Jazz /
My Present Song
Dive into the brilliance of 1970s Japanese jazz with this exceptional bass-led trio session. While piano trios had their spotlight, the bassists led equally enchanting ensembles. Eiji Nakyama's bass takes center stage, weaving lyrical lines complemented by energetic guitar and drums. The album seamlessly blends straight jazz and modal explorations, showcasing creativity without gimmicks. A testament to Japanese jazz greatness, this session stands out for its dynamic and innovative approach.
Busy Butterflies
*2023 stock* "To watch two butterflies in flight is to see a complex intertwining of zigs and zags, dips and weaves, as each—seemingly erratically--rides the turbulence its wings create to carry it along. Together they trace an unchoreographed but nevertheless coherent set of variations on the line as they move with, against and through each other’s paths.
The intricate pattern of two butterflies’ interwoven flight paths stands as a fitting analogue for the nuanced complexity of Busy Butterflie…
Transient
"Second album for Clairvoyance, a trio that sublimates improvisation through a blessed chemistry, delivering a perfectly balanced music where elements coming from different derivations and attitudes find grace and essentiality, freshness and solidity. Narrative spots and timbral consciousness inform this classy band and make this record unmissable!!
Clairvoyance's fundamental orientation--an orientation that, collectively and individually, represents a compositional stance toward improvisation. …
Wells
"Amirani Records, the label founded and run by Milanese soprano saxophonist Gianni Mimmo, ends its eighteen-year run with three final releases. The last of the three, a recording of the Sestetto Internazionale, was reviewed here earlier; preceding it a duet for Mimmo and Finnish soprano and sopranino saxophonist Harri Sjöström, and a solo recording by Milanese cellist Walter Prati.
Mimmo and Sjöström are frequent collaborators, whether in the Sestetto Internazionale or as duet partners, and on W…
Due Mutabili
[…] There is something slightly daunting about the notion of an improvising sextet. Do the casual math of instrumental permutations from six soloists to one sextet, adding in duos, trios, quartets and quintets, and you have something like 55 possible combinations. Literally anything might surface, but among the least likely is the superb music achieved here by Sestetto Internazionale, music that dances between the ideal poles of inevitability and unpredictability, inviting a sense of wonder. Lis…
Cadenza Del Crepuscolo
"The meaning of "cadenza del crepuscolo" ("dusk cadenza") can be interpreted in a variety of ways. The most profound is the one corresponding with the implicitly slow flux of thoughts and reflections that emerge as we sense the day fading away, possibly in a moment of somewhat regretful oscillation between an unknown tomorrow, what we have already experienced and now miss, and the unexpressed potential of what we long for, but have not yet achieved (and perhaps never will).
The sympathetic music…
Mass Hysterism In Another Situation
Huge Tip! *Remastered and cut to double 45RPM 12” vinyl. Housed in a heavy tip-on gatefold jacket with Pantone spot colors, spot ink pigment foil on gloss film laminate finish and printed inner sleeves. Pressed to high quality vinyl at RTI.* “Without producing a single phrase, the two distorted guitars became simple “electric sound” generators, and like fish swimming freely in water, they each tear through time in their own fashion. And yet there is a remarkable sense of unity to how they fill t…
Lados B
On October 15th and 16th, 2020, drummer Daniel Villarreal was joined by guitarist Jeff Parker and bassist Anna Butterss for two afternoons of recording in the backyard of Chicali Outpost in Los Angeles. For all three musicians, it was the first ensemble recording session they’d done in-person since the pandemic locked the world down just seven months prior. Some choice moments from these sessions made it onto Villarreal’s critically-acclaimed 2022 album Panamá 77, but most of the music remained …
Resavoir
"Resavoir - the collaborative project led by Chicago producer/composer Will Miller - presents their second self-titled album. The new 'Resavoir' is a subtly radiant symphony interweaving modern-day soul-jazz with bedroom beats, synth serenades and twilight sonatas. It represents Miller’s most assured and refined work to date. Imagined, instigated and produced by Miller, who ties the diverse sounds into an expansive, coherent whole, 'Resavoir' features a wide and vibrant cast of collaborators, in…
Moon
Tip! Bocian Records presents Moon by saxophonist/clarinetist Frank Gratkowski and pianist Reinhold Friedl. Recorded and mixed by Nik Hummer. Mastered by Rashad Becker.
Psychicemotus
Psychicemotus was released in 1965 and features Yusef Lateef on various flutes and tenor saxophone, Georges Arvanitas on piano, bassist Reggie Workman, and drummer James Black. And while the Coltrane era of modal and free jazz was in full swing, Lateef always followed his own muse, and continued looking forward while looking back to ancient musics. His use of bamboo and Chinese wood flutes on the title track and "Bamboo Flute Blues" added not only dimension and texture, but rhythmic invention to…
Trio
Jesper Nordberg Trio is a group based in Copenhagen (DK) and Malmö (SE), featuring the double bass player Jesper Nordberg, violinist Stefan Pöntinen and trumpetist Ruhi Erdogan. With Nordberg's compositions as a starting point, the trio's playing can be characterized by close interplay, radical shifts, and having elements ranging from experimental improvisation, Balkan music, Scandinavian folklore, jazz and expressionism. Jesper Nordberg's warm tone and rhythmic displacements meet Ruhi's trumpet…
The Cod And The Cat
*2023 stock. 50 copies limited edition* After his oneiric, Casio-centric 'Nullpluss' that Kristian Tangvik released two years ago, the time has come for his next move. In Kristian's own words: "The Cod and the Cat has developed over the course of two years. It came to me in a dream. Some compositions arrived while traveling, others in a complete standstill. And so I have gathered a fresh combination of exceptional performers from the rich and exciting underground of Copenhagen's music scene, and…
Circular Temple
"On a good day it is strenuous to stay current with pianist Matthew Shipp's imposing and voluminous output. On an even better day it is a fool's hardy errand to say the least. Now with the planned re-issuing of some of his great early deconstructions of musical thought and theory, starting here with 1990's daringly incongruous yet hypnotically accessible, Circular Temple, keeping up just got a whole lot harder. With William Parker on bass and Whit Dickey on drums, this four-movement suite for pi…
Crescent
*2023 stock* "John Coltrane's Crescent from the spring of 1964 is an epic album, showing his meditative side that would serve as a perfect prelude to his immortal work A Love Supreme. His finest quartet with McCoy Tyner, Jimmy Garrison, and Elvin Jones supports the somewhat softer side of Coltrane, and while not completely in ballad style, the focus and accessible tone of this recording work wonders for anyone willing to sit back and let this music enrich and wash over you.
While not quite at th…
Sacred Gong Dive
*2023 stock* "Gongs have been part of my life since 1970, when as Jazz Swiss School student in Bern (Switzerland), I had the lucky opportunity to visit the Paiste, Cymbal and Gongs factory. I was immediately fascinated by the sonic world of the gong and related metal percussion and I started dreaming a future that could possibly include those marvelous instruments. Few years later, while in New York on my first US trip, I found few Albums of Balinese Music in a small record store in the Greenwic…
L.A. Strictly Confidential
*2023 stock* "The West Coast Chamber Jazz Trio, recently formed, remains faithful to its name, in the sense that the undoubted chamber size and the jazz component, apparent in rhythmic melodic lines and improvisation always kept under control, are beautifully conjugated in the narrative modes, colloquialisms and relaxed of the Californian jazz, not only from the fifties and sixties, but also that one of the most recent landings …" - Libero Farnè
Ictus Nights @The Stone - Anthology Volume 2
*2023 stock* "Celebrating a label's 35th anniversary at a venue as iconic as The Stone in New York City is already quite revealing of the nature of the music to be heard, i.e. definitely unusual and daring, definitely with no piano bar and no noisy cash register... But with the present celebration, there was an added element of surprise, as Andrea Centazzo — founder of the creative Ictus label and curator of the 12 nights Festival (April 1-14, 2012) -- brought for the first time ever to the hear…
Ictus Nights @The Stone - Anthology Volume 1
*2023 stock* "Celebrating a label's 35th anniversary at a venue as iconic as The Stone in New York City is already quite revealing of the nature of the music to be heard, i.e. definitely unusual and daring, definitely with no piano bar and no noisy cash register... But with the present celebration, there was an added element of surprise, as Andrea Centazzo — founder of the creative Ictus label and curator of the 12 nights Festival (April 1-14, 2012) -- brought for the first time ever to the hear…
Live In Europe 1970-1971
*2023 repress* There can be little more exciting or rewarding than listening to a band playing live and firing on all cylinders at the absolute peak of its powers, and the live performances presented here by Nucleus are no exception. They capture the group in arguably its finest incarnation right at the start of its long career, exhibiting a staggeringly high level of musical discipline matched by an equally impressive ability to improvise and solo.
Nucleus began its long jazz-rock journey in 19…