Jazz & Improvisation / All styles

Poppy was pianist Masaru Imada's second album for the Three Blind Mice label. Imada brought the idea of playing slow ballads by himself to the TBM producer Takeshi Fujii, who greenlit the project but requested Imada to perform his original compositions with his current trio. The result was this album. Side A consists of four solo piano performances of jazz standards, and the trio takes on Imada's three originals on Side B.Produced by Takeshi Fujii. Recorded at Aoi Studio in Tokyo on January 25 a…

"Otomo is an alto player from the Jackie McLean school of tone and the Art Pepper institute for improvisation. In other words, his tone has an edge, but he always phrases and improvises melodically. With Tsuyoshi Yamamoto leading the rhythm section, the other two members, Tamiko Kawabata on bass and Arihide Kurata on drums, had to be ever watchful and vigilant that these proceedings didn't escape them altogether. The set opens with the hard blues wing of the title cut by Artie Shaw. Otomo pushes…

Kaoru Abe was an influential Japanese free jazz alto saxophonist, who is often regarded as being the greatest abrasive sounding saxophonist.  He generally performed solo, and died young from a drug overdose, and has since been immortalized in the jazz scene. He became close friends with Milford Graves, Masayuki Takayanagi, Derek Bailey, and Motoharu Yoshizawa, and was married to the author Izumi Suzuki. His cousin was the famous singer Kyu Sakamoto.  

One of the most compelling albums Steve Lacy recorded during the 80s – a spare set of duets with Japanese percussionist Masahiko Togashi, who really helps shape Steve's style on the record! Togashi approaches his instruments with a very introspective, almost tentative style – hardly the bold rhythms of other drummers, and instead this subtle stepping forward that almost feels, at times, as if Masahiko is discovering his instruments for the first time – and figuring out the sounds in a careful wa…

Jinya Disc presents Three Improvised Variations On a Theme of Qadhafi. A live recording board that includes live performances of improvisation by Action Direct, which was performed on the theme of "personal image" of Muanmar al-Gaddafi rather than ideology or political position. Jim O'Rourke refers to Three Improvised Variations On a Theme of Qadhafi as "a constellation of moving celestial bodies, expanding gas, exploding stars densely packed" and "a corridor of endless possibilities and discove…

Mass Hysterism: In Another Situation, a 1983 record by the late Japanese noise-guitar hellion Masayuki Takayanagi (1932–1991) is one of those albums that always going to be lurking in my attic, so to speak. I can put it away for a while, but it never goes to sleep—it's always calling me. Even if it takes a few years, I'll be back. (As an illustration of this, I obsessed over Takayanagi in a February 2007 post as well.) It's a bashing, clanging exorcism: two electric guitars (the other played by …

Further distanced in time from John Coltrane's spiritual new-jazz and the influential second Miles Davis quintet, Doug Carn showed a close affinity with R&B when recording his fourth and final Black Jazz album Adam's Apple. Sharing his interest in R&B was a platoon of committed, resourceful jazz musicians including young star-in-the-making Ronnie Laws, who had worked with Earth, Wind & Fire before that band's big commercial breakthrough. Of the others, ace guitarists Nathan Page and Calvin Keys …

John Butcher, saxophones. Michael Duch, contrabass. Jazzfest Trondheim, Trondelag Senter for Samtidskunst, 9th May 2015. Recorded in concert by Jonas Krossli and mastered by Karl Klaseie. Thanks to Ernst-Wiggo Sandbakk and Randi Martine Brockmann. 'I first heard John Butcher in 2001 playing duos with Rhodri Davies and Derek Bailey on the CD Vortices and Angels. I was completely mesmerized, particularly by the two tracks in the end with John and Rhodri playing together. Vortices and Angels is sti…

Masayukia Takayanagi, electric jazz guitar. Nobuyoshi Ino, contra bass. Hiroshi Yamazaki, drums. Recorded live at Yokohama Airegin on August 26, 1984. Remastering and remix by Yukio Kojima from Takayanagi's private tapes. Linernote (in Japanese) by Kazuo Imai.

Masayuki Takayanagi, electric jazz guitar. Nobuyoshi Ino, contra bass. Hiroshi Yamazaki, drums. Recorded live at Yokohama Airegin on August 26, 1984. Remastering and remix by Yukio Kojima from Takayanagi's private tapes. Linernote (in Japanese) by Kazuo Imai.

that includes bonus CD, edition of 500. Fire! is a Swedish trio comprising Mats Gustafsson (The Thing), Johan Berthling (Tape), and Andreas Werliin (Wildbirds & Peacedrums), which came together with the idea of a fresh approach to improvised music drawing upon a number of influences from free jazz, psychedelic rock, and noise. Fire! is also these musicians' vehicle for rekindling their instrumental skills, playing outside their comfort zones, and collaborating with such prestigious guests s…

rec. 1973 live at the Funkhaus, Hamburg, Germany - ltd/numbered 1/69, with paste-on cover (front & back with notes) "two sides long pieces, available here for the 1st time, top sound quality/pressing" punzmann

A vibrant Sun Ra recording session held in NYC at Variety Studio in 1973, ltd/numbered 1/79, with paste-on cover (front & back with notes) "meager, raw and totally oblique Arkestra rec. available here for the 1st time. very difficult record to do, came out amazing" punzmann

Cultures Of Soul compile a selection of music culled from rare private press Jazz LPs, pressed in small quantities of a few hundred for band members and the local jazz community. This group existed in the creatively fertile, Boston jazz scene at the time. Presented as a double LP set, packaged in deluxe box with each piece of vinyl housed in its own euro-style glossy jacket. In the 1970s Boston was a fertile ground for a very creative jazz scene. Small, independent venues ranging from lofts…

**2016 revised edition** Utterly essential!!How did Free Improvisation, aka Free Music emerge? And how has this most arcane of musical forms survived so long and gained such loyal adherents? Trevor Barre seeks to answer these questions in Beyond Jazz, the first book solely devoted to the so-called First Generation of Free improvisers. Beyond Jazz is an account of the genre's formative London years. It retraces the road that led from the music's emergence in late 1965/early 1966, through t…

Begun as a temporary project in 2014 by Mats Gustafsson(The Thing, Fire!), Brian Chippendale (Lightning Bolt), and Massimo Pupillo (Zu), this trio soon evolved into a band project. They're now releasing their first album on Trost Records, with a tour to follow in 2016. Mats Gustafsson: saxophone; Brian Chippendale: drums; Massimo Pupillo: bass.

A five part suite evoking the memory of Jimmy Guiffre and Giancinto Scelsi. Alex's brilliant clarinet playing perfecty complements Coxon's musical experiments in which the listener's spatial perspectives are constantly being challenged-extremely vivid recordings of guitars, kalimbas, 78rpm recordings,pebbles, metal objects and handbells form surreal landscapes as he takes the listener on an extended musical journey.

In the only studio recording of this duo, John Tchicai and Evan Parker improvise a set of pieces at once reflective and joyful, introspective and responsive by turns. Recorded in 2005 during John's visit to London at the invitation of John Coxon and Ashley Wales. A beautiful dialogue between these two great figures.

The extraordinary improvising duo of John Edwards and Mark Sanders have recorded together in countless groups, but only once as a duo [Nisus Duets Emanem 2002]. For this recording, Mark uses an unorthodox kit setup with horizontal orchestral bass drum. John's huge bass sound is captured in full by the old RCA ribbon microphone used in this recording. Constantly imaginative, thrilling playing.

Giovanni Di Domenico (piano, Rhodes), With Norberto Lobo (acoustic guitar), Tetuzi Akiyama (acoustic guitar) and Jim O'Rourke (electric guitar). Recorded during the course of 3 years (from 2011 to 2013) in various locations in Brussels and Tokyo, this double LP puts together 3 of the most uncompromising and original guitar players of the globe (there should have been a fourth great guitar player, the late Hans Reichel, but unfortunately he passed away days before asking him to join the project),…

Delivery Health is the highly idiosyncratic trio of Giovanni Di Domenico, Jim O'Rourke and Tatsuhisa Yamamoto. The recording was done in Tokyo's great GOK Sound, directly on 24 tracks tape recorder, and was mixed at Steamroom, Tokyo, by Jim O'Rourke himself. The blend of early 70's ECM drumsound, long unfolding travelogues and the great trasparency of the mix, give to this record a breadth and deepness that will give hard times catagorizing it's music, where jazz (the one of Abercrombie's Gatewa…

"In the late 1950s, Ornette Coleman set the jazz world on fire. From his own unique playing style to his fundamental deconstruction of harmony and complete rethinking of group performance, Coleman at once confounded critics and inspired a new generation. This revolutionary music eventually became known as free jazz, but Coleman's influence extended well beyond -- into avant-garde rock and art circles -- and today his name is synonymous with artistic freedom. Originally released in Japan o…

Vladimir Tarasov - drums, percussion, cimbalom and hunting horn, Eugenijus Kanevicius – bass and electronics, and  Liudas Mockunas - soprano and tenor saxophones, clarinet and bass clarinet. Recorded at Vladimir Tarasov home studio in Vilnius, June 2014. Limited edition of 400 copies.

This limited edition LP documents a collectively birthed exploration spread across the two sides by the visiting German pair of reedman Thomas Borgmann and long time associate drummer Willi Kellers, who team up with NYC bassist Max Johnson. The concert took place as part of the New York Tenor Saxophone Festival at Ibeam in 2015 organized by Cisco Bradley of Jazz Right Now fame, hence the title. The trio constitutes a favored format for Borgmann. He's helmed two killer outfits in the past, firstl…

Lerner – Filiano – Grassi have been featured at the Guelph Festival, Canada (2010) and the  Hurta Cordell Festival in Madrid, Spain (2012). They have also performed at venues throughout the Northeast including The Stone, NYC, The Bop Shop, Rochester, NY and Hallwall’s, Buffalo, NY. Their first cd “Arms Spread Wide” (NoBusiness Records) has received strong praise worldwide. This album is a live recording from Edgefest 2013 "Keys to the Edgedom". The ”Canadian pianist Marilyn Lerner has garnered a…

All compositions by Jean-Luc Cappozzo, Didier Lasserre. Recorded live at la Maison Peinte, Labarthe-sur-Lèze, December 19th, 2014. Jean-Luc Cappozzo was born in Belfort, France, in 1954. He started playing the trumpet in the local orchestra of his native town where he performed both jazz and classical music. Following a meeting with the diatonic accordionist Serge Desaunay, he started to perform traditional music as well. His meeting with Dizzy Gillespie in 1984, who invited him to participate i…

**2006 release, long out of print, very few copies available** Trumpeter Itaru Oki Trio's landmark debut album from 1970 reissued, a flamed out free jazz masterpiece. Itaru Oki (trumpet), Yoshiaki Fujikawa (alto sax), Keiki Midorikawa (cello, bass, piano) for sure one of the earliest free jazz players and albums from Japan. And this album is possibly his finest effort, eclectic and saturated with ethnic elements, quirky, free form.Japanese trumpet player Itaru Oki represents one of the very firs…

"one night i was surfing the net and i can't remember exactly how i arrived at that youtube Rakka video ?! but i saw some friendly faces (Janne from Rakhim and Ville from Black Motor) and i'd immeditaly feel the special vibes... so i wrote them and here they are, the 1st two Rakka releases on vinyl. i started with qbico way back in early 2001, so with these two records i'm celebrating 15 years OUTSIDE the music biz AND please believe me: i'd have NEVER asked/wished for something better to celebr…

"Finland has always been a place of original charachters... well Rakka are 101% original cats (they learned the lesson/s and went their OWN way/s) and in this so amazing and so exciting today music world, that's already something ! most (if not nearly all) of the records coming out today have a no future or play me only once tag... well these records (top mastering for a top sound quality) are destined to have a bright future and to be played at least twice (such beautiful compositions, all orig…

Otomo Yoshihide's Guitar Solo "LEFT" was released last summer but "RIGHT" is completely different from "LEFT". the 123 short fragments of Otomo's guitar sounds are run by computer programming at random so no one know how the sound played. This CD is one infinity."-Doubtmusic "What is most remarkable about the single, 62-minute track on Otomo Yoshihide's Guitar Solos 2015 RIGHT is how consistent, top to bottom, it sounds. Or, viewed through a different lens, how much coherence (real or imagined)…

German reedman-composer Peter Brotzmann is, despite an immense catalog spanning over forty years of activity in free music, criminally underrepresented in the format of a "standard" piano-less quartet. From reed-heavy octets and orchestras to the winds-bass-drums power trio, not to mention a long-running trio with percussion and piano, most of the possible formations have been covered. His Die Like A Dog Quartet was the one entry in this instrumental canon in the late 1990s, and produced five re…

"From New York" is a musical jouney into the street of New York divided into three splendid albums:  DAVID MURRAY - Live at the Lower Manhattan Ocean ClubNew Year's Eve 1977 gig with Lester Bowie, Fred Hopkins and Phillip Wilson, originally released on India Navigation. JOHN LINDBERG'S TRIPOLAR - (A)Live at Roulette, NYCString Trio of New York bassist Lindberg, with Don Davis (sax) and Kevin Norton (drums), recorded in sparkling form in New York, 2010 LESTER BOWIE - The Great PretenderGospel-dre…

"Berlin Box vol. 1 " is a musical journey divided into three splendid volumes that give the listener the best of recordings made by the label Jazzwerkstatt in Berlin. The first cd "Live in Berlin" (JW 22) proposes the fabulous duo of Steve Lacy (soprano sax) and Mal Waldron (piano), immortalized on stage when creating a harmonious interpretation of "A Flower is a Lovesome Thing" by Billy Strayhorn and "Epistrophy" Thelonious Monk together with their own original pieces. The second album "Live in…

The first volume of the box "FMP - Free Music Production Box" brings the listener back to the 1977 into the FMP studio in Berlin where Alexander von Schlippenbach recorded the album "Piano Solo '77" (FMP 129): a fascinating album of music improvisation for piano solo. The second volume of the box "No Comment" (FMP 133) is dedicated to the trio of Stefan Keune (sopranino sax, high baritone), Hans Schneiber (bass) and Achim Krämer (percussion) appreciated for their always direct expressiveness wit…

With their debut album, Backer & Strid tell both short and long stories through sound improvisations that includes the rich spectrum from more serious expressions, to humoristic passages and parts. Tracks range from minimalistic and quiet nuances, to outraging energy bursts. The music is inspired by European improv, free jazz, contemporary classical music, folk music and much more. The album was improvised and recorded September 2014 in Heby, Sweden by Strid, and mixed by Backer & Strid.

The newly formed quartet is making its debut performance at the gallery. Alan Wilkinson (alto saxophone), Olie Brice double bass,Dominic Lash (double bass), Mark Wastell (cello). Mark Wastell Quartet is combining the unavoidable and reverential influence of the great jazz pioneers of the 20th century with the sophisticated integrity of the modern day improviser.

"Free-improv CDs sometimes turn up in the record-business equivalent of fish-and-chip paper, but this handsome book-form package encloses three audio CDs, a DVD, a raft of colour photography, and a thoughtful essay from Richard Williams. It documents a 2013 Cafe Oto season for the UK trio of drummer Eddie Prévost, bassist John Edwards and saxophonist Evan Parker, plus German musicians Christof Thewes (trombone) and the doyen of European free-jazz pianists, Alex von Schlippenbach – the Brit…

Amazing and strong vintage synth and keys duo improvisations by free jazz pioneers Alan Silva and Burton Greene, still exploring and pushing boundaries after half a century of no compromise careers. Burton Green says: “It’s not about the latest (electronic) instruments or gadjets.. it’s about the creativity of the composer/improvisor. Alan Silva and I have so-called “dated” instruments or “retro electronics”, but you can just judge for yourself if what we do with them is dated on not..!.. …

Helios is typically credited for our solar well-being, but let's not forget that his four horses have been the ones doing the heavy lifting day in and day out all these years... They must have bailed on the bossman somewhere above Connecticut because on September 9, 2013 in New Haven it was not Pyrois, Aeos, Aethon, and Phlegon but Tiger Hatchery (Ben Baker Billington, Mike Forbes, Andrew Scott Young) and Paul Flaherty who brought the heat. Neither party is any stranger to fire music: aft…

2014 Release. It has been eight long years since we've had a new duo album by Paul Flaherty and Chris Corsano. The two have played together in other configurations, but we all know there has always been something special and telepathic about their duo collaborations. From the moment they began playing together late in the last century, Paul and Chris communicated in weird, deep ways. And so it is here. Low Cost Space Flights was recorded in June 2013, at Eric Gagne's 'Thing in the Spring F…