Jazz & Improvisation / All styles

New CD issue of this classic album, with bonus track and improved sound (previously issued by Mantra). Upon it's original release, 1984, with it's unusual combination of lengthy abstract sound-journeys and short, weirdly devolved James Brown-inspired pieces, gained much critical acclaim. 1984 was an extremely unusual release for 1973 and an extremely unusual project for CBS Records, who first released it. Like the groundbreaking novel after which it was named, Hopper's record was truly ahead of …

A re-reissue of this classic recording of Philip Cohran and the Artistic Heritage Ensemble. This record has only been previously available in limited quantities and is back in print now due to the collaborative efforts of Kelan Zulu productions and Katalyst Entertainment. This historic recording is the definitive representation of one of the most significant groups of this era in jazz history. With several legendary musicians including guitarist Pete Cosey, percussionist Henry Gibson, Louis Satt…

2008 release ** Ferran Fages: electric guitar. Recorded live by Pablo Rega, january 19th 2007 at Almazen, Barcelona. Some tracks are versions or new approaches of pieces released before in the album 'a cavall entre dos cavalls'. 'Al voltant d«un paral.lel ' brings to light a tension, which matches that of the previous two guitar albums of Ferran Fages. It's probably because a parallel could also be thought of as the lanes of a horse race, as a permanent conflict, or as a trait of one's character…

The Young Cricketer is Chris Corsano's debut of Frankenstein-gamelan skin detail. It's a monster and a babe all wrapped under the guise of The Solo Drum Album. Corsano's flea-market kit of cast-iron pot lids, super-bouncy-balls on sticks, butter knives, and even a sax mouth-piece jammed-in-a-hose conjures a part rhythmic maelstrom, like a Milford Graves drip painting, and the sweet metallic ice drones of Tony Conrad and Keiji Haino rubbing sticks together until end days. Globally known for a doz…

A fully improvised communion of 3 of America's masters of music. The manifest intent: sowing seeds of sound & bringing them to full blossom. Abstract, organic, & fully inviting. Recorded live at NYC's The Stone in June of 2008, this was the 3rd meeting of drummer GERALD CLEAVER, bassist WILLIAM PARKER, & pianist CRAIG TABORN. An immersive experience yielding magic & inducing a calming mystical ambience. Improvising in long, fluid ideas, Mr. Taborn's solos were housewreckers.

EXCLUSIVE! Recorded live at Sting Jazzklubb in Norway during the Maijazz Festival in 2006. The godfather of European free-jazz, Peter Brotzmann, is joined by respected Scandinavian percussionist Paal Nilssen-Love to form a musical partnership of rare & beautiful balance.

The release of a new album by the Revolutionary Ensemble should come as a shock to many. From their start in the 70's they were a mysterious band. They were one of the first string bands to record free jazz. Graceful yet cutting, the album sounds matured in a way that their output from the 70s didn't. Perhaps it is the improved sound quality, or the time & experience that have filled their playing, but somehow the time apart seems to have cemented the group's focus & direction.

"It's not a church anymore, it's an ex-church, it's used now for cultural purpose, not for praying and religious madness anymore", those are the exact words some random anxious pedestrian yelled at Chris Corsano and Paul Flaherty, trying to stop them from putting the St. John Renaissance Theater in Louisville, Kentucky on fire, Paul Flaherty used his long grey beard to start the fire and blew as high as he could with a rusted tenor and alto saxophone, the flames went high, but not high enough fo…

The maestros of improv noise (with a big N) with their ferocious album for Agaric from 1988. Some call it jazz, some call it improv, some call it noise. Two saxes (Jim Sauter & Don Dietrich) and one guitar (Donald Miller). Great intensity.

This English vibes-player, living in France, recorded in 1971 and 1973 this record with guests like Steve Potts on saxophone, Ken Carter on double-bass and Gilbert Artman on drums. Robert plays an improvised music, close to free-jazz, with a succession of crystalline notes, without melody, or rhythms. Saxophone, drum and bass participate in this maelstrom of sounds. Magnificent album

This compilation of rare material from the Sun Ra Arkestra draws from tapes recorded between 1963 and 1970, and the space-age jazz shaman conjures up a variety of styles and moods along the way. A balmy tropical vibe greets the ears with the opener ("Island in the Sun"), but it doesn't take long for Ra to set his controls for the stratosphere, and soon, distorted gongs, haunted house organ, and homemade instruments are exploring African mysticism on the title track. "Velvet" is a more traditiona…

The real gems of this prized reissue from Leo Records's Golden Years vault imprint are two previously unreleased tracks. The first features Sun Ra and his Arkestra on an 18-minute "Watusa" from 1984, and the second features a 13-minute piece by Saleh Ragab's Cairo Free Jazz Ensemble, "Music for Angela Davis," from 1971. It's no surprise Sun Ra loved going to Egypt, what with all the astro-mythology he used in the Arkestra. This love shows brightly on "Egypt Strut" and "Dawn," two Ragab tunes pla…

Multi dimensional sound that blurs any line between the notions of Jazz, Improvisation, & New Music. Will appeal to patient & adventurous music fans of AMM, Spontaneous Music Ensemble, Polwechsel, Evan Parker, & the group work of Taku Sugimoto.

Avant-jazz group consisting of guitarist Jason Bivins, soprano saxophonist Marty Belcher, baritone saxophonist Joe Donnelly, flautist Richard Patterson and drummer Matt Griffin. The UE's carefully woven detail becomes richer with each listen, and the group's broad and unblushing sense of humor keeps this disc from devolving into self-absorbed noodling.

The Revolutionary Ensemble was: Leroy Jenkins (violin), Sirone (bass), Jerome Cooper (drums, piano). Long awaited reissue of the Revolutionary Ensemble's 1975 album The Psyche. This group introduced New York to decided musical advances, many pioneered by Chicago's A.A.C.M. musicians. Ex-Chicagoan Leroy Jenkins, who played violin, of all unheard-of modern jazz instruments, had formed his concept from classical, swing, blues, and modern elements and had been one of the radicals who discovered new …

2 separate performances from 1986 & 1990 show Sun Ra & friends in trademark improvisational spaciness, playing tracks like "The Shadow World," "Space Is The Place/We Travel The Spaceways" & "Interstellar Low Ways". Recorded in 1986 and 1990.

Sun Ra presents a fun-filled & strange live album that pays tribute to Walt Disney with a few songs from his movies, inc. "Zip A Dee Doo Dah," "High Ho, High Ho" & "Whistle While You Work" Recorded in Austria in 1989.

The cosmic musical scientist presents a 7 track live performance made in 1983 in Utrecht, inc. the cuts "Love In Outer Space/Space Is The Place," "Round Midnight" & "Along Came Ra". Recorded live in Utrecht, The Netherlands in 1983.

For the last five years Trunk Records have been issuing the great, lost work of pioneering British composer Basil Kirchin. Here is his last album, completed only a couple of weeks before he passed away in late 2005. It proves that Kirchin, even in his mid-'70s, was still very much an experimentalist at the top of his odd game. Kirchin invented ambient music and set the template to which much of today's avant garde music sounds like. Highlights of Particles are many -- "The Atonals" for example, …

The third and final installment of AUM Fidelity's collaborative releases with Arts For Art, Inc. presenting specially commissioned works which made their debut at Vision Festival XII in June 2007. And it is William Parker's this time me a tell you IAIAH. An orchestral work featuring immensely gifted individual and collective voices from around the world, meshing as one to manifest a pair of deep bass groove-driven mantras. Featuring both Hamid Drake and Gerald Cleaver on drums (each tremendous m…

First ever UK CD release for this classic album from the master percussionist & ambient musician -- remastered from the original tapes. Extensive booklet with liner notes & fully restored artwork. Stomu Yamash'ta is a master percussionist who studied jazz drumming at Berklee School of Jazz. In the 1970s, he recorded a string of innovative albums for Island Records which utilized the talents of such leading musicians as Hugh Hopper, Maurice Pert, Steve Winwood, Michael Shrieve and Klaus Schulze, …

This is the first chance to hear a recently discovered recording from Command All Stars, a project involving widely recognized musicians from Keith Tippet Group, Soft Machine and King Crimson, among others. In February 1972, a group of young jazz musicians gathered in London's Command Studios, with producer Robert Fripp, to record a double album intended for Ronnie Scott's productions. The cast, consisting of pianist Keith Tippet, saxophonist Elton Dean, trombonist Nick Evans, trumpeter Mark Cha…

Originally recorded in 1964. Featured artists: Albert Ayler (tenor saxophone); Sunny Murray (percussion); Gary Peacock (bass); Don Cherry (cornet). The legendary recording, digitally remastered with new artwork, and liners by Russ Musto. Includes free 9.5 x 9.5 pullout poster!

Pharoah Sander's classic 1964 session, his first as a leader. Remastered from the original tapes and presented here for the first time with insightful and entertaining interview clips detailing Pharoah's early experiences as a young musician in New York. Includes over thirteen minutes of previously unreleased interviews with Pharoah Sanders and ESP-Disk founder/CEO Bernard Stollman. Pharoah Sanders (tenor saxophone); Stan Foster (trumpet); Jane Getz (piano); William Bennett (bass); Marvin Pattil…

Trio improvisations recorded at festivals in Esslingen, Germany (2005) and Klagenfurt, Austria (2008). Axel Dörner (trumpet), Thomas Lehn (analogue synthesiser) and Phil Minton (voice) - TOOT's second album, following One on Sofa Records. Two extended collective improvisations finding three masters of European improvisation in absolutely fine form. Dörner brings his trumpet deconstructions - brassy hisses, burred growls, sputtered flurries. Lehn provides warm analogue synth grit and oscillations…

Since last year, those titles had been a hold by various matters but ONJO (Otomo Yoshihide's New Jazz Orchestra) Live CD are finally released at last. Those essential titles, 2CDs x 2 sets are organized various Live performances and indicate the future ONJO. The sound of ONJO contains every connection between tone, onkyo, sonority, melody, rhythm and so on. Disc 1 : Shichinin no Keiji (Berlin + Tokyo), Gazzelloni (Kyoto), Te recuerdo Amanda > Song For Che > Reducing Agent (Tokyo), Super Jetter (…

Since last year, those titles had been a hold by various matters but ONJO (Otomo Yoshihide's New Jazz Orchestra) Live CD are finally released at last. Those essential titles, 2CDs x 2 sets are organized various Live performances and indicate the future ONJO. The sound of ONJO contains every connection between tone, onkyo, sonority, melody, rhythm and so on. Disc 1 : Lost In The Rain (Berlin), Out To Lunch (Tokyo), Playgirl BGM (Berlin + Tokyo), Double Command II (Tokyo), Single Command (Tokyo), …

Classic spiritual soul jazz from Pharoah Sanders – recorded with an all star lineup that includes Lonnie Liston Smith, Cecil McBee, Roy Haynes, and Michael White. The album's got a strong influence from the members on the set – particularly Lonnie Liston Smith, who seems to bring in a very nicely soulful approach to a few of the numbers, and Michael White, whose spiritual consciousness is still a bit rough-hewn and personal at this point. The record oddly shifts mood from track to track …

Although introduced as a protégé of John Coltrane and touted by many as his heir apparent, reedman Pharoah Sanders quickly proved his own man. His shared interest in the "cosmic" music of Coltrane's final period belies the fact that Sanders frequently plays with an unhurried sense of peace and satisfaction rarely found in his mentor's music. His use of space, African and Asian motifs and instruments, and simple, repetitive melodies also pointed the way for jazz, rock, and new age musicians in th…

No one navigates a stormy sea and subsequent repose quite like avant garde pilot Pharoah Sanders. We are invited here to join the personnel in transcendental affirmations of peace, reassured by the yodeling of Leon Thomas and happy, revelatory ...    Full Descriptionpiano work of the one and only Lonnie Liston Smith. Chimes, African thumb piano, and the talking hourglass drum are just some of the other elements which make this album musically and culturally compelling. The compositional minimali…

Digitally remastered by Erick Labson (MCA Music Media Studios). Hannibal Marvin Peterson's trumpet and Pharoah's tenor screech out of the melody in accord--their amity is in the process and the product.. Characteristic of Pharoah's other ...    Full Descriptionwork at this time, "Black Unity" rides an often static bass figure. In this way, while the improvisations may evoke the reflective or the frantic, an assertive central theme pervades in the lower register: determination (Does "A Love Supre…

In 1966, she replaced pianist McCoy Tyner in her husband John Coltrane's group. Coltrane's work became a spiritual wellspring for her, but she surely developed her own style on piano, organ, harp, and later, Indian instruments such as the tamboura. After Coltrane's death in 1967, Alice began recording under her own name for Impulse!, leading groups that included at various times saxophonists Pharoah Sanders, Archie Shepp, Joe Henderson, Frank Lowe, and Carlos Ward, double bass players Cecil McBe…

Ptah, the El Daoud was the third solo album by Alice Coltrane. This was Coltrane's first album with horns (aside from one track on A Monastic Trio (1968), on which Pharoah Sanders had played bass clarinet). Sanders is recorded on the right channel and Joe Henderson on the left channel throughout. All the compositions were written by Coltrane. The title track is named for the Egyptian god Ptah, "the El Daoud" meaning "the beloved". "Turiya", according to the liner notes, "was defined by Alice as …

Originally issued by Impulse in 1971, this is definitely one of the best  truly cosmic jazz orchestrations ever realized. Recorded at the Coltrane home studio, Dix Hills, New York on November 8, 1970. Alice Coltrane (harp, piano); Pharoah Sanders (soprano saxophone, perc); Charlie Haden (bass); Rashied Ali (drums); Cecil McBee (bass); Vishnu Wood (oud); Tulsi (tamboura); Majid Shabazz (bells, tambourine). "Swamiji is the first example I have seen in recent years of Universal Love or God in actio…

Anthony Braxton's 9 Compositions (Iridium) 2006 is a nine-CD-plus-one-DVD box set documenting what Time Out New York called "last Spring's epochal run" at New York's Iridium Jazz Club with his 12+1tet. Described by Braxton as "THE point of definition in my work thus far," these concerts featured the world premieres of Compositions 350 through 358, the final works in his Ghost Trance Music series, recorded over the course of this rare four-night stand on an American stage. Included with the music…

Onze Danses Pour Combattre la Migraine (French for "Eleven Dances for Fighting Migraine") is the debut album by Belgian avant-garde rock band Aksak Maboul. It was largely the work of one of the band's co-founders, Marc Hollander and was credited to Marc Hollander/Aksak Maboul. It was released on LP in 1977 on a Belgian independent record label, Kamikaze Records, and later re-released twice on Hollander's own Crammed Discs label: on LP in 1981, and on CD in 2003. Onze Danses Pour Combattre la Mig…

An album properly realized for an the 'Arte Aborigena Australiana' exhibit, organized by Galleria Bolzani, Milano. Stefano Scala is a researcer and musician with a great experience in antropology and ethnic instruments collected all over the world.

Here it is, the Mosaic’s awesome Anthony Braxton set, The Complete Arista Recordings, is a long-awaited dream-come-true for fans of the jazz avant-garde. The set’s liner notes were written by musician and scholar Mike Heffley, who gave Mosaic a draft that was twice as long as what they were able to use. Anthony Braxton is the sort of artist who triggers those heated “Is it jazz?” debates; whatever his music is, it is brilliant. By the time he signed with Arista Records in 1974 at the age of 29, …

long deleted, very few availabe...Many if not most of Derek Bailey's fans (I was going to write "hardcore fans," but aren't we all?) will be surprised at the existence of these extremely early solo recordings, originally issued by Incus back in 1973. Even for a label as unorthodox as Incus, the TAPS represented a unique but very short-lived experiment in "marketing"; basically, Derek decided that it would be interesting, cheaper, and "less formal" to issue some of his favorite recent solo improv…

Long awaited reissue of this historic pre-FMP album by Peter Brotzmann. Known to many for it's placement on "The List" (T. Moore's Top Ten list of free jazz artifacts as published in Grand Royal of course), this is one of the most desirable and completely unseen albums in the genre of modern improvisation. Recorded April 18/24, 1969 and released on the Calig-Verlag label. Simply put, Nipples is one of the rarest and most influential European energy jazz recordings of all time. The incendiary Sex…