Jazz & Improvisation / All styles

''My Beloved Brothers and Sisters: I am overwhelmed with joy to see the entire youth of America gathered here in the name of the fine art of music. In fact, through the music, we can work wonders. Music is a celestial sound and it is the sound that controls the whole universe, not atomic vibrations. Sound energy, sound power, is much, much greater than any other power in this world. And, one thing I would very much wish you all to remember is that with sound, we can make—and at the same ti…

Svart Records is proud to reissue Olli Ahvenlahti’s first three LPs. This is his third and most difficult to find album, Based on a Novel. Olli Ahvenlahti’s first albums were issued by the independent company Love Records which then went bankrupt in 1979. Otto Donner, one of the founders of Love Records and the power behind the scenes of Bandstand and The Poet, decided to form a new recording company, Ponsi. The doors were once again open for Olli Ahvenlahti to enter the studio. Ponsi was, howev…

The quartet of Ian Carr, Jeff Clyne, John Stevens and Trevor Watts - encounter here in their only recorded document, is among the most important gestures in the history of British free jazz. Issued in 1969, but recorded three years earlier, Springboard  offers a window into the origins of an entire movement - the flowering of change within a music in geographies not its own. Free jazz always had a more receptive audience in Europe than in America. It’s not surprising that indigenous realisations…

ESP-Disk present a reissue of Albert Ayler's Prophecy, originally released in 1975. Recorded in concert at the Cellar Cafe, NYC, June 14, 1964. Three weeks before this trio recorded ESP-Disk's first jazz album, the epochal Spiritual Unity (ESPDISK 1002CD/LP), it was captured "live" by Canadian poet Paul Haines, who also recorded the New York Eye and Ear Control soundtrack (ESPDISK 1016CD/LP). This is one of the most influential groups in jazz history, a coming together of like-minded innovators …

Alto Saxophone – Klaus Marmulla (tracks: 1-1 to 1-10, 2-1 to 2-15), Peter Reinke (tracks: 1-11, 1-12) Bass – Hajo Lange (tracks: 1-1 to 1-10, 2-1 to 2-15), Wolfgang Lauschert (tracks: 1-11, 1-12) Drums – Heinz von Moisy (tracks: 1-1 to 1-10, 2-1 to 2-6, 2-8 to 2-11), Joe Nay (tracks: 1-11, 1-12), "Eminenz" Roberts (tracks: 2-7, 2-12 to 2-15) Piano – Michael Naura Vibraphone – Wolfgang Schlüter (tracks: 1-1 to 2-6, 2-8 to 2-15) Vocals – Gitta Eilers (tracks: 2-14, 2-15) In the booklet drums for t…

Alto Saxophone, Clarinet – Bernd Rabe Baritone Saxophone, Vibraphone – Karl Blume (tracks: 1 to 8) Bass – Eberhard Pommerencke Drums – Helmut Perschke Guitar – Heinz Kitschenberg (tracks: 14 to 21) Piano, Accordion – Klaus Wunderlich (tracks: 1 to 8) Piano, Vibraphone – Gerd Mann (tracks: 9 to 21) New Jazz Group Hannover recorded November 1954 by the BFN (1, 2) December 1954 at Studio A, BFN Cologne (3 to 8) May 19, 1955 at Kongresshalle, Frankfurt/Main (9 to 13) May 30, 1955 at Volksbildungshei…

Limited remastered edition of 250 copies only. Nearly everyone on the planet has heard Mtume. Notorious B.I.G.’s sample of his 1983 single Juicy Fruit, is as iconic as they come. What few know, is that prior to entering the world of R&B, the drummer James Mtume was a seminal figure in the 1970’s New York free jazz scene - among the wildest of its fiery voices. Part of a remarkable musical legacy - his father and uncles made up the Heath Brothers, he began his career working with Don Cherry, Herb…

t’s a rare feeling when music can give you the sensation like a bullet through the head, and you call it a pleasure. No Balls ‘More is More’ gives a new meaning to what we used to call ‘heavy shit’, filling the missing spot between rock and harsh noise. Anders Bryngelsson (Brainbombs, Orchestra of Constant Distress), Kjetil Brandsdal (Noxagt, Ultralyd), David Gurrik (Anal Babes, Astroburger), Jan Christian Lauritzen (Noxagt) blessed our ears with a masterpiece of brutal honesty and perverted bea…

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…

Recording of Heather Leigh and Peter Brötzmann's great set at Unlimited Festival, Wels, 2016. Personnel: Heather Leigh - pedal steel guitar; Peter Brötzmann - tenor saxophone.

Great improvisers reveal a lifetime of experience and artistry in every note. For both pianist Satoko Fujii and bassist Joe Fonda, that brings to bear an estimable history of collaboration with some of the music’s greatest practitioners and travel that spans the globe. It also means that despite the fact that their winding paths had never previously crossed, they immediately tapped a rich vein of musical understanding during their first-ever performances together. On Duet, a live recording of th…

It all started on “Brothers And Sisters”. Actually, the process began prior to that, with my discovering the Blues through John Mayall’s records, but that’s a different story…Seeing the picture of that “super-extended family” on the inside cover with musicians, roadies, friends, women and kids, and listening to the Bluesy flavor of Gregg Allman’s voice and Dicky Betts’ guitar just hit me really deep, and in my dreams I wished I could have been there, stopping the clock to stay….in some sort of a…

A fantastic addition to the Barney Kessel catalog of the 50s – a never-heard live set that has the guitarist in form that's every bit as strong as his famous albums for Contemporary Records! In fact, the strength of the recording may well capture Kessel at a level that beats those sessions – as Barney's playing live, with a bit more bite – and really grabs us with the strong tone on his solos – and the sense of energy he gets in a quartet that also includes a young Pete Jolly on piano! The recor…

The brilliant third album from Mike Westbrook – a sharp-edged, two volume set with a scathing anti-war theme! The work is Westbrook's first total-concept album, and it's still one of his best – written with an edge that's free from some of the more whimsical touches that showed up in Mike's later years, and played by a core group of British avant soloists with searing intensity! You've never heard large group scoring like this – bold, ambitious, and quite different than most of what's c…

The French band Rhesus O was formed in 1971 by future Magma keyboarder Jean-Pol Asseline with musicians from the jazz and jazz-rock field and released one self titled record. Soft Machine is the main influence to be found on the record and to a lesser extent Magma, Miles Davis and Frank Zappa. The record presents a melodic jazz-rock with folk and classical elements, based on an instrumentation of two keyboarders: Alain Monier on organ and Jean-Pol Asseline on e-piano and harpsichord, two bass pl…

Paul Rutherford's been making amazing sounds on trombone for decades – and he still sounds incredible here on this late 90s performance in Japan – a set that has the trombonist working with percussionist Sabu Toyozumi – but at a level that really seems to let Paul take the lead on most numbers! The set begins in a slightly tentative way – with Rutherford maybe going for some more familiar modes of expression, but quickly opening up as Toyozumi fills in the spaces between the notes – always in wa…

Alice Coltrane Turiyasangitananda self-released four brilliant cassette albums. These contained music, inpired by the gospel music of the Deroit Churches she grew up in, and the Indian devotional music of her religious practice. Originally available only throughh her ashram, they are her most obscure body of work. Turiyasangitananda’s devotion to spirituality was the central purpose of the final four decades of her life, an often-overlooked awakening that largely took shape during her four-year …

The Quartets album, Paris Smith and Kenneth Hill's first album together with original material. A truly remarkable underground jazz album from 1977 that sounds like it was recorded 15 years earlier, top feeling and very much alive. Paris Smith – vibes, Kenneth Hill – sax, Michael Smith & Donnell Lambert – Bass, Usama – Drums. Comes with new pictures, download codes and new liner notes and remastered sound. 

Electro-Acoustic Composer, Cornetist Rob Mazurek continues to focus on the Brazilian side of his musical production, and that’s good news. Even better when we notice that “Chants and Corners” is something else than a new São Paulo Underground enterprise – some of the contributors are the same, but the project has another confection and this signifies that it’s multiplying in different perspectives, like the flowers of a plant. Playing a modular synth, a sampler and a piano besides his cornet, Ma…

Two political fueled Soul Jazz cuts out of California in the early 1980. Black Panther related. Featuring the vocals of the late Somayah 'Peaches' Moore Khaliq. She lays down a serious message over the great, sligthly reggae tingled 'Brotherman' The highlight is the jazz funky 'Geronimo Pratt' telling the story of the imprisoned Black Panther member who was released in the 90s on false charges. Rare limited replica reissue from the very hard to find 1983 original 7inch.

Reissue of a very rare Spiritual Jazz / poetry 7inch. All woman Soul Jazz with attitude and a message! 'The Common Woman' is a basement revamp of Herbie Hancoks 'Maiden Voyade' with flute, recitation and a lovely piano buildup. Flip it and you have the polical soulful track 'Degradation' including conga breakdown! Rare replica reissue from the very hard to find 1974 original released by The Women's Press Collective.

This trio is on to something extraordinary; full on furor brushed w thin melodic lines or rage contained in a certain kind of drunken beauty and bliss - all stumbling on towards the heard and the unheard - in a whisper, in a shriek, forces joined and disjoined....This trio is the whole in the never ending audible crack Johan Berthling: double bass; Martin Küchen: tenor and soprano saxophones, retardophone, flute; Steve Noble: drums and percussion. Recorded by David Carlsson at Gula Studion, Malm…

3CD version. History can be a motherfucker - its authors vindictive and deeply unfair. Though Jazz - long heralded as the great American art form, got its due, buried within its canon are the legacies of systemic neglect. Its narrative is a mere shadow of the truth. Robert Northern is a lost giant - a name that almost no one has heard - a prodigy once recruited by Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Thelonious Monk, Roland Kirk, Donald Byrd, Charlie Haden, Don Cherry, Freddie Hubbard, Eric Dolphy, and S…

Simultonality is the follow-up to Joshua Abrams's critically acclaimed 2015 album Magnetoception (MTE 063-64LP, 2015). Credited to Joshua Abrams and Natural Information Society (NIS), it is the first recording in the project's nine year, four album history made by a regularly gigging manifestation, rather than a special assembly of friends. Recorded in 2014 and 2015 in single takes by the full ensemble during and after tours of the US and Canada, Simultonality once more affirms the project's …

Wherein we come upon three visceralists who have been collaborating for years - innumerable instances in a roulette wheel of settings -- finally shacking up in a studio and fashioning a proper trio record. Glory be. Let's listen in-- 'These.' It's a phrase that never gets started, and an apt title for this record, which right off bolts from the barn and burns so brightly it nearly gets away from you by the time you're done twisting your head around looking for whoever it was that left the …

Sun Ra is still trying to get our attention 50 years after dispatching this transmission. Humanity’s path since then makes his message even more urgent today. Years after Herman Poole “LeSony’r Ra” Blount “left the planet” he’s still trying to reach us, to wake us up and to change our destiny.Sun Ra and the Arkestra weren’t a traditional studio band, and every star in the vast galaxy of their discography reflects this. The origins of these records can be hard to pinpoint at times, but when it co…

**500 copies** It is always a treat to see some major musical innovators in action. Especially in a mind-blowing line-up, at the top of their game and unrecorded until now on this impressive new Dropa Disc release.Evan Parker might be a member of some legendary trios – one with von Schlippenbach and Paul Lovens and one with Barry Guy and Paul Lytton – still this brilliant master of the saxophone and pioneer of free music managed to surprise us big time when he introduced his trio with John Edwar…

When Ballister – the fearsome trio of Dave Rempis (saxophones), Fred Lonberg-Holm (cello) and Paal Nilssen-Love (drums) – performed in Antwerp in March of 2015, they played the kind of music you know some musicians are capable of, but rarely get to experience. It was a magnificent concert that grabbed you by the collar and took you for an adrenaline-fueled ride. There were some quieter moments when you could enjoy the view and take a breath, but the impression that lingered on was one of fearles…

Actor/singer/flautist Vesa-Matti Loiri's third album 'Veskunoita' (1973) delves deeper into the kind of vocal jazz-pop which he mastered on his second record, 'Vesku Suomesta', but with a more light-hearted approach. During the recordings Loiri was joined by a host of well known Finnish jazz and rock musicians. This is the first ever reissue of this title of which original copies are almost impossible to find.

It seems bizarre that this LP’s original copy was pressed in such low numbers in 1969 that it has become an unusually expensive and wanted collector’s item that hasn’t been repressed on vinyl (and never released on CD) until now. Soulset were, after all, in the late 1960s one of the most popular pop groups in Finland. Their recorded legacy is relatively short, and when this split LP was released, Soulset were already about to call it a day. Here Soulset perform five fine cuts of jazzy Fenno-soul…

Black vinyl, edition of 300. Svart Records presents the first vinyl reissue of the first solo album by Juhani Aaltonen, a rarity since its original release in 1974 on Love Records. Saxophonist and flautist Juhani “Junnu” Aaltonen is a living legend among Finnish jazz musicians, having also performed stints with rock groups such as Tasavallan Presidentti. Encouraged by the ubiquitous Edward Vesala, with whom Aaltonen recorded several albums over the years, he ended up in the recording studio as …

Olli Ahvenlahti's a poet on the keys – one of the most soulful players in the 70s Finland scene, heard here on one of his greatest albums ever! The record's got a glowing grace that's really wonderful – part CTI-inspired electric fusion, without as much jamming as other European work of the time – but also an album of rounder, warmer tones – recorded with a slightly larger lineup that includes Eero Koivistoinen on tenor sax, and lots of great percussion at the bottom! Tunes have a subdued approa…

is Eero Koivistoinen's seventh album and finds him in the company of other excellent Finnish musicians: pianist Heikki Sarmanto, guitarist Jukka Tolonen, bassist Pekka Sarmanto and drummer Reino Laine, plus American drummer Craig Herndon. Except for Tolonen, who is mostly associated with jazz-rock fusion due to his membership in the legendary Finnish bands Tasavallan Presidentti and Wigwam, the rest of the players are all pillars of the Finnish modern jazz scene and all are virtuosi on th…

A fiery, raw burst of fusion jazz played by a large group with incendiary energy, Eero Koivistoinen’s commanding saxophone controlling the chaos! Don't be put off by the long name, or the overuse of vowels in the title – because this album's a killer batch of free jazz, filled with loads of choppy sax riffs, sweet Fender Rhodes licks, and plenty of heavy drums. The record's got a hard fusion groove – and all the tracks are long instrumentals served up with plenty of power, and plenty of …

Tilt" is the amazing debut album by a band whose members were not newbies at all. The six musicians' combined former experiences had led them to the roads of jazz and prog rock (even the very young, masterful drummer Furio Chirico had played in The Trip's last two albums) for some time, so their expertise was quite obvious and quite impressive as well by the time "Tilt" introduced Arti + Mestieri to the eyes of the world. The jazz-rock oriented sound delivered by the band serves as an appropriat…

It was the summer of love in 1967, and more than 12 000 people found their way into the Rheinpark in Cologne – situated opposite the majestic cathedral and right at the bank of the Rhine river – for the first German open air jazz festival. Featured on those two sunny days in September were three big bands – including ace musicians like Jiggs Whigham, Dusko Gojkovic, Manfred Schoof and Volker Kriegel – and the Kenny Clarke - Francy Boland Sextet. When the festival was revived the following year, …

Temporary Super Offer! Reaching a near-mythical status amongst fans of free jazz's most worldly intrepid explorer, these seldom heard Paris soundtrack sessions known as Music, Wisdom, Love have evaded collectors' grasps and confused historians for exactly 50 years. Instigated in Paris in 1967 and filmed during Don Cherry's downtime on a visit to the Chat qui Pêche nightclub in March 1967, where he played with Karl Berger, Henri Texier, and Jacques Thollot, the bulk of this cinematic portrait was…

Ahmad Jamal is a jazz giant and The Awakening is his iconic masterpiece. The landmark deep trio session - recorded in NYC and released on Impulse! in 1970 - is an essential album and perennially sought-after on vinyl, so Be With Records are delighted to make it available again. As a “Zen master of jazz piano” and one of its greatest innovators, Jamal evolved his elegant sound with this adventurous record. The Awakening showcased his fast, richly melodic chops in remarkable variation. A consummat…

Drummer Edward Vesala was an early Finnish pioneer of avant garde jazz, and he managed to release this lovely LP that has to be considered the first proper Finnish free jazz album in 1970. The Vesala trio was supposed to be a quartet, but trumpetist Mike Koskinen fell ill, and the remaining exploratory trio (Vesala, saxophonist Juhani Aaltonen and bassist Arild Andersen) recorded the album in a short, fiery session. The album Nana is an absolute rarity as well as an absolute beauty. As with many…

Eremite present Byron And Gerald's Unity, a private press free jazz album recorded in 1969 at Howard University and the first release on Byron Morris's EPI label. It is the only hardcore free jazz record out of 1960s DC, and a viscerally powerful cultural dispatch on the sociopolitical upheavals of its time. From Byron's 2017 liner notes: "In the early spring of 1969, several months before moving to Poughkeepsie, NY, Gerald Wise and I, along with the recording engineer Len Jones, conceived of th…