Jazz & Improvisation / All styles

*2026 stock* A live document from the legendary “5 Days In Jazz” festival in Tokyo in March 1974, and one of the most ambitious multi-band albums in the Three Blind Mice catalogue. The record gathers some of the most important working units of the moment: bassist Isao Suzuki and guitarist Sunao Wada sharing the front of the stage, the Tsuyoshi Yamamoto Trio holding things together from the rhythm section, and the George Otsuka Quintet stepping in with the alto-led horn front-line that defined th…

*2026 stock* Nobuo Hara led Sharps & Flats for an astonishing run, well over half a century, and the band became one of the institutions of Japanese jazz, in roughly the same way the Clarke-Boland Big Band held its place in Europe. Active Volcano catches the ensemble in particularly muscular form: arrangements that draw on the funkier, groove-conscious end of seventies big-band writing, brass passages that hit hard without losing definition, and a sense of swing that belongs less to the swing er…

*2026 stock* The Tsuyoshi Yamamoto Trio in concert at Montreux, and one of the relatively few records that documents the working group on an international stage. By the time of this recording the trio had already been together for years, and the band's mutual understanding shows in the way pieces unfold: long heads, patient solos, and a rhythm section that responds to the leader's harmonic choices before he has finished making them. Yamamoto plays with the bluesy, slightly behind-the-beat phrasi…

*2026 stock* A mid-seventies entry from the Tsuyoshi Yamamoto Trio, and one of the records where the leader's bluesy, groove-conscious side comes most clearly to the front. The title track is the Ramsey Lewis standard, and the choice tells you most of what you need to know about the date: Yamamoto's trio was a working unit happy to engage with the soul-jazz and groove-jazz vocabularies that had been moving the music since the late sixties. The rest of the programme balances that with the lyrical…

Duo Concert Frankfurt 1986 was recorded live in Germany on February 15th. The album captures tenor icon Pharoah Sanders and celebrated pianist John Hicks in a moment of profound musical harmony. Sanders, known for his evolution from fierce free-jazz to deeply lyrical spiritualist, plays here with warmth, focus and emotional clarity. Hicks meets him with luminous touch, rich voicings and an intuitive sense of space that elevates every phrase. Together they deliver a beautifully balanced set of Co…

Australian progressive fusion-jazz-symphonic rock act Pantha burst from the mid‑1970s with a uniquely spirited record, Doway Do Doway Do !?!!, a thrilling hybrid of rock, jazz, Latin American rhythms, West Indian grooves and occasional Zappa‑styled eccentricity. Originally released in 1975, the album showcases the group’s deft ability to marry virtuosic musicianship with irresistible danceable energy. Doway Do Doway Do !?!! draws on the Santana hallmark of driving rock over Latin beats but expan…

*2026 stock* Drummer George Otsuka was a fixture of the Tokyo jazz club scene from the sixties onwards, leading a series of working bands that earned a reputation for tight ensemble playing and consistently high temperature. 'Go On', one of the early releases on Three Blind Mice, captures the quintet at the moment when its hard bop foundation was beginning to stretch into something more searching: there's still plenty of swing, but the modal frames and freer improvising of the surrounding scene …

*2026 stock* One of the more obscure entries in the early Three Blind Mice catalogue, and a record that points to the label's willingness, from very near its beginning, to host visiting players alongside the domestic scene. The American saxophonist Allan Praskin worked at the international margins of the jazz circuit, and Encounter finds him in a quartet setting that draws on the rhythmic discipline of the Japanese players around him. The writing sits firmly in the post-bop tradition: modal fram…

*2026 stock* Guitarist Sunao Wada spent the seventies as one of the most consistently working figures in Japanese jazz, a player whose tone owed something to Wes Montgomery and Kenny Burrell but whose phrasing carried a particular Japanese weight, more thoughtful than driving. Coco's Blues, an early release on Three Blind Mice, alternates quartet and sextet formations across the programme, and the shift in scale gives the record a real architectural interest. The smaller settings let Wada's line…

*2026 stock* Saxophonist Kenji Mori belongs to the second generation of TBM regulars, a player whose work for the label spans several years and several formats, but whose quartet records have a particularly distilled quality. Firebird fits cleanly into the modal and post-bop tradition that defined the heart of the Three Blind Mice catalogue: heads with real melodic substance, harmonic openness that gives the soloists space without leaving them stranded, and a rhythm section that knows how to kee…

*2026 stock* The pianist Fumio Karashima is best known internationally for his long association with Elvin Jones, having held the piano chair in Jones's working bands for years, a credit that already tells you most of what you need to know about his playing. Gathering, his trio date for Three Blind Mice, is the work of a player who has spent serious time on the bandstand with one of the most demanding drummers in jazz history, and the record's qualities reflect it: a strong rhythmic centre, a le…

*2026 stock* One of the more intimate entries in the Three Blind Mice catalogue: a duo session, with all the exposure and concentrated focus the format implies. Conversation lives up to its title. Two players in close, careful dialogue, with neither voice dominating and neither retreating into accompaniment. The duo format strips a lot of the usual jazz furniture away: there's no rhythm section to lean on, no horn section to fill out the harmony, no place for either player to hide. What's left i…

*2026 stock* A later Sunao Wada session for Three Blind Mice, and one of the more outward-looking records in his TBM run. The quintet-plus-one format brings the saxophonist and flautist Minoru Ikeno alongside Wada's working group, and the addition shifts the music's centre of gravity, opening up the writing to longer tones and more spacious harmonies. There's still plenty of the bluesy swing that runs through Wada's discography, but the textures here are wider: Fender Rhodes lacing through the h…

*2026 stock* An earlier Sunao Wada outing on Three Blind Mice, recorded with both quartet and quintet formations across the programme, and built (as the title suggests) around the blues. But this is blues in the broader, more searching sense the seventies were beginning to articulate: harmonic frames borrowed from soul and modal jazz alongside the standard 12-bar architecture, and an improvising attitude that's more interested in development than display. Wada's guitar carries the writing with t…

On Live at the It Club, Thelonious Monk and his classic quartet - Charlie Rouse, Larry Gales and Ben Riley - burn through two nights of Los Angeles brilliance in 1964, turning familiar originals and standards into angular, swinging explorations now fully restored in a complete edition.

On Blue Lake, Don Cherry dissolves borders in real time: a transcendent 1971 Paris trio set with Johnny Dyani and Okay Temiz, now restored by Charly and BYG, where flute, bass and percussion spiral through Native American echoes, Far‑Eastern tonalities and two sprawling, ecstatic journeys past the twenty‑five‑minute mark.

*2026 much needed repress!!* "Written and arranged by Hiromasa Suzuki, and originally released in 1975 on Nippon Columbia, this album is incredible, and truly well-named - funky stuff, indeed! Fat bass, a great variety of guitar sounds, horns and organ, and crisp drums: this is an instant favorite! From the end of the 1960s, saxophonist Jiro Inagaki led groups such as The Soul Mates, and His Black Rhythm Machine, blasting down the jazz rock road before forming Soul Media in 1969. The album Funky…

Ascension, released in 1966 on Impulse!, stands as one of John Coltrane’s most radical and influential works. Subtitled “Edition I & II” to reflect the two complete takes recorded at the session - and presented together on LP for the first time - the piece is a nearly 40-minute large-ensemble performance marking Coltrane’s decisive embrace of the avant-garde. Recorded on June 28, 1965, at Rudy Van Gelder’s Englewood Cliffs studio and produced by Bob Thiele, the session assembled an expanded ense…

"Bassist Ron Carter had long been Creed Taylor’s first-choice bassist on record dates stretching as far back to the classic Gil Evans recording Out of the Cool in 1960. Carter was the first bass choice for many Creed Taylor productions throughout the 1960s for the Impulse, Verve, MGM and A&M/CTI labels, even while the bassist was recording and touring as part of the Miles Davis Quintet. And it was Ron Carter’s dulcet tones and swinging accompaniment on the double bass that drove nearly every CTI…

The Błoto we knew until now briefly ceased to exist in September 2025, somewhere in the backstreets of Bucharest’s Floreasca district. This was not an ending, though, but a new beginning and a conscious transformation. With their core left intact, the band expanded its lineup to include a pillar of the Romanian alternative scene, Ion D. That move became the catalyst for the most groundbreaking project in their career. The album Atmosfera, set for release in 2026 via Astigmatic Records, unfolds a…

Members… Don’t! is the tour-de-force new release by acclaimed drummer and composer Tyshawn Sorey that offers a bold reinterpretation of Max Roach’s potent album Members, Don’t Git Weary, connecting its message of resilience in the face of struggle to the present day. It follows on a string of albums from Sorey that feature pianist Aaron Diehl, the latest of which – The Susceptible Now (Pi 2024) – received 5-Stars from Downbeat, which describe it as “a garden of sonic ecstasy… Sorey’s trio conjur…

Over two decades guitarist and composer Miles Okazaki has built a body of work marked by rigor and restless curiosity. With Boomtown, his ninth album of original compositions and his fourth as a leader for Pi Recordings, he presents a large-scale, finely wrought, sometimes unruly work that hurtles forward with narrative force. The album continues the themes of Miniature America from 2024, described by pianist Ethan Iverson as “meticulously assembled, absolutely a blast to listen to, and informed…

Originally brought together in September 2015 to perform the Zorn Bagatelles, Julian Lage and Gyan Riley have become two of Zorn’s most trusted and soulful musical collaborators, having recorded over a dozen CDs of his compositions for acoustic guitars both in duo and in trio with Bill Frisell. Seven Sonnets is their sixth CD together as a duo and the music is a lovely series of compositions referencing early music, minimalism, contemporary classical, soundtracks, folk, jazz, and more. Two of th…

*2026 stock* This album is the second release by saxophonist Sachi Hayasaka, following her debut album Free Fight. Most of the music was recorded in Tokyo with members of Stir Up!, capturing the raw energy and spirit of the group. Two additional tracks were recorded in New York at Baby Monster Studio, featuring special guest trumpeter Wadada Leo Smith. These sessions added another dimension to the album, making it an especially rich and memorable work. The album was produced entirely by Sachi an…

*2026 stock* A live document from one of the towering figures in Japanese jazz history. By the early seventies Terumasa Hino had established himself as Japan's most internationally fluent trumpeter, a player whose vocabulary moved easily between Lee Morgan-era hard bop, Miles-influenced modal abstraction, and the harder edges of Coltrane-era extended playing. Live! catches his quintet in concert, working through original material at the high temperature his groups were known for: long forms, fie…

*2026 stock* A double-set capturing Bingo Miki's Inner Galaxy Orchestra in live performance at Montreux, and one of the more ambitious large-ensemble documents in the entire Three Blind Mice catalogue. Miki spent his career writing for big bands at the edge of mainstream Japanese jazz, blending orchestral architecture with modal, spiritual and free-leaning impulses, and the Inner Galaxy Orchestra was his most expansive vehicle. The Montreux performance shows the ensemble at full stretch: long-fo…

*2026 stock* Legendary Japanese jazz vocalist Kimiko Kasai, one of the most innovative singers of the 1970s, joins forces with the fiery Kosuke Mine Quartet on the newly reissued Yellow Carcass in the Blue, originally released in 1971 on the esteemed Three Blind Mice (TBM) label. This rare leader album captures Kasai at her peak, blending her husky, soulful voice with avant-garde improvisation and fusion grooves, featuring standout tracks like the title song—Masabumi Kikuchi's composition elevat…

*2026 stock* Bassist Hideto Kanai was one of the most ambitious composer-bandleaders to emerge from the Japanese jazz scene of the early seventies, a writer of long-form pieces that integrated free playing with chamber-jazz architecture, and a player with the patience to leave space where lesser arrangers would clutter. Q, only the sixth release on Three Blind Mice, is one of his most uncompromising early statements: extended group playing built around Kanai's slow, structural bass lines, with t…

*2026 stock* Hidefumi Toki's 1975 album Toki offers a deeply personal journey into the realms of jazz, showcasing his expressive prowess on alto and soprano saxophones. Backed by a stellar quartet including Kazumi Watanabe on guitar, Nobuyoshi Ino on bass, and Steve Jackson on drums, Toki creates a stunning sonic landscape filled with gentle, raspy tones. The album's ambiance is laidback and mellow, yet infused with a profound sense of spiritual depth reminiscent of Coltrane's work. Original com…

*2026 stock* Trumpeter Shunzo Ohno spent much of his career moving between the Japanese scene and the New York post-bop circuit, a player whose résumé runs through American bandleaders alongside his domestic work, and whose tone bears the marks of both worlds. His quintet date for Three Blind Mice is one of the records where he sounds most explicitly engaged with the modal and spiritual currents of seventies American jazz: Coltrane shadows everywhere, but absorbed into a particular Japanese pois…

The very first record released on Three Blind Mice, a debut for both label and bandleader. Recorded in Tokyo in August 1970, Mine announces the saxophonist Kosuke Mine and sets out, in advance, the editorial stance the label would hold for the next two decades: serious post-bop with European clarity, Coltrane-era heat, and a particularly Japanese sense of restraint that lets the most intense solos hold their shape. Mine's quintet pairs his alto and soprano with trombone, the great Hideo Ichikawa…

The MerKaBa Brotherhood are Roman Norfleet (The Cosmic Tones Research Trio, Be Present Art Group) and Andre Raiah (Brown Calvin of Brown Calculus, Be Present Art Group). The duo draw from esoteric texts, sacred imagery, and mystic thought, shaping sound into space, tone, and pulse. It's a spare and almost geometric record featuring Sax, keyboard and percussion. The album turns sound into a working language - textures as diagrams and melodies as signals. There is much to be learned and even more …

Were you to tap the lifeblood of Chicago music, you would find Josh Berman flowing liberally through its veins. Active on the scene for more than a quarter century, the cornetist, bandleader, and composer has helped retain the unique flavor of the city's soundscape, with particular attention to the music of its jazz past – groups like the Austin High Gang and the Oliver-Armstrong lineage and Freddie Keppard, as well as more recent figures from Lester Bowie to Wadada Leo Smith. But Berman is more…

With Ça commence par la marche (It Begins with the Walk), Jérémie Ternoy presents an immersive work in which repetition becomes movement and movement becomes sonic architecture. Building on a career shaped by major collaborations — notably with Magma — as well as his own projects (Organik Orkeztra, his trio, and TOC), he delivers here a fully realized synthesis of his artistic explorations. The album makes walking its founding principle: moving forward slowly, perceiving the world in its finest …

The music on “Green Prism” is rooted in the last of the many commissions Keith Tippett wrote in the latter part of his career. The original compositions featured on this album are arrangements drawn from a suite composed by Tippett entitled "Winter's Welcome" in 2018 for the brass ensemble Zinc & Copper, which premiered in Berlin on 17th February 2019. Due to ill health Keith was unable to attend the final rehearsals, which meant the project was never finished as originally envisioned. After Kei…

This 1971 album by the Hungarian jazz guitarist Gábor Szabó is a smooth jazz-fusion record blending psychedelic jazz, pop, and Latin influences. It includes one of Szabó’s best-known tracks, "Breezin’", later famously reworked by George Benson. The album is marked by melodic guitar lines, cinematic arrangements, and a polished, atmospheric sound typical of early-70s jazz fusion. Szabo also delivers a few stellar originals, showcasing his signature fusion of Hungarian folk music, jazz, psychedeli…

Get ready to ignite your turntable: Cal Tjader's seminal 1965 Latin jazz masterpiece Soul Sauce is back on vinyl for the first time since 1993. This vibrant reissue celebrates the album's enduring groove, fusing the vibraphonist's shimmering melodies with irresistible Afro-Cuban rhythms like mambo and boogaloo. A cornerstone of Latin jazz, Soul Sauce captivated audiences with its tight, danceable grooves and accessible yet sophisticated arrangements. Tjader, the vibraphone virtuoso who bridged j…

Originally released in 2003, With A Heartbeat brings together Pharoah Sanders, Bill Laswell and Graham Haynes in a collaboration that remains as elusive as it is forward-thinking. Now reissued by Glossy Mistakes, the album receives its first official vinyl edition, remastered and available both in standard black and a limited burgundy pressing. At the core of the record lies an unusual but striking element: the steady pulse of a human heartbeat. Rather than a conceptual gesture, it becomes the f…

French-born, London-based composer and musician Pascal Bideau aka Akusmi announces his second full-length Terra Incognita, an album of intrepid sonic exploration that delights in the sensation of being somewhere you've never been before. The listener is invited to experience seven faraway sonic imaginariums, as global and spiritual jazz are fused with modern electronics and life affirming minimalism into a hypnotic, polyrhythmic odyssey. The album's rich multilayered sound world features contrib…

Join the Kyle Shepherd Trio on “A Dance More Sweetly Played” as they explore, collaborate and improvise on the ‘songs we like to play’. The album’s title is a dedication to the celebrated South African artist William Kentridge, with whom Shepherd collaborated on a joint-work “Waiting for Sybil” that has toured world-wide. In addition to ten Shepherd originals, perhaps most unexpected is the inclusion of an exquisite reading of Massive Attack’s ‘Teardrop’ and a deconstructed take of Journey’s ‘Do…