★Esp-Disk
Free Music One And Two
One of the most uncompromising free jazz records ever made, this one-off improvisation by a group of Dutch players, led by percussionist Pierre Courbois, is an archetype of the style
Percussion Ensemble
* 2021 Stock ** Percussionist Milford Graves recorded his first and only ESP-Disk' recording on August 5th, 1966 along with fellow percussionist, the late Sonny Morgan. According to Milford Graves, the titles were given numbers according to how many beats were in each measure. Milford Graves has been one of the main drummers in the free mode scene (known for skillful inclusion of Asian and African rhythmic ingredients into his solos). He worked with the New York Art Quartet, Giuseppi Logan, Albe…
And Company
** 2021 Stock ** The Alabama born saxophonist/clarinetist Marzette Watts had a short lived career as a member of the sixties avant-garde, but achieved legendary status for the company he kept in his Cooper Square loft where the likes of Ornette Coleman, Cecil Taylor, Don Cherry, Archie Shepp, and Pharoah Sanders often congregated. This debut date is best known for the presence of players, who like Watts, were to become renowned for the rareness of their recorded output, including Sonny Sharrock,…
The Forest and the Zoo
** 2021 Stock ** "In 1966, the late Steve Lacy visited the new ESP-DISK office at 156 Fifth Avenue with a master tape of his concert in Buenos Aires with his quartet... He offered to sell the master for what I thought was an exorbitant price. I bought it. ... In 1992, the master tape was brought to engineer Ken Robertson at the Sony Studio, who observed that it had been recorded out of phase, and he corrected the phasing." - Bernard Stollman
"Soprano saxophonist Steve Lacy's impressive career wa…
On Tour
** 2021 Stock ** First-ever American CD edition of this lost classic, recorded "live" during ESP's 1966 New York State College Tour. The "piano harp" credit is Burton Greene's way of noting that he plays inside the piano, directly on the strings – the first jazz pianist to do so on record, taking a page from avant-gardist Henry Cowell's book. In his notes to the original LP, included complete in this reissue, Greene writes, "The tour found people largely unexposed to this music. They were often …
Trio
Lowell Davidson recorded this singular session on July 27th, 1965 with Gary Peacock and the ever amazing Milford Graves. Sadly, the only recording ever released by Davidson, it remains fresh and exciting 40 plus years later. On Ornette Coleman’s recommendation, ESP-Disk’ owner Bernard Stollman signed up pianist Lowell Davidson (then majoring in biochemistry at Harvard) for this album without having heard him play. Davidson came to New York and got to work with the elite rhythm section of drummer…
This Week Is in Two Weeks
** Edition of 500 ** Recorded direct to lathe cut, this pair of spontaneous creations teams two Berlin-based horn players with two New Yorkers of broad-ranging vision. Since their inception in 2003, Talibam!’s ultimate goal has been to wed disparate ideologies through proficiency, controversy, inquiry, and compassion. This is their fifth release on ESP-Disk’. Silke Eberhard, alto saxophone; Nikolaus Neuser, trumpet; Matt Mottel, piano, synthesizer, three-string guitar; Kevin Shea, drums.
No Love is Sorrow
ESP Disk presents the third solo album 'No Love Is Sorrow' by Buck Curran (of the duo Arborea). Buck Curran - vocals, acoustic and electric guitars, Ebow, piano. Adele Pappalardo - additional vocals. Dipak Kumar Chakraborty - Tabla on Blue Raga. Mastered by Harris Newman at Grey Market Mastering, Montreal. Album cover photo and layout - Sarp Tuncer.
Gowanus Sessions II
Gowanus Session II was seven years in the planning. Thollem McDonas, Nels Cline, and William Parker convened at Peter Karl Studios in Brooklyn on January 3rd, 2012 and recorded two complete albums. The first was Gowanus Session I, released by Porter Records in April of 2012. GS II was put aside to eventually complete the five-album palindromic cycle of trio albums Nels and Thollem ambitiously set out to realize. The albums in between include Radical Empathy with Michael Wimberly (Relative Pitch,…
Spiritual Unity
2023 repress. LP version. 180 gram virgin vinyl, with original artwork restored. Spiritual Unity, recorded on July 10, 1964, is the album that made Albert Ayler and ESP-Disk' famous (or, in some people's eyes/ears, infamous). Mr. Ayler had already recorded in Europe and, in February '64, in New York, but this was the first album on which neither he nor his collaborators held back. It was also ESP's first jazz recording. Spiritual Unity presented a new improvisation paradigm: looser structure, le…
Reality and Other Imaginary Places
This album was recorded during Thollem McDonas's 2017 residency at Brooklyn-based multi-discipline mecca Pioneer Works. It's the second by Radical Empathy, which combines three uncategorizable improvisors. Michael Wimberly has been astonishing folks since his days in Charles Gayle bands and Steve Coleman & Five Elements in the early '90s, and has gone on become a composer and educator of note. Nels Cline has spent decades changing people's ideas about the role of the electric guitar in multiple …
New Improvised Music From Buenos Aires
ESP-Disk' has a little bit of history with Argentina -- the label issued Gato Barbieri's first international release, and their Steve Lacy album was recorded there -- so the label couldn't resist putting out this compilation of 2012-17 recordings (most previously unreleased) from the Buenos Aires scene.In his liner notes, compiler Jason Weiss writes, "In June 1966, just as General Juan Carlos Onganía was leading a military coup d'état, Steve Lacy's quartet arrived in Buenos Aires: not exactly sa…
Son of Local Colour: Live at the Pizza Express, Soho
The core of this group -- John Surman, Alan Skidmore, Peter Lemer, Tony Reeves, and Jon Hiseman -- recorded an LP titled Local Colour for ESP-Disk in 1966. The plan, conceived the year after the 50th anniversary of the recording session, was to reunite the original quintet, which had existed for six months back in '66, but unfortunately Nisar Ahmad (George) Khan, tenor saxophonist on the original album, came down with something and couldn't appear. Alan Skidmore (Lemer bandmate in SOS) was deput…
An Avant Garde of Our Own: Disconnected Works 1980-2018 (8CDBox)
Saxophonist/guitarist/composer/music historian/ provocateur Allen Lowe spans the history of jazz in his music in a way that few besides Jaki Byard, Beaver Harris, Steven Bernstein, and Air have ever done, intertwining blues, early jazz, bebop, and the avant-garde. A prolific composer who was incorporating American roots music into his jazz decades before it was hip, he has led project bands featuring a broad array of jazz greats ranging from Doc Cheatham, Randy Sandke, Joe Albany, Don Byron, Ken…
Retrograde
Matt Lavelle (trumpet, flugelhorn, alto clarinet) and Reggie Sylvester (drums), New York avant-jazz veterans and longtime cohorts in the Bern Nix Quartet, perform in duo here on Retrograde, their debut on ESP-Disk'. Visiting destinations overlooked on John Coltrane's tour of the solar system, they craft their own space suite of earthier delights. This album was recorded live at Andrea Wolper's WhyNot Experiment?
series. Matt and Reggie played two sets; the second set, with Bern Nix
in the audi…
Wet Robots
"Few vocalists have the sheer boldness – the outright fearlessness – of Fay Victor as an improviser. The New York native has long been a creative force on the avant-jazz scene, as a singer, bandleader, composer, arranger, and teacher. She has worked on both sides of the Atlantic with the likes of Misha Mengelberg, Roswell Rudd, and Anthony Braxton, along with recording several distinctive albums as a leader. Reviewing her recent disc Absinthe & Vermouth, NPR declared evocatively that Fay’s origi…
Morning Haikus, Afternoon Ragas
LP version. On Buck Curran's second solo album, Morning Haikus, Afternoon Ragas, the emphasis switches to acoustic guitar, as compared to his first solo album, Immortal Light
(ESPDISK 5014CD/LP, 2016). Side A, all solo acoustic instrumentals,
seems to have fallen out of a wormhole emanating from Takoma Records in
the 1970s. There's some of that on side B as well, but there are also
vocals and other instruments, sometimes overdubbed, and the dedication
of "Taurus" to Peter Green, guitarist e…
Immortal Light
160-gram DMM LP version. Limited edition of 350. Includes download code. Immortal Light is the debut solo album by psychedelic folk guitarist-singer-songwriter Buck Curran. Since 2005, Curran has recorded and performed as one half of the psych-folk duo Arborea. To date, Arborea has released five albums, including 2013's ESP-Disk' release Fortress of the Sun (ESPDISK 5002CD/LP). Curran's music has developed through a decade of playing with Arborea, and the experience of playing blues and folk thr…
Live in Forli, Italy 1982
Robbie Basho (1940-86), who died young after a stroke, never got his due in the culture at large, but steel-string guitar enthusiasts have known for decades that he was one of the greats of "American Primitivism". Technically adept and compositionally imaginative, fusing the music of many cultures into a mesmerizing solo style, he has been an inspiration for many; his music has generated a surge of interest in recent years. This 1982 concert was part of a four-show Italian tour. It took place at…
Local Colour
ESP-Disk' present a vinyl reissue of Peter Lemer Quintet's Local Colour, originally released in 1968. British pianist Peter Lemer studied with Jaki Byard, Paul Bley, and Bill Dixon. His lengthy and distinguished career has found him in a wide variety of settings. As an avant-garde jazz pianist, he recorded with Spontaneous Music Ensemble; in the jazz fusion realm, he was a member of Gilgamesh and Paraphernalia; as a progressive rock keyboardist, he played with Gong, Baker Gurvitz Army, the Mike …