★Discus Music
Pianoply
This is my fourth solo piano release on this wonderful label. The studio’s Yamaha piano is an older darling, bless her, with an easy mechanism and unusual bright tone - lovely to play! It was also my first time recording at Sansom Studios in the West Midlands, some distance from Lancashire where we live. The album was recorded in a few hours and is in three sections. Two tea breaks divided the music in effect, no edits, completely improvised. I was curious about recording in a studio again, most…
Mast Year
The first song cycle collaboration by this new partnership is a highly adventurous and ambitious work, and one which explores a journey through dark places expressed in an improvisation-based language of strange sounds and textures, plus some unexpected left turns into electronic and choral music, before emerging from the woodland and into the morning light. I make a lot of records. In fact most years I release more albums than I make live performances. But this one is special to me in many ways…
Immersion
"This was a unique experience recording for me in a studio that I have had several fantastic experiences in over 20yrs. We have not performed, had not rehearsed and were formulating a sonic world in real time as the takes proceeded. Copious light came into the room and never left! I believe we have more than a book within each of us. Sometimes a day provides a sentence. An hour provides a paragraph. A week provides a comma, and a minute provides a whole page. As Wayne Shorter says ‘Our instrumen…
Live In Brighton
A wonder trio consisting of Charles Hayward, Guy Segers (Univers Zero) and Kawabata Makoto (Acid Mothers Temple), captured live. A special evening in which the three veterans met on stage, setting the atmosphere on fire with a unique concert, short-circuiting forty years of rock history from blues to noise via the most liquid and rarefied psychedelia.
Charles Hayward has always asserted a very personal idea of improvisation, in some ways equidistant from the abstractness of European free and the…
Shattered Stone
Frostlake, the atmospheric and visionary project of musician and composer Jan Todd, unveils her new album Shattered Stone through the renowned label Discus Music. Known for her haunting soundscapes and delicate layering of sonic textures, Frostlake continues to push the boundaries between ambient, folk, and experimental music with this latest body of work.
Shattered Stone is a deeply evocative album that reflects both fragility and resilience, weaving together shimmering electronic environment…
Move Fast And Mend Things
For their second album Hi Res Heart expand from being a trio to a performing quintet with the addition of the two string players. In contrast to the first album - a very carefully conceived studio construct - Move Fast And Mend Things finds the group in live performance mode, recorded the day after their first gig as a five piece. As before, spaciousness and fire co-exist. Even when the music is at its most abstract, the spirit of the blues is never too far away. The music is direct and melodic …
Now It Can Be Told
Fierce, complex and multi-layered progressive sounds from this significant drummer / composer.
Ecliptic
Shifa is a name taken from the Arabic word for healing, شفاء. The trio's members are three of the UK's most experienced and in-demand improvising musicians.
Cup & Ring
During a 50+ year career across the spectrum of music saxophonist Larry Stabbins has worked with most of the important figures at the cutting edge of European Jazz and Improvisation from Mike Westbrook to Keith Tippett and Tony Oxley and Germany’s Peter Brotzmann, as well as with Robert Wyatt and Jerry Dammers Spatial AKA. Alongside this he played in the seminal pop group Weekend and formed Working Week with guitarist Simon Booth, a project that took a melange of latin, soul and jazz into the wo…
Red Hot Ice
Dunmall continues his run of very special releases on Discus Music. Working with a nine piece group centered around his Birmingham based colleagues, and which includes double keys and electronics, Dunmall delivers a swirling mix of spacey big band music which breaks down into atmospheric and exciting open ended improvisations from time to time. Paul considers this to be a milestone release, and one which is unlike anything else in his extensive discography. Edited and produced with respect, love…
Recording Rites
“For me this music felt like coming home. Or perhaps I should say this feels where I should really be; proud to be associated with it.” - Sam Richards
Star Quality - Speculations for Guitar and Voice
Star Quality – Speculations for Guitar and Voice is a highly original album of experimental music that transcends the categories of free improvisation, jazz, electro-acoustic art, and the opera aria
Private View
A meticulously crafted set of songs, instrumentals and abstracts recorded over a couple of years by Orchestra Of The Upper Atmosphere’s principal composer / arranger / multi instrumentalists Archer and Todd.
Fanfares and Freedom
A live recording from a piece premiered at the 2023 Cheltenham Jazz Festival, and later recorded at The Vortex. Laura Jurd was commissioned to write this piece for scored ensemble plus improvising quartet, and the resulting piece balances the composed and improvised elements beautifully in the fast moving 45 minute work which is very much in the tradition of the best British jazz.
Laura writes - "I don’t think I’ll ever forget hearing Paul Dunmall play for the first time. Whilst aware of his gra…
Biyartabiyu
"Because I make records in a number of different styles, I often filter and change my saxophone playing to match the style of the record I’m making. But when I make a work like this, you hear my playing in my natural, unfiltered style, and that style is determined by the many AACM records which were most influential in forming my own playing. That’s especially true in this duo setting with Walt Shaw, where the music is stripped down to its essence of blues + abstraction. It’s really simple - I’m…
Harpsichords
Tip! "Three harpsichords in various states of disrepair were kindly offered to me by Leeds Conservatoire. I accepted, and a memorandum of understanding was swiftly drawn up. The offer was made under the condition that I might make some music from them, given my penchant for infirm instruments, and their conventional worthlessness to anyone wishing to use them for their intended purpose. There seemed to be an auspiciousness surrounding these harpsichords, the stories they might reveal, and more i…
Couple In Spirit
"During 2019 Keith, Julie and myself had discussed the idea of a new Couple In Spirit album for Discus Music. Rather than choosing one of the many possible live recordings of the duo, Keith and Julie were keen to make a new multi tracked studio recording, something they had not done for 30 years since their EG release. The studio was booked for spring 2020, and the project was opened for advance subscriptions. The New Year arrived, lockdown kicked in, Keith’s already fragile health deteriorat…
Meets Matthew Bourne Volume 1
On July 16 2021, Shiver (Guitarist Chris Sharkey, Bassist Andy Champion and Drummer Joost Hendrickx) met up with Pianist Matthew Bourne at his house in Airedale, Yorkshire. Hungry to make music following various lockdowns, cancellations and disappointments, the quartet embarked on a ferocious two-day journey of exploratory music-making. The weather was good, the connection was immediate. There was much laughing, tea-drinking and storytelling. In the evening, the stove was lit and we listened to …
ZZAJ: Jazz From the 23rd Century
*In process of stocking* ZZAJ: Jazz from the 23rd Century, is a thrilling new collection of music featuring 34 new songs – all previously unreleased – from artists from all over the world. The brainchild of producers/multi-instrumentalists Jerry King (Cloud Over Jupiter, Moon X, John Shirley & Jerry King) and Dave Newhouse (The Muffins, Manna Mirage, Moon X), ZZAJ asked musicians to interpret jazz from various conceptual viewpoints, particularly avoiding traditional jazz sounds. Says King, “It’s…
Green Money
Steve Day, poet, writer, percussionist has been around Discus Records for several years contributing sleeve notes for Keith Tippett recordings as well as reviews and other wordplay. Although he and comrades Peter Evans, Julian Dale, Mark Langford, have recorded for other labels, the Day Evans Dale Ensemble is a completely new venture with regular live dates in a range of venues. This seemed like an appropriate time to bring their 'new thing' to Discus Music; a mix of spoken word and spontaneous …