Jazz & Improvisation / All styles

"Moonflower, by the legendary Finnish pianist Heikki Sarmanto and his quartet, is the first "new" album on Luke Mosling's Porter label; the other two projects that make up his opening salvo are reissues of private-press recordings done by Mait Edey's Seeds imprint in the early '70s. Sarmanto is best known to American audiences for his work with Sonny Rollins and Art Farmer. He's recorded 25 albums as a leader, including New Hope Jazz Mass for jazz ensemble, orchestra, soprano, and choir (conduct…

2008 release ** ""Nicola Cipani's "Ill-Tempered Piano" is a suprising and playful album of solo improvisations played on broken and untuned pianos. Cipani's accomplished melodic and rhythmic approach and his responsiveness to each instrument's raw potential set this project apart. The recordings were made over the span of two years in different New York City warehouses, on several keyboard instruments (among the pianos you hear also a clavichord), some of which are so damaged as to be hardly rec…

Live at BBC 1970 captures the raw energy and innovation of Nucleus in their formative year, presenting a selection of live sessions recorded for the BBC just as the group was redefining British jazz-rock. Founded by trumpeter Ian Carr, Nucleus emerged from London’s vibrant late-60s scene and quickly established themselves at the forefront of jazz fusion, inspired by the electric revolution of Miles Davis. This LP features standout performances of key tracks from their groundbreaking debut Elasti…

Soul Of Africa stands as a cornerstone of the Afro-Parisian jazz scene of the 1970s and 1980s, uniting the expressive tenor sax of Hal Singer with the adventurous piano and arrangements of Jef Gilson. Recently reissued by Endless Happiness on 180g vinyl, this sought-after album brings back a key document in the fusion of African rhythms and Parisian jazz innovation. Recorded in Paris, the album features a stellar lineup: Jacky Samson (bass), Bernard Lubat (vibraphone, piano), and the “Malagasy R…

*2025 much needed repress!!!* Black Truffle is pleased to announce For McCoy, a new work by Eiko Ishibashi dedicated to the widely loved character of Jack McCoy, portrayed by Sam Waterston in Law & Order. Following on from Hyakki Yagyō (BT064), For McCoy finds Ishibashi further exploring the unique space she has carved out in recent years, bringing together musique concrète techniques, ECM-inspired jazz, lush layers of synths and hints of pop into immersive and affecting structures crafted in he…

*2025 much needed repress!!!* Black Truffle is pleased to announce the re-release of Ichida, the first release from the duo of two important yet often underappreciated musicians, Eiko Ishibashi and Darin Gray. Ishibashi is a singer-songwriter, keyboardist, drummer, and multi-instrumentalist, known in Japan both for her own elaborately conceptual solo albums and for her frequent collaborations with figures such as Jim O’Rourke, Merzbow, and Phew. Darin Gray is a bassist and multi-instrumentalist …

"The band showed up, four folks from three different spots on the globe -- Chicago (Vandermark, Reid); Nickelsdorf, Austria (Gustafsson); Philadelphia (Taylor). They assembled their gear and sound-checked at the studio. There was a four-way freedom at play, structures but liberties and no need for elaborate explanation. Everyone spoke the same shorthand. Cues were understood; timings were implicit and considered; space was made for chances to be taken. In creative music, you sometimes need to re…

2001 release ** "Gravitar were an American band who appear to be influenced by K.K. Null’s work in Zeni Geva, with similar dense walls of oppresive guitar but more expansive in it's approach. Self-proclaimed as the "world's loudest Jazz band" and described by WM. Rage as "Too noise for rock, too rock for noise...". Extreme music inspired by everything from Charlie Parker to John Zorn to the sound of breaking glass. Heavy and harsh walls of psychedelic noise!!!"

2004 release ** "Hemophiliac is an experimental musical act. This group is billed as improvisational music from the outer reaches of madness. Mike Patton does voice effects along with John Zorn on saxophone and Ikue Mori on laptop electronics. Volume 6 of John Zorn's 50th birthday party series of concert CD's (ten volumes in total) is the first fully commercially available showcase for the trio's mad improv collision."

1998 release **  "This big band, led by T.S. Heg (alto sax & keyboards) is nominally a 'jazz outfit', but since in addition to lots of reeds, brass, bass and drums, they work with guitars, synths, sampling, etc., it's a fairly safe bet that this isn't 'just' a jazz album. Mostly structured with some very crazed, free parts, I guess you could compare them to Doctor Nerve in that regard, even though they sound nothing like Nerve."

2002 release ** "Drummer Guillermo E. Brown burst onto the progressive jazz circuit via his performances and recordings with forward-thinking saxophonists David S. Ware and Rob Reddy amid various projects and sessions. His first solo release finds the artist carrying the torch for Thirsty Ear's somewhat futuristic "Blue Series." Brown, with assistance from multi-reedmen Daniel Carter and Andre Vidal, among others, delivers a decisively high-tech outing, awash with funk, trip-hop, and more. The d…

4CD Set "Originally released across two edited volumes by Shandar in 1971, the concerts are now being reissued by Strut in a stunning 4CD set, Limited Edition 4CD Set. Features a 36-page booklet featuring liner notes by by Daniel Caux, Jacqueline Caux and Paul Griffiths and stunning restored photos of the festival by Philippe Gras. Sun Ra’s Nuits de la Fondation Maeght recordings are legendary within his extensive canon. Across two nights in August 1970, these were the first concerts Ra and the …

2007 release ** "Improvisations between jazz, minimalism, cosmic influences and acid rock; few are the possible comparisons, above all probably Sunburned Hand Of The Man. The music creates a decidedly hypnotic but also tribal effect, all immersed in a spatial atmosphere in which dilated and rarefied sounds are lost around percussions that oscillate between hypnosis and obsession."

Recorded on March 14th, 2024 by Mikko Innanen in Hietsun Paviljonki, Helsinki Maria Faust- alto saxophone Mikko Innanen - alto, sopranino and baritone saxophones Fredrik Ljungkvist - soprano and tenor saxophones Liudas Mockūnas - sopranino, soprano and bass saxophones

2010 release ** "The duo's music is rarefied, in the sense that it's highly personal and hardly rife with echoes of the familiar. Such is the other worldly aspect of "First Marriage" that it's barely possible to tell which instrument is responsible for what. This has the effect not merely of confounding expectations but also of establishing the territory in which both players are naturally at home. Their dialog, as is so often the case in this highly specialized form of improvisation, is as purg…

2010 release ** "over 2 years in the making, to much togethers is the follow up album to ashley paul’s 2008 ‘d.o.l’ release. patiently crafted and paced to much togethers continues on ashley’s unique path of ‘song’ style. combining clattering strings, (her custom green-box string set up), psycho acoustic sustain and decay, bowed metal, expressive saxophone, subtle and ear grabbing sense of color and distant voice all slowly creating mood and thought provoking miniatures, that succeed in fitting …

2009 release ** "Ruby Ruby Ruby are more or less a vehicle for experimental German singer Margareth Kammerer. She has been involved in The Magic ID, a song-based project with Berlin improviser Christof Kurzmann, and also formed Ruby Ruby Ruby to pay homage to Billie Holiday and other jazz singers.  This appears to have been a one-off project, there being no indication that the group (consisting of Derek Shirley and Steve Heather alongside Kammerer) has done anything else or is planning to work t…

2025 stock New music from Paul Flaherty, with Sam Gas Can and White Limo. Pressing of 500 copies, cover art by Joshua Burkett. Like all of the greatest live "festival" records -- Woodstock II (Cotillion '71), Mar y Sol (Atco '72) & 1968 Memphis Country Blues Festival (Blue Horizon '69) -- Mystery Triangle is an especially exceptional souvenir for those people who were there when it happened. But unlike dud compilations, Mystery Triangle provides a truly fine sonic gush for even those of us who w…

2025 stock Originally released in 2019. "A classic big-band album and one of the first-ever releases on the Impulse! Label, this 1961 recording features a superb line-up including Jimmy Knepper on trombone, Ron Carter, on bass and a fiery Elvin Jones on drums."

In July 1983, the Hebrew Israelite vocalist, songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Margeeah Aharon recorded her debut album Looking For Love with the Kingdom Sounds community band at P.C. Studios in Tel Aviv, Israel. Fittingly - given the meaning of her Hebrew name, soothing, calm and tranquil - it’s a questing melange of devotional jazz, soul, funk and reggae. More than just that, Looking For Love is an album full of yearning and reflective songs of spirit, heart and inner solace. Thirty-six yea…

Søren Skov Orbit's debut album, "Adrift," is at once subtle and profound. The Danish saxophonist and his collaborators have created something quite special and consistently deep. This record may not easily be classifiable, but the most interesting music creeps between the lines. Tenor and soprano saxophonist Søren Skov (Debre Damo Dining Orchestra) and keyboardist Peder Vind co-founded the trippy quintet Søren Skov Orbit in 2016 to explore “more jazzy ideas,” as the saxophonist puts it. Joined b…

2009 release ** "You like free jazz raw and hard and real and authentic? Well then here's a treat for you: Daniel Carter meets Randall Colbourne meets Paul Flaherty in a free-for-all blowing session."

Stardust is a rare live recording that reunites three pioneers from the dawn of Japanese jazz: Masayuki Takayanagi (guitar), Ryozo Sugiura (vibraphone), and Hideto Kanai (bass), captured at Yokohama’s Stork Piano Lounge in December 1979. Unlike the intense, driven performances Takayanagi was known for in his “New Direction” and “Second Concept” projects, this session offers a relaxed, intimate atmosphere-full of warmth, camaraderie, and spontaneous musical dialogue. Listeners can even catch the …

A vital document of late-period Japanese jazz innovation, Holy Holy captures Masayuki Takayanagi in a moment of creative transition. Recorded live on December 8, 1985, at Aketa no Mise, this session features Takayanagi’s razor-sharp guitar in dialogue with two double basses: Nobuyoshi Ino and Toru Saitoh. The result is a soundscape of overwhelming depth and intensity, where the deep, undulating resonance of the twin basses intertwines with Takayanagi’s incisive lines. On Holy Holy, the trio reim…

2025 stock  A cinderblock-sculpting freakout session from Don Dietrich (Borbetomagus/The New Monuments) and Ben Hall (The New Monuments). Highly-touted by Aaron Dilloway, deep sea creatures, and your local tire dealership.

2009 release (VERY RARE) ** "Drummer Tyshawn Sorey is a very interesting young player. In only a few years, he's made a substantial impact on the East Coast scene, playing with saxophonists Anthony Braxton, Steve Coleman, and Steve Lehman, trumpeters Wadada Leo Smith and Dave Douglas, pianist Vijay Iyer, and many others. As that list of collaborators and employers should imply, Sorey is a cerebral and introspective player whose work frequently eschews traditional swing for a more fractured, impr…

*100 copies limited edition* The sixth issue in the U Jazz Me catalog is an album by the jazz super group Late Night Poems, which has already appeared on wax with the U Know Me Records logo in 2022. Imagine a jazz club straight out of New York in the 1990s. Imagine a jazz club in one of Poland's medium-sized working-class cities, which has been operating continuously for 45 years, driven and run by one tireless man. The greatest from the country and the world have played there. They stare at you…

Elisabeth Flunger - bass drum Dominic Lash - double bass Kathryn Williams - bass flute "Recording the Dissenting Voices confirmed the extent of their divergence from The Future That Never Was. Music always has something to do with the sonic architecture of instruments, but it is also about the fantasy with which musicians like Dominic, Elisabeth and Kathryn choose to play." - Christopher Fox

Though they may not have recorded together until 1953, when Rollins was 23 years old, Sonny was introduced to Monk while a senior in high school, already part of a cadre of young neighborhood jazz neophytes. Monk became a mentor to them, offering home-based instruction on the new possibilities restructuring bop harmonies and rhythms, or as Rollins later put it, “the geometry of musical time and space.” - Art Lange

A cornerstone of avant-garde jazz, B-X0 NO-47A captures Anthony Braxton at a pivotal moment in his career and in the history of the Association For The Advancement Of Creative Musicians (AACM). Recorded in Paris in 1969 and newly restored from the original master tapes, this classic session finds Braxton leading a quartet of fellow AACM visionaries: trumpeter Leo Smith (before adopting the name Wadada), violinist Leroy Jenkins, and drummer Steve McCall. The group’s instrumentation is strikingly …

Tip on sleeves with matte varnish finish. Branches captures the electrifying first meeting of two uncompromising improvisers: Evan Parker, the legendary UK saxophonist and pioneer of multiphonic, trance-state improvisation, and Bill Nace, the American experimentalist known for his radical guitar and taishōgoto explorations. Recorded live at London’s Café OTO on May 25, 2024, this set documents the instant chemistry between two artists who had never played-or even met-before that night. Nace, clo…

This vinyl album by Micheal Mantler is new old stock from Ecm archives. Original first pressing – printed in the USA in 1977. The record has never been played and the vinyl is in mint condition. However, the sleeves are sealed but may have slight marks and ringwear on the cover and signs of aging.  In 1977, Michael Mantler and Carla Bley's WATT label unleashed a quietly revolutionary take on Silence that still resonates today. This wasn't just a reissue - it was a complete reinvention, stitched …

This vinyl album by Micheal Mantler is new old stock from Ecm archives. For light relief from his darker, more existential works, Michael Mantler assembled two fine ensembles at the end of the 1970s to play music that might be described as the Thinking Man’s Answer to Fusion. Imagine walking into an art house cinema where the projector runs without film - the stories unfolding purely through Michael Mantler's haunting trumpet and the alchemy of his stellar ensemble. That's the experience of Movi…

Keith Jarrett and conductor-pianist Dennis Russell Davies have been friends and musicalcomrades for forty years. In the mid-70s the St Paul Chamber Orchestra, under Davies’ directionpresented Jarrett’s chamber music. In the 90s Jarrett recorded the Mozart piano concertos with Davies and the Stuttgarter Kammerorchester. Near the beginning of their association, Jarrett invited Davies to play a composition he had written for solo piano. To listen to Ritual is akin toexperiencing the core of a Jarre…

2025 stock Crystal Silence A cornerstone of ECM’s legendary catalog, Passengers unites vibraphonist Gary Burton with an all-star ensemble: guitarist Pat Metheny, bassist Eberhard Weber, electric bassist Steve Swallow, and drummer Dan Gottlieb. Recorded in January 1976, this album captures a moment of creative synergy and forward-thinking jazz, blending lyricism, subtle groove, and the unmistakable ECM sonic clarity. The repertoire features original compositions from Metheny, Swallow, and Weber, …

The repertoire features original compositions and Norwegian folk themes, balancing lyrical melodies with subtle harmonic exploration. Pieces such as “The Circle” and “Stream” highlight Gustavsen’s ability to let themes emerge organically, favoring patient development and deep listening over overt virtuosityWith Opening, Tord Gustavsen returns to the classic piano trio format that has defined his ECM legacy, unveiling a fresh perspective on his distinctive blend of Scandinavian folk hymns, gospel…

On his second release for ECM New York-based saxophonist Oded Tzur introduces a heightened sense of urgency and a conceptually augmented approach to his distinctive voice, weaving one underlying musical idea through a series of elaborate and impassioned designs. The quartet’s lineup is unchanged from 2020’s Here Be Dragons and the group’s interplay has grown even more expressive in the meantime. Throughout Isabela the saxophonist and his collaborators – pianist Nitai Hershkovits, Petros Klampani…

On Once Around The Room ECM recording artists and key jazz musicians from several generations unite in a small ensemble to celebrate the musical legacy of drum icon Paul Motian in a big way. Joe Lovano and Jakob Bro lead a party of seven through fiery originals that recall the idioms and idiosyncrasies which Motian brought to light over six influential decades behind the drums. Lovano and Motian had been intimate colleagues for many years with their most notable collaboration being the groundbre…

Wolfgang Muthspiel and his trio with Scott Colley on bass and Brian Blade on drums reaches a new creative peak on Dance of the Elders – the group’s follow-up up to the much lauded Angular Blues, which The Times called a “quietly impressive album”. Here Wolfgang’s successful stride continues, with his unique compositional signature on the one hand and the particularly vibrant interchanges with his trio colleagues on the other. The guitarist’s writing and approach to jazz is heavily folk-induced b…

On Lontano, Anja Lechner (cello) and François Couturier (piano) expand the expressive horizons of the duo format, weaving a tapestry of original compositions, improvisations, and deeply personal interpretations. Recorded at Sendesaal Bremen and produced by Manfred Eicher, the album draws inspiration from a remarkable array of sources-echoes of Bach, the folk laments of Argentina, the lyricism of Henri Dutilleux, the cinematic touch of Anouar Brahem, and the haunting minimalism of Giya Kancheli. …