Jazz /
Breath Awareness
Derek Bailey - guitarSabu Toyozumi - drums
Recorded live on November 2nd, 1987 at IMAI-Tei, Fukuoka City, Japan by Hidenobu EharaConcert produced by Masahiro TomiokaMastered by Arūnas Zujus at MAMAstudiosDesign by Oskaras AnosovasPhoto by Yumi Mochizuki at Taruho Jazz, Yamato CityCover art by Sabu Toyozumi
Raging Bulgakov
Simon Nabatov has undertaken one of the most unusual projects in contemporary music, an intense scrutiny and setting to music of modernist Russian literature, much of it taken from the years of Stalinist censorship, repression and imprisonment. For 25 years, beginning with Josef Brodsky’s Nature Morte, he has set text in partially improvised settings, including excerpts from Isaac Babel’s grim Red Cavalry and poems by Daniil Kharms and the Gileya group. Along with that largely poetic enterprise,…
Six Hands Open As One
In 2019, a year before the onset of the pandemic and three years before the full-scale war in Ukraine broke out, we released Illuminated Silence. This was the first album of a new trio consisting of the young Japanese-born, Irish-based pianist and composer Izumi Kimura and the greats of the improvised music world Barry Guy and Gerry Hemingway. The album was very much liked by listeners and I heard from many of them the question whether there is a chance that this formation will survive, because …
The President
Kamil Piotrowicz - one of the brightest and most acclaimed for his creativity pianists on the artistic map of Poland, an artist associated with the new Scandinavian (Danish) improvised music scene accompanied by equally talented two musicians from Norway, trumpeter Erik Kimestad and drummer Simon Albertsen. The President is their first album recording. The material was created at DKDM studios in Copenhagen and mastered by another Polish artist highly regarded for his directorial efforts, Albert …
Escale
Xavier Camarasa - Fender Rhodes, Jean-Marc Foussat - Synthi AKS, voix jouets and Marc Maffiolo saxophone baryton
Sam Gendel & Shin Sasakubo
Also known as the leader of the jazz trio Inga, Sam Gendel is an L.A. saxophonist who has developed a free and unique sound that has been described as psychedelic, outsider, and meditative, and Shin Sasakubo is a Chichibu-based guitarist. A new album by the duo of Sam Gendel, an up-and-coming saxophonist from LA, and Shin Sasakubo, an uncanny guitarist based in Chichibu, who is also active as a photographer and contemporary artist. The two showed great chemistry in Shin Sasakubo's previous work …
From The Source
2024 stock. This performance is a second coming together of a rather unusual but wonderful pair; Dame Evelyn Glennie, a household name in percussion, and Szilárd Mezei, a prolific free improviser, multi-instrumentalist, and composer. In 2018, these two artists came together in the Core-tet Project, one of Dame Evelyn’s significant forays into free improvisation. Since then, she also worked with TRIO HLK, but this live performance with Mezei and his quartet is a much different kind of performing…
Ballads & Blues
Patryk Zakrocki - one of the most important improvisers, composers, and sound artists in Poland, and last time also guitarist as well as bassist Maciej Garbowski and drummer Krzysztof Gradziuk, known as the pillars of the best piano trio RGG on the Polish scene, are musicians representing completely different musical worlds. Their first studio meeting is an intimate oneiric improvisation framed by the conventions of ballad and blues. An astonishing encounter bringing music that is not made every…
Scratching Fork II
On a perfectly smooth surface of silence, three hurled stones create their patterns of waves. The lines intersect, unite, cancel out, or reinforce each other. Sometimes, they form together a harmonious pattern. At other times, they express the beauty of chaos and entropy. But they always remain in relation to each other - no movement goes unanswered. No energy escapes into nothingness. These three stones are Scratching Fork. Three musicians with different characters, histories, and registers. Ma…
A Vol D'Oiseau
"There are many illusive or ephemeral descriptions that are often part of how words seek to elucidate the listening experience. In the music we have on this recording from Florestan and the trio he has formed to venture his musical initiatives, words such as space, transparency, suspension, stasis, momentum, tension, multiplicity, flow, cohesion, dimension, release are some of the ingredients that come to mind to articulate the musical experience this recording offers. To me, Florestan’s musical…
Sleeping Beauty
Originally released on Saturn Records in 1979, both Sleeping Beauty and On Jupiter are studio recordings by the large Sun Ra ensemble (including electric guitar and electric bass) and, for the most part, feature the first recordings of the titles included on them (though most were played live a few months earlier). These two releases belong together, since they were recorded and released in close proximity and are both long, groove-based, pieces that range from proto-disco to relaxed groove-driv…
Ball of Eyes
Placebo's debut album "Ball of Eyes" is a remarkably focused Soul Jazz record, without the experimentation or Free Jazz moments which were still in vogue during the first half of the '70s. Excellent covers of Marvin Gaye's "Inner City Blues" and Sam & Dave's "You Got Me Hummin'" as well as his own compositions make "Ball of Eyes" a perfect example of the genius of Marc Moulin and his incredible band.
Spiritual Jazz 15: A Tribute to 'Trane
Gatefold sleeve. Includes download code. Many artists achieve greatness but very few produce work that is so moving it's considered sacred. Whether you choose to call them hymns, psalms or spirituals, their songs are a healing force for troubled times. Jazzman's Spiritual Jazz series would not exist without the inspiration and leadership of the spiritual messiah that is John Coltrane. It can therefore only be right and proper that a whole album is dedicated to his legacy and lasting influence. S…
Doppelgänger ga boku wo
LP ltd to 315 copies. An’archives is proud to present the latest album by Japanese free saxophonist and vocalist Harutaka Mochizuki, Doppelgänger ga boku wo. Since the early 2000s, Harutaka has quietly, yet steadily, released a string of solo and collaborative releases that have allowed multiple perspectives on one of the most singular voices in modern music. In collaboration, he seems to prefer the duo format, and digging through his discography, you’ll find releases where he pairs with Tomoyuk…
GNASH
"This overdue duo record by longtime colleagues Tashi Dorji (guitar) and Dave Rempis (saxophones) is a monument to the endless musical curiosity that links them. These two come at it from remarkably different backgrounds – Dorji combining his Bhutanese ethnicity with a love for metal, punk, American blues and folk, and anarchist political theory, with Rempis riding the outer edges of the jazz world throughout his career, while also inspired by his Greek ethnicity and a longstanding interest in f…
Eleven Tension
A sonic odyssey of extreme brilliance! Computer musician Tom Mudd and Hungarian percussionist/violist Áron Porteleki navigate the liminal space between the virtual and the corporeal with ferocious intelligence. Recorded live at NEXT Festival 2022 in Bratislava, this rambling and consistently surprising collaboration bridges divergent sonic landscapes with rare intensity.
Mudd's impossible virtual instruments - simulated guitar using the NESS physical modelling code - intertwine seamlessly with P…
Gateway
Joining their newly launched Luminessence audiophile vinyl-reissue series, the legendary imprint, ECM, digs deep into their own vaults and comes up with an absolute gem: the guitarist John Abercrombie, the bassist Dave Holland, and the drummer Jack DeJohnette’s groundbreaking 1975 LP “Gateway”. Rooted in approaches drawn from free jazz and unquestionably springing from both Holland and DeJohnette’s time working in Miles Davis’ electric fusion band at the end of the 1960s and early '70s, it’s a r…
Silent, Listening
Silent, Listening is a major addition to ECM’s distinguished line of solo piano recordings, featuring one of the outstanding improvising pianists and jazz masters of our time: Fred Hersch. The album features seven original creations and a handful of well-chosen standards, including Billy Strayhorn’s “Star-Crossed Lovers”, Sigmund Romberg’s “Softly, As In A Morning Sunrise”, Alec Wilder’s “Winter Of My Discontent” and Russ Freeman’s “The Wind”, all played with the focus, sensitivity and gracefuln…
458 R.T. / 60 Winslow
2024 stock. Valuable of 1975 reissue of Finnish Jazz. Day is Over, an album often credited to Esko Linnavalli Quintet but without any mention of performing group on the cover, was born during a series of Finnish Jazz Music Workshop events, led by Heikki Sarmanto and Esko Linnavalli, out which the New Music Orchestra UMO was born. A UMO-anticipating 14-headed workshop band gathered to rehearse at the rock club Tavastia in 1974. Out of that group emerged a quintet, who took a trip to Stockholm to …
Eye of the Universe
Eye of the Universe" is the latest offering from Finnish sax player and composer Markus Holkko. Grounded in his musical heritage, the album explores a range of influences, from straight to Latin and spiritual jazz, with subtle hints of west coast cool and psychedelia.