Jazz /
Four String Quartets
Alvin Singleton’s (b. 1940) approach to music-making has all along been involved in an interplay with listeners and their psychology. While this does not mean he has been centered on simply pleasing his audiences, his work seems to constantly draw his audience into confronting challenges of listening, and they tend to end up pleased. Therefore, with so many of his pieces, they might be extremely complex and masterfully crafted, but seldom do you feel he presents the listener with something they …
Orbital
The Outskirts came together as a working band during bassist Ingebrigt Håker Flaten’s three-year stint as a Chicagoan from 2005-2008. They played regularly at all of the working venues for improvised music in Chicago at that time, including The Hungry Brain, The Velvet Lounge, The Hideout, and Elastic. They even made a live recording in April 2009 that they were eager to release. But unfortunately, the multi-track audio files were lost in a hard drive mishap, leaving only a barely usable rough m…
Thi Nam
Originally released in 1981, Mr. Circle’s Thi Nam should really have been recognised decades ago as a jazz dance classic. A beautiful example of European jazz fusion at its most sophisticated and optimistic, the album is immersed in the sonics and rhythms of pan-Latin fusion and Brazilian samba, but with one foot in the upful jazz fusion exemplified by Roy Ayers or the Mighty Ryeders. Remastered from the original tapes at Abbey Road, Outernational Sounds is proud to present a true lost gem of Eu…
Reference: Albert Ayler Spirits & Spirits Rejoice
The album "Spirits," released by a debut label based in Copenhagen, marked the first opportunity for Ayler to record his "free music" in February 1964 in New York. The musicians selected by him included notable figures such as Cecil Taylor (with drummer Sunny Murray), members from Sonny Rollins' band (bassist Henry Grimes), and musicians from his Cleveland period (trumpeter Norman Howard, bassist Earl Henderson). This work also represents his first focus on his own compositions, which includes H…
Concert A Prades Le Lez Vol 1 & 2
On Concert A Prades Le Lez, Intercommunal Free Dance Music Orchestra turns Tusques’ radical internationalism into exuberant sound: a border‑smashing live suite where New Orleans, Brittany and North Africa collide in dance‑charged, militant joy.
Concert A Prades Le Lez Vol.2
On Concert A Prades Le Lez, Intercommunal Free Dance Music Orchestra turns Tusques’ radical internationalism into exuberant sound: a border‑smashing live suite where New Orleans, Brittany and North Africa collide in dance‑charged, militant joy.
Concert A Prades Le Lez Vol.1
On Concert A Prades Le Lez, Intercommunal Free Dance Music Orchestra turns Tusques’ radical internationalism into exuberant sound: a border‑smashing live suite where New Orleans, Brittany and North Africa collide in dance‑charged, militant joy.
Awofofora
On Awofofora, Marion Brown folds funk, reggae and Afro‑Caribbean rhythm into his mature structural language, using grooves not as decoration but as architecture for golden‑toned alto lines and quietly radical collective improvisation.
Looking for Consonance
"The title Looking for Consonance popped into my head one day as I began thinking about a name for this collection of music. This title immediately felt important, so I kept sitting with it. I thought I knew what consonance meant in music, but I also knew it carried other meanings—ones that extend well beyond sound. Webster’s Dictionary defines consonance as “the harmony or agreement of sounds produced simultaneously, resulting in a pleasing and stable auditory experience.” The word that stands …
The Debt
Frank London, a major voice in today’s Jewish music renaissance, who has worked with the likes of LLCooI J, LaMonte Young, Jane Siberry and Gal Costa, is a trumpetist, composer, arranger and musical scholar of startling range and creativity. The Debt is the first collection of his work for film and theater, and contains a wide variety of his musical obsessions: Latin grooves, Mingus-style jazz arrangements, classical chamber compositions, moody sound pieces, funky bachelor pad music and a gorgeo…
Simulacra
A rhythm-driven, analog-leaning record built from hypnotic basslines, warm synth textures, and layered percussion, "Simulacra" is the debut LP from Venetian bassist and producer Eric Demuro, a fully realized studio statement that brings his compositional voice into focus. The album moves through hazy jazz-funk, ambient passages, library psychedelia, and Brazilian rhythmic language without settling into revivalism. Fender Rhodes figures, hand percussion, and vintage keyboards drift through spacio…
1970s Jazz Fusion (Book)
In 1970s Jazz Fusion, critic Matthew Reed Baker reassesses a once‑derided hybrid, showing how the electric experiments of Davis, Hancock, Corea, Mahavishnu and others reshaped jazz, rock, soul and hip‑hop from the 1970s to today.
Wigmore Hall 1968
*Edition of 300 copies. High thickness cardboard with opaque laminated cover. Comes with a printed insert.* John Tchicai (1936-2012) was one of the most visionary free jazz saxophonists of the 20th century - a rare artist whose voice stood apart even among giants. Born in Copenhagen to a Danish mother and a Congolese father, his path to New York came through a chance encounter at a socialist youth festival in Helsinki, where Bill Dixon and Archie Shepp heard him play and urged him to make the mo…
The Straight Horn Of Steve Lacy
Originally released in 1962 on Candid Records, The Straight Horn of Steve Lacy finds a young Steve Lacy stepping forward with quiet confidence and a sound unlike anyone else at the time. Stripped of excess and focused on tone, space, and intent, these sessions reveal a musician already thinking beyond convention. The soprano sax cuts clean and direct, moving between sharp angles and lyrical calm, with a small group that listens as closely as it plays. Nothing here feels rushed or ornamental, jus…
The Best Of John Coltrane
The year 2026 marks the hundredth birthday of John Coltrane, whose groundbreaking artistry as a saxophonist, composer, and bandleader made him one of the most influential musical figures of the 20th century. To honor his immeasurable impact, Craft Recordings looks back on Coltrane’s early years as a bandleader with a carefully curated collection of original compositions and standards. Produced with the full support of the John Coltrane Estate, The Best of John Coltrane draws from the saxophonist…
Future Present Past
Future Present Past is the second Impulse! Records album by the free jazz collective Irreversible Entanglements. The album was largely recorded at the historic Van Gelder Studio and showcases how the quintet fuses atmospheric jazz, world music traditions, and spoken word with the story of our collective existence: a future full of possibilities, a present with all its uncertainties, and a past as a source of ancestral wisdom.
Irreversible Entanglements, formed in Brooklyn in 2015, consists of p…
Flirty Ghost
Flirty Ghost is an evocative LP by Rachel Kitchlew, a jazz and contemporary harpist known for pushing the boundaries of her instrument. A blend of jazz, ambient, and experimental sounds, the album was crafted in a spontaneous, deeply personal atmosphere, recorded late at night in the cozy, smoky setting of SFJ headquarters.
Inspired by everything from Henry Mancini to Dorothy Ashby, this LP captures an eerie, playful essence, like a ‘flirty ghost’, while celebrating exploration and self-expressi…
Grzyby
On Grzyby, Błoto complete their mycelium cycle with a compact blast of medicinal‑and‑toxic club jazz: five mushroom‑named cuts of broken beats, sub‑heavy low end and live improvisation that argue for dialogue and interdependence in a world addicted to walls.
Dybbuk Tse!
On Dybbuk Tse!, Yoni Mayraz turns Jewish possession lore into a groove‑driven exorcism: live‑wire jazz, 90s NYC hip‑hop grit and Middle Eastern modes colliding in a story where a wandering spirit is forced out beat by beat.
Scenery
On Scenery, Ryo Fukui turns a late‑start passion into a quietly astonishing debut: airy, confident trio swing and luminous ballads that distil a distinctly Hokkaido sense of space, light and seasonal melancholy into six perfectly breathing performances.