★A New Wave Of Jazz
Ballads From The Wrecked Ship
Ballads From The Wrecked Ship is a decidedly varied and rather wonderful improv release, which sits somewhere between sonic creativity and atmospheric moodiness. The seven-track album slides in at a concise and focused forty minutes, and I must say it certainly stand as one of more distinctive/ original improv release I have heard in some time. The album appears on the always worthy/ interesting New Wave Of Jazz- coming in the labels house style mini grey gatefold packaging, which as always fea…
Monólogos A Dois
**Limited edition of 100 copies** “I am not sure if with the double bass there are various types, like with the guitar, but none is mentioned on the cover or the fact if this is a mono recording. The latter probably not. It was recorded in the spacious surrounding of the old church in Oud-Charlois, which is a part of Rotterdam and home to a few great concerts, some of these involving the church organ housed there. Goncalo Almeida stuck to his bass. We know him for his one-off collaboration with …
Solo Acoustic Guitar Improvisations I
**Limited edition of 100 copies** “Following some forty CD releases on his imprint New Wave Of Jazz, Dirk Serries thinks the time is right to expand to the world of vinyl. Here he plays a 1957 Hoffner archtop guitar, and recorded with a single microphone, some 50 centimetres from the guitar and there has been no other audio processing. The liner notes, as always by Guy Peters, are on the front cover, and he uses the extra space the format allows him, to talk some more on the history of free jazz…
Imaginary Junction
Performed by Cath Roberts (bariton saxophone and objects), Dirk Serries (acoustic guitar), Martina Verhoeven (piano), Tom Ward (flute, clarinet and bass clarinet) on July 18th 2020. This music was recorded simultaneously in two locations - Brockley and Sint-Lenaarts - using the JackTrip software to transmit/receive the live sound via the internet. The musicians could hear each other at studio quality in near-realtime, despite the physical distance separating them.
Crosscurrents
* Edition of 300 * Performed by Patrick De Groote (trumpet, bugel), Cel Overberghe (alto sax), Dirk Serries (acoustic guitars), Martina Verhoeven (piano). Recorded, mixed and mastered at the Sunny Side Inc. Studio, Anderlecht (Belgium) on December 14th 2019.
New Inventions
* Edition of 300 * Performed by Colin Webster (alto saxophone), Andrew Lisle (drums) at Shrunken Heads Studio, London on 24th May 2019. Recorded and mixed by Senor Al Funklinos. Mastered at the Sunny Side Inc. Studio, Anderlecht (Belgium).
Light Industry
**300 copies** "Colin Webster and Dirk Serries are skilled improvisers you can’t pin down on a single outlet. They remain restless seekers, never content with merely repeating themselves, not even within the same project. Compare Gargoyles to Light Industry. They are totally different." - Guy Peters"Serries and Webster meet again at their favorite studio, Sunny Side in Anderlecht, Belgium, in September 2019 for an intimate duo where Serries plays only acoustic guitars. They already recorded a du…
Praxis
**300 copies** "It’s the classic 'the journey, not the destination' attitude. Dealing with the moment. Dirk Serries, Martina Verhoeven and Colin Webster have a refreshing take on that. They use instruments, but it feels as if they are playing with wood and metal. With breath and touch. They caress, pluck, sigh, thump, blow, push, creak, sputter. There is no obvious order to what they are doing, yet you are aware of a certain concord, an understanding below the surface of what’s there. The openne…
First and Second
**300 copies** "To fully grasp the range of extended techniques, you should be able to see them in action, but it is also perfectly possible to listen to this music and focus on elements such as flow, density and responsiveness." - Guy Peters"SETT is a an acoustic strings quartet, featuring British most prolific double bass player John Edwards, Dirk Serries and Daniel Thompson on acoustic guitars and violist Benedict Taylor, recorded at the Dave Hunt studio, London in November 2019. SETT does no…
Finch
**300 copies** "The British tradition of guitar improvisation includes some game changers like the Derek Bailey, but also John Russell, Keith Rowe and Fred Frith. Yet it doesn’t prevent Daniel Thompson from carving out his own little corner. Finch proves that even in the most demanding and intimidating of circumstances, Thompson has a sharp, creative mind. Surely, there will be more to follow. There should be." - Guy Peters"Daniel Thompson's Finch contains music recorded in a studio called the S…
An Evening at Jazzblazzt
**300 copies** "Another special such place, situated in Holland, but only a few hundred meters from the Belgian border, is JazzBlazzt. It is as homely as can get - basically a garage turned into a small concert venue - but at the same time a miraculous place, where many artists that have appeared on this label have performed." - Guy Peters"Dirk Serries, still on acoustic guitar, meets again violist Benedict Taylor, and pianist Martina Verhoeven (she plays only on the second set) in a live perfor…
Traces of Eternity: of What Is Yet To Be
**300 copies** "There have been quite a few releases of Antoine Beuger’s music over the past several years and it’s an odd, and very pleasurable thing to consider them en masse. On the one hand, his music is so diaphanous, so air-suffused that you’d think it might be difficult (not to mention unnecessary) to differentiate them mentally. On the other, they’re always very different. There’s that old AMM aphorism: “as alike or unalike as trees” that conveys something of my feelings about Beuger’s w…
Segment Tones
**300 copies** "Tonus is a group that always contains Dirk Serries and his wife Martina Verhoeven, but otherwise seems to be an open membership group. Today, on Segment Tones, it is a trio. Serries plays accordion and soprano melodica (the latter I would believe for the first time), Verhoven is on concertina and cello and Colin Webster on clarinet and alto saxophone. Whatever the line-up of Tonus might be, I do believe they play slow and quiet music; music that is not in any way, shape or form, …
Impetus
**300 copies** "Dirk Serries (acoustic guitars), Kris Vanderstraeten (percussion) and Martina Verhoeven (piano) – these are three featured figures of international avant-garde jazz scene. Musicians are playing and collaborating with dozens of other famous jazz masters. Their music is played with expression, drive, creativity and energy. All three musicians have their own style of improvising, sparkling virtuosity and the will to create new, exciting and modern sound. All their music is usually b…
Boskage
**300 copies** "The modus operandi of more than a few of the recent New Wave of Jazz releases is sparse free improvisation using extended techniques. These albums, often disjointed with abrupt transitions and long minimalistic passages, exhibit a surprisingly consistent approach despite their aleatoric nature – a commitment to the unpredictable. Enter acoustic guitarist Daniel Thompson and saxophonist Colin Webster, both experienced improvisers who team up on the three tracks of Boskage. This pa…
Close | Quarters
**300 copies** "Close | Quarters is a seven-track slice of often compacted and angular improv for viola and prepared chamber. The two players here are Benedict Taylor and Anton Mobin. Taylor is a British improviser / avant musician who has been active in the scene since the early 2000s releasing a good body of work, as well as becoming a respected name, and Frenchman Mobin has once again been active since the early 2000’s making a name for himself as both an improviser and sound artists.The albu…
Ear Duration
**300 copies** "Overall, especially on the over 35-minute Set 1, which perversely in placed last on the CD, the improvisations’ mooring is supplied by the brief, repetative but distinctive patterning of Belgian pianist Martina Verhoeven. Much like John Tilbury’s program with AMM, these continuous motifs are the reassuring signposts for the puffs, scratches, strums and plops contributed by Britons, flutist / alto saxophonist Colin Webster, violist Benedict Taylor and Graham Dunning using a snare …
Puncture Cycle
**300 copies** "Spreading their intuitive playing over nine, randomly sequenced improvisation titled with numbers, Benedict Taylor and Dirk Serries many variations on fiddle string twists and slurred guitar fingering produce tunes that are manually constructed, deconstructed and put back together again. Tracks often posit and resolve singular experiments. For instance, the hard dry swagger of IV opens up into a tremolo and spiccato bowed narrative. Swift, repetative slithers from Taylor enliven …
Cagean Morphology
**300 copies, 2019 stock** "The Serries-Verhoeven acoustic, chamber duo – Serries on the acoustic guitar and Verhoeven on the piano – is actually the last one to be recorded in the Tonus series but the duo distills the very essence of the series serves as a fitting introduction to this series. Cagean Morphology was recorded, mixed and mastered at the Sunny Side Studio at Anderlecht, Belgium on March 10th 2018. The minimalist layout of the Tonus series, was designed by Rutger Zuydervelt, aka Mach…
Texture Point
**300 copies, 2019 stock** "Minimal art is often presented as an act of simplification, a field in which nothing much happens and lesser (or even lazy) artists can have a field day. However, it is both in the visual arts and in music, perhaps one of the most misunderstood movements. Minimal artists not only sought out a certain core essence, but leading artists and theorists, such as Donald Judd, also offered a reaction against the extravagant focus on the subjective by the abstract expressionis…