Jazz /
Revision
Fred Moten & Brandon López’s duo debut explores cultural innovation, virtuosity, and confronting institutional madness while preserving humanity.
Balloons On Grass
Balloons On Grass is a collaborative album by Tony Orzano, Bryan Rohmer, and Jeremy Wexler that thrives on the unpredictable energy of improvisation. Recorded in a single, free-form session, the album is a vivid journey through the intersecting worlds of post-rock, noise, and free jazz. Each track unfolds organically, with the musicians responding to each other in real-time, creating a dynamic tapestry of sound that is both spontaneous and deeply intentional.
The album opens with shimmering guit…
Out Beyond Orbit
Draguns & Cozzolino Reunite as Flying Sutra to Win Over a New Generation of Fans with Fresh Hit Album Featuring Blossoming Saxist Ayumi Ishito
Bukas
Bukas: How Karl Evangelista is Exploring the Future of Free Music with his Quintet and Special Guest, Andrew Cyrille
Percussion Discussion
"Toe Rag Orchestra" by Shawn Lee is a remarkable album that encapsulates the essence of live, analog recording and the magic of spontaneous musical creation. Recorded in January 2024 at the legendary Toe Rag Studio in East London, the project brought together Shawn Lee, Paul Elliott, and Rupert Brown—three musicians known for their deep groove sensibilities and adventurous spirit. The trio entered the studio with a clear intention: to capture the immediacy and authenticity of live performance, f…
I/O
Akio Niitsu's first album, "I/O(i･o)" released in 1978, was produced in a homemade studio that had been converted from a storeroom in his home, and he spent three years doing everything from composition to engineering by himself, using overdubbed guitar recordings. Akio Niitsu's first analog re-release has been decided.
As a guitar multi-recording album, the idea was realized six years earlier than the album "E2-E4" released in 1984 by Manuel Göttsching, the central figure of "Ash La Tempel", bu…
Spiritual Sound (Mizik Filamonik)
Telluric, intense, terribly alive, the gwoka drums of Guadeloupe carry the identity of a painful and fervent island. Marked forever by the crime of slavery, Guadeloupe's créolité cherishes the ka drums and their natural environment: the low-pitched boula drum with male goatskin, the high-pitched soloist makè drum with female goatskin, the chacha, ti bwa, triangle, calabash and other percussion instruments that surround them, and the voices - the fiery, proud, timbred, urgent voices of the gwoka.…
Music for Zen Meditation and Other Joys
Mostly improvised by clarinettist Tony Scott, backed by Hozan Yamamoto and Shinichi Yuize — on the Japanese instruments shakuhachi and koto — this 1964 album is a precursor to later movements in ambient and new age music, from in and out of the jazz world.
The Body & The Soul
In his last release for the Impulse label, Hubbard’s ambitious 1963 recording The Body & The Soul includes both an all-star septet and an orchestra with strings. Including a number of Hubbard originals and such notables as Curtis Fuller (trombone), Wayne Shorter (tenor saxophone), Eric Dolphy (alto saxophone), Cedar Walton (piano), Reggie Workman (bass), and Louis Hayes (drums), the album stands alone as one of the most unique productions in Freddie’s substantive discography and as a showcase fo…
Invite Your Eye
With drummer Kenny Wollesen (Tom Waits, John Zorn, Norah Jones) and Dave Harrington (of electronic duo Darkside) guitar/bass/electronics, New York-based Swedish/Turkish saxophonist, composer, club-label owner Ilhan Ersahin captures the vibe of impromptu, cross-pollinating, and heavily grooving late-night jam sessions at Nublu, his “East Village Club where everything goes” (New York Times).
The telepathy and intuition that flows between these three musicians is one that has developed over many ye…
Chonyi Together
1999 release ** "While documenting some of the most important free-style jazz from around the globe, Leo Feigin of Leo Records has focused on discovering new talent, particularly in the former Soviet Union. Here, startlingly unique trumpeter Guyvoronsky is teamed with young accordionist Evelin Petrova for a series of eleven duets that incorporate folk music and jazz in an experimental avant-garde approach that defies convention and focuses on color, humor, and shading. At times, the trumpeter se…
(Y)earbook Volume 3
1991 release ** The third in a three volume compilation (each available separately) of 114 improvisers from around the world, covering a wide variety of approaches to improvisation. "A turbid dive into new music, this release packs everything from free-form jazz-like scraw to variations in composition, structure and situation to solo exploration." Featuring Pluto, Amy Denio, Davey Williams, LaDonna Smith, Marty Walker, Crawling With Tarts, IDLH, Ed Herrmann, Andrew Voigt, Tom Nunn, Tamio Shirais…
New Vienna (At The Musikverein, 2016)
New Vienna is the fourth concert recording to be released from Keith Jarrett’s final European solo tour. It follows Munich 2016, Budapest Concert and Bordeaux Concert. Why New Vienna? As Jarrett aficionados will know, his discography already includes a legendary Vienna Concert (recorded at the Vienna State Opera) whose music, he once claimed, spoke “the language of the flame itself”, after long years of “courting the fire”. Keith Jarrett’s 2016 return to the Austrian capital brought the flames …
The Sorrounding Green
Masterful trio interplay reliant on deeply honed three-way communication and a refined sense of understatement make Fred Hersch’s third recording for ECM an essential entry into the piano trio canon. Hersch tackles a handful of 20th century compositions – spanning from standards to less frequented jazz tunes – as well as three originals, with Drew Gress on bass and Joey Baron on drums – two longstanding companions of Fred’s who have played with him on and off since the late 80s and early 90s res…
Drifting
After Mette Henriette’s critically acclaimed, self-titled first recording comes Drifting – and album pervaded by trio conversations of idiosyncratic and original expression. With Johan Lindvall returning on piano, new addition Judith Hamann on cello and herself on saxophone, Mette’s chamber musical elaborations prove of a concentrated and exploratory quality, marked by subtle yet intense interaction. Motifs and recurring patterns crystallize and reveal a concise, intricate narrative. The saxopho…
Relations
Musical messages from Oslo, New York, Basel and Lugano – recorded between 2018 and 2022 – are juxtaposed and recombined on an absorbing recording that features Norwegian drummer Thomas Strønen solo and in a series of duets . With such partners as Craig Taborn, Chris Potter, Sinikka Langeland and Jorge Rossy, the musical frame of reference is very broad. Elements from Langeland’s’s archaic-sounding folk to Potter’s post-Coltrane saxophone and Taborn’s whirlwind modernist piano each find their p…
Arcanum
The Scandinavian project Arcanum brings together four artists all well-known to followers of directions in music at ECM: Arve Henriksen, Trygve Seim, Anders Jormin and Markku Ounaskari. They’ve played together in many permutations over the years, but this is their first album as a quartet. Compositions by Anders Jormin and Trygve Seim, the Finnish traditional “Armon Lapset” (Children of Mercy), and Jormin’s arrangement of Ornette Coleman’s “What Reason Could I Give” are slotted into a programm…
Cry! Tender
Although his main instruments were the tenor saxophone and the flute, Yusef Lateef was known for his innovative blending of jazz with Asian music. In addition to the oboe and bassoon (which are both unusual in jazz), he played various instruments. Lateef began recording as a leader in 1957 for Savoy Records, a non-exclusive association that continued until 1959. The earliest ofhis albums for the Prestige subsidiary New Jazz overlap his Savoy Recordings. Cry!-Tender was one of these early albums …
Holiday For Soul Dance
"Holiday For Soul Dance" by Sun Ra & His Arkestra, recorded in 1960, showcases soulful jazz standards reimagined with cosmic flair, revealing a rare, earthbound side of Sun Ra’s visionary artistry.
35th Reunion
2000 release (no OBI) ** "It may be unfair to compare this recording to the seminal album recorded on ESP almost 35 years earlier, but such comparisons are hard to resist. In truth, the group -- now with Amiri Baraka (formerly LeRoi Jones) assuming an expanded role and bassist Reggie Workman substituting for the late Lewis Worell -- sounds as fresh and, yes, revolutionary as it did back in the heyday of 1960s radicalism. To be sure, each member has changed, but the sounds here are surprisingly r…