob Warmenbol. The last two can also be found together in Abschattungen, Giovanni Di Domenico's big band. In other combinations the three cross each other separately with Nest and Punk Kong, among others. On Don Kapot we note parallels with Morphine in top gear, especially because of the way t…

Act-Up Trio play free music based on improvisation. Their live performances are therefore an opportunity to enter their research laboratory, where - more than just improvising - they build instant compositions, giving birth to soundscapes and enabling the atmosphere to pass through a whole range of emotions.   Giotis Damianidis: guitarPetros Damianidis: double bassChristos Yermenoglou: drumsRecorded live at the Royal Alzheimer Hall, 22 January 2013

**300 copies, 2019 stock** Punk Kong is a chameleon, it changes color according to the circumstances to avoid being part of any particular musical idiom. The bassless ensemble offers you a crossover among African blues, avant-garde jazz, noise rock and improvised music. In addition to his collaborations with improvisers from all over the world, the leader and guitarist of the group Giotis Damianidis was influenced by his long collaboration with the legends of Afro-beat Oghene Kologbo and Tony Al…

Cien Fuegos present a reissue of Schlippenbach Quartet's Three Nails Left, a classic mid-1970s originally released on FMP in 1975 and showing Schlippenbach is in sublime form. It features a stellar line-up, with  Evan Parker - soprano and tenor saxophone; Peter Kowald - double bass and Paul Lovens - percussion. Side A was recorded live at 3rd Jazz Festival Moers June 2nd, 1974 by Michael Krause. Side B was recorded live at the Quartier Latin Berlin, February 2nd, 1975 by Jost Gebers with the FMP…

Studio Mule present their third reissue of Fumio Itabashi with Rise And Shine: Live At The Aketa's, originally released in 1977. Rise And Shine Live At The Aketa's was his second release of 1977, and it was recorded at legendary Jazz Club in Tokyo. This album was actually recorded before his first release Toh. "Jumping Board" on side A is a Japanese hard bop classic. Itabashi's cover version of "My Funny Valentine" is very sweet and elegant while the main track, "Rise And Shine", is one of his b…

few copies back in stock, totally sold-out at source - Replica reissue of one of the rarest free jazz LP ever made: Masayuki Takayanagi's Flower Girl. Supposedly released in a limited run of 100 copies in 1968, this incredibly rare record - released as a promotional album, and never marketed - gets its first vinyl reissue via Craftman Records. Japan's leading jazz guitarist Masayuki Takayanagi is one of the first to pursue free jazz music in Japan, and its activity has not been confined to the f…

Corbett Vs. Dempsey present a reissue of Dudu Pukwana, Han Bennink and Misha Mengelberg's Yi Yole, originally released in 1979. Recorded at the ICP Jubileum, a festival in Uithoorn, Holland, in 1978, Yi Yole brings together the core of the Instant Composers Pool -- pianist Misha Mengelberg and drummer Han Bennink -- with legendary South African alto saxophonist Dudu Pukwana. Longtime member of the Blue Notes, Pukwana was a beloved figure in European free music after he left South Africa in the m…

Originally recorded and released in 1977, the Instant Composers Pool's Tetterettet is the first classic of the band's larger incarnations. Assembled out of elements recorded live in Uithoorn, Utrecht, and the band's home base of Amsterdam, with Misha Mengelberg using a cut-and-paste collage method akin to Teo Macero's work with Miles Davis, the record features an all-star lineup that added three leading lights of free music: bassist Alan Silva and saxophonists John Tchicai and Peter Brötzmann. I…

Since 2015, Chicago's Experimental Sound Studio has been the host of Option, a series of intimate concerts of improvised music. Featuring an uncommonly wide range of players representing virtually all haunts of free music, the series has fostered not only an important exchange of ideas in musical form, but it has also promoted literal conversation about the music, usually substituting a dialogue with the musician or musicians for the requisite second set. In 2018, the series was funded by a cons…

If you've missed out on bassist Torbjörn Zetterberg, now's your chance to play some catch up ball. He's one of creative music's most eloquent exponents, having emerged from the fertile Swedish jazz scene around 2005. With his band Torbjörn Zetterberg Hot Five, he began a fruitful relationship with the thoroughly excellent Moserobie label, run by his frequent band mate, saxophonist Jonas Kullhammar, and by the time he was making records like Skildrar Kvinnans Kamp and Och Den Stora Frågen, Corbet…

Hailing from the Germantown section of Philadelphia, well known as the site of the Sun Ra Arkestra communal homestead, Sounds of Liberation were at the forefront of '70s Black liberation music. After a series of gigs in elementary schools, prisons, and community centers, the band travelled along with their manager George Gilmore (father of Linc Gilmore of Breakwater fame) to NYC in 1973 for a recording session at Columbia University. This five-song session has never been heard until now. Had it …

**25 copies** Brand new sparkling hard-bop in the Quintet formula, from aspiring Finnish drummer talent Aleksi Heinola featuring a top cast of Finnish jazz-men: Mikael Jakobsson on keys (Five Corners Quintet), Mikko Gunu Karjalainen on trumpet and flugelhorn, Manuel Dunkel on tenor saxophone (UMO Jazz band) and Swedish Daniel Franck on double bass.

**250 copies** Here comes a special duo recording, featuring the crème de la crème of the younger generation of Finnish players – Max Zenger and Teemu Åkerblom. A unique live set that stands the test of time, hear Max and Teemu improvise their way over five original compositions, using alto saxophone, flute and double bass with bow. Rich in detail and a surprisingly fresh set of songs. Very seldom do you get superlatives about something from the players themselves, but swear I heard a bird say “…

**250 copies** More music from trumpeter extraordinaire Etuk Ubong! We’ve run a limited hand-stamped vinyl run with the best tracks from his first album and EP from 2016 and 2017, 'Miracles' and 'Tales of Life'. The music is simplistic yet thoughtful modal jazz that was written around the time of the death of Ubong’s mother Margaret. The Quartet features an all-star Nigerian rhythm section rounded up with Ubong’s unique voicing. "Short and snappy, ‘Battle For Peace’ opens with a tight electric b…

Brand new sparkling hard-bop in the Quintet formula, from aspiring Finnish drummer talent Aleksi Heinola! This is the full album by Aleksi Heinola Quintet, featuring a top cast of Finnish jazz-men: Mikael Jakobsson on keys (Five Corners Quintet), Mikko Gunu Karjalainen on trumpet and flugelhorn, Manuel Dunkel on tenor saxophone (UMO Jazz band) and Swedish Daniel Franck on double bass. Aleksi wanted to make his debut album where his heart lies musically, in the modern hardbop landscape of past gr…

More than ten years after the demise of Sun City Girls as an entity, something wild and weird has now surfaced, grown and ripened in the heat and dust of the same desert. Described as “deep spirited, Arabic-music-tinged free jazz-punk and harsh exotica”, Sunn Trio’s ever-evolving ensemble digests a number of genres, spitting them back out in “creative destruction.” Carrying on a long tradition of sun-beaten Phoenix punk, Sunn Trio evokes the sweltering and hallucinatory Arizona desert. Echoes of…

It took more than just some time and imagination to believe that 'Carte Blanche' , this piece of astonishing contemporary music by some of the most talented and able musicians of the international avant-circuit, could be realized. Karkhana, a highly explosive mostly Middle Eastern / Mediterranean ensemble - Sam Shalabi Land of Kush, Shalabi Effect, Dwarfs of East Agouza), Sharif Sehnaoui (“A” Trio), Michael Zerang (Peter Brötzmann, Hamid Drake, Jaap Blonk, Vandermark, etc.) Mazen Kerbaj (“A” Tri…

The newest installment in Unrock’s ongoing Saraswati Series is the most rebellious and wildest to date. Again an intercontinental output. A dangerous, electric brew filled with exotic aroma from Cairo’s sound guerilla, Alan Bishop (Sun City Girls), Maurice Louca (Karkhana) and Sam Shalabi (Land of Kush, Karkhana). The always changing face of Dwarfs of East Agouza, shows them  in a feverish mode and adrenalin rush. Massive eruptions fight genuine flow. Sultans of Unrock. Chris Corsano and Bill Or…

Back in August of 2015, the legendary London Grand Seigneurs of improve pioneers, AMM (John Tilbury and Eddie Prévost) joined forces with Lebanese electro-acoustic-free-jazz outfit "A" Trio (Mazen Kerbaj, Sharif Sehnaoui & Raed Yassin). Two generations of improvisers with a very differing approach to work, captured dancing slowly along a very thin line of fine tuned, both, clear and crackling improvised sounds. Harsh at times with magic mellow moments of intense, fragile, broken noises. No overd…

**2019 stock** 140-gram LP in gatefold sleeve with a special drawing by Mazen Kerbaj + bonus 7". Mastered for vinyl by Harris Newman. Edition of 500. Entirely recorded at Tunefork Studios on the outskirts of Beirut, Burj al Imam's five tracks include three largely improvised numbers, a loose reworking of Sun City Girls track "The Imam", and a cover of traditional Americana song "Gently Johnny" (a highlight of Alan Bishop's live Alvarius B. shows). True to their habits, the Lebanese trio of trump…

**100 copies** Blend 3 is an organism made up of three different but similar personalities. The group explores the diverse sonorities of a trio that, without a predetermined set, utilizes composition and improvisation as its only resources. By means of this combination of composition and improvisation, what is already written is proposed in an original and revisited way time after time. Concurrently, improvisation as an actual practice rather than as a genre is developed with a deep compositiona…

"This dialogue between the two musicians sounds both genuine and profound; a sort of four-handed diary, reflecting throughout the natural moods, signs, colours, and spaces. Allusions, rips, bursts of humour and sudden gusts of poetry flow into each other in an unusual animation based on strings, wood, breaths and brass. Musical stories that linger with you." (Fabrizio Spera) Luca Tilli: celloSebi Tramontana: trombone

"Insalata Statica" (Silent Water, 2017), Giovanni Di Domenico's first solo album, allowed the Italian pianist based in Brussels to free himself from his abundant creativity by proposing six dense movements. It took him five years to record and produce this first record. With "Zuppa di pazienza", recorded and produced in five months, Di Domenico worked much faster, but the result is that these compositions are more thorough. Reduced to two, the movements are more refined, taking the time to devel…

Saxophonist/guitarist/composer/music historian/ provocateur Allen Lowe spans the history of jazz in his music in a way that few besides Jaki Byard, Beaver Harris, Steven Bernstein, and Air have ever done, intertwining blues, early jazz, bebop, and the avant-garde. A prolific composer who was incorporating American roots music into his jazz decades before it was hip, he has led project bands featuring a broad array of jazz greats ranging from Doc Cheatham, Randy Sandke, Joe Albany, Don Byron, Ken…

**800 copies** Key System Recordings present a reissue of Yusef Lateef's "Hikima: Creativity", originally released in 1983. In the early 1980s, famed jazz saxophonist and musical luminary Yusef Lateef traveled to Nigeria as a Senior Research Fellow to study, write, and teach at Ahmadu Bello University. He cut this record while there; pressed locally in Nigeria, it remained virtually unknown by jazz fans and collectors for over 30 years. On Hikima, Lateef leads a nonet of African musicians in sev…

Phil Ranelin's "Collected Works 2003-2019" features songs with Pharoah Sanders, Kamasi Washington, Donald 'Duck' Bailey, Henry Franklin, Big Black, Calvin Keys, Roger Glenn and many, many more. Phil founded cult label Tribe Records in 1973 then went on to perform with artists such as Max Roach, Gary Bartz, Freddie Hubbard, the Temptations and even the Red Hot Chili Peppers. Here in this collection of 16 years of Phil's work, his 'Tribe' spiritual root continues to grow into greatness and he is a…

Buntús Rince translates from Irish as 'basic rhythms', and this new compilation explores how Irish musicians were influenced by strands of different genres of music from around the world, merging them to create their own unique sounds. The compilation features some of the most innovative and talented figures in the history of Irish music and includes rare Irish jazz, fusion and folk outliers from the 1970s and early 1980s from musicians relatively unknown outside of Ireland. Often regarded as a …

**Exact LP repro edition. Limited Edition of 200 copies, remastered sound.** Although he was one of Italy’s leading jazz musicians, playing the piano at an international level in a mainstream style, it is probable that Romano Mussolini owed some of his fame to also being the third son of the Fascist dictator Benito Mussolini. A common idea that everyone had before listening to his music, and discovering the importance he always gave to every musician who had the opportunity to play and grow arti…

2019 small repress. First of all, Bengt Berger -- a pioneer of the Swedish underground of the '70s and historical member of bands such as Archimedes Badkar and Arbete Och Fritid -- is a versatile drummer-percussionist and well-educated ethnomusicologist with several research sojourns in India and Ghana. Deeply influenced by Hindustani, Carnatic, and West Africa music, he founded the Bitter Funeral Beer Band in 1980, an ensemble of 12 elements, basing his ideas on the traditional funeral music of…