★ezz-thetics
Make That Flight
*In process of stocking* 'Even a cursory revisiting of Houle and von Orelli’s previous recordings confirms that the stark forum afforded by a horn duo strips their music to its essentials, their shared ability to make unorthodox forms and materials sing and dance being the most salient. Fresh, distanced, and potentially transformative perspectives abound on this album, and not just about the music of any other artist; but, more importantly, the tug and pull between the continuity represented by …
Miles Davis Quintets Stockholm Live 1967 & 1969 Revisited
'Was there more than one Miles Davis? Could he be both the Prince of Darkness and the purveyor of cool? A drug addict and an athletic boxer? A hip bebopper and a protohippie? A flamboyant dresser and a shy vulnerable soul? A brutal misogynist and an insecure romantic? The answer is yes, and yes. Miles Davis was both a creator and a destroyer. His chameleon-like nature can be explained by the times in which he lived and created his art. These live recordings in Stockholm, Sweden, 1967 and 1969, i…
Where Is Brooklyn? & Eternal Rhythm
These sessions were recorded exactly two years apart, in early November 1966 and 1968 (both were released in 1969). While they can’t be called “bookends” by any means, they do bracket a remarkable period in Don Cherry’s musical evolution, on his journey from the more strictly jazz environments, as adventurous as they were, of Ornette Coleman, Albert Ayler and others, to a philosophy that embraced many non-Western traditions. While these included various African forms, especially those of west-ce…
Hieroglyphs
"‘Hieroglyph’ is a word that history has gradually prised away from its linguistic roots as the Greek term for sacred carvings. Over time it came to be associated principally with the enigmatic symbols found in Egyptian burial sites and because these symbols resisted translation for so many centuries the word hieroglyph became a synonym for incomprehensibility. It was the discovery of an artefact – the socalled ‚Rosetta Stone‘, containing both hieroglyphs and parallel texts in other scripts – th…
Song Of Praise, Live New York 1965
"These Half Note recordings from March 26 and May 7, 1965, two dates from an extended stay at the club, were captured as a radio broadcast. ezz-thetics has re-sequenced the music here to demonstrate Coltrane’s approach to incorporating all his inventions into a performance, while also mapping a future to his music." – Mark Corroto
Producers note: "We have re-sequenced these tracks to allow the listener to become part of the development of the music and to follow John Coltrane’s evolutio…
Nothing Is...
"Attempts to dismiss Sun Ra as an “outsider” artist, an eccentric who made strange claims, are always own goals. Of course he was an outsider. That was precisely his point. And not just an outsider. He came from so far away we could not imagine it. But he also came from right inside American culture and was deeply shaped by it. There is perhaps no more representative an American artist of the modern period. If the Saturn V rocket was the symbol one kind of hegemony, governed by the dollar and th…
Life Time & Spring (Revisited)
"Life Time posited a radicalism quite different from the other watershed recordings of 1964. Anthony Williams had an overt, unconventional approach to form, accentuated by the time constraints of a LP side and the various configurations he employed... By the time the 19-year-old Williams returned to Van Gelder Studio to record Spring with Hancock, Peacock, Rivers, and Shorter, the avant-garde was ascending... He retained some of the parameters
of Life Time ..." - Bill Shoemaker
Decibel
Cat Hope is a composer, performer, songwriter, noise artist and researcher. She is lautist, experimental bassist and artistic director of Decibel new music ensemble, which led to her being awarded the Australian APRA|AMC Award for Excellence in Experimental Music. Decibel are a new music ensemble that focus on the integration of acoustic and electronic instruments in chamber music performance, founded in Western Australia in 2009. They are world leading interpreters of graphic notations and pion…
Things In Between
* In process of stocking * "This album features the relatively unusual quartet line-up of two pianists and two percussionists. Equally unusual, though less so than it once was: the leader
on this date, pianist Judith Wegmann, is equally at home in improvisation and composed music. She's a composer, and an interpreter of com- posed music – her recording of Morton Feldman's Triadic Memories and For John Cage appeared recently on this label. But she's also a free improviser who draws on the tradit…
La Cave Live, Cleveland 1966
the first authorized release by permission of the Estate of Albert Ayler of the two concerts played at La Cave, Cleveland on April 16 & 17, 1966. Remastered for best possible sound of these under difficult technical circumstances recorded performances.
New York Is Now & Love Call Revisited
New York is Now! and Love Call are rarely mentioned in surveys of Ornette Coleman’s music, and they are often glossed over when they are cited…. Even in commentary focusing on Coleman’s recordings for Blue Note between 1965 and ‘68, these albums tend to be overshadowed by the two volumes of At the “Golden Circle” Stockholm... However, these last sessions before Coleman’s departure for Impulse! are pivotal, influential albums that merit reassessment. – Bill Shoemaker"Alto saxophonist and composer…
Copenhagen 1963 „Revisited“
Despite persisting labeling of its music as avant-garde, The New York Contemporary Five played unthreatening contemporary jazz almost as often as it explored more daring materials. Two of Thelonious Monk’s loveliest melodies – “Monk’s Mood” and “Crepuscule with Nellie” – were embedded into their sets, aswell as three of Ornette Coleman’s more accessible, swinging vehicles, “O.C.,”“When Will the Blues Leave,” and “Emotions.” These pieces provided a perspectiveof contemporary jazz that placed the …
For John Cage (2CD)
Tip! John Cage was an evangelist for a new mode of listening in which we would listen to everything with the same attention that we bring to music. For John Cage proposes instead that we listen to this music as if it were everything. While these two instruments are playing there is nothing else, just a violin and a piano. Even the process of remembering, normally so important in helping us make sense of what we hear, is altered: the ‘tenuous’ rhythms of For John Cage articulate patterns in which…
If There Were No Opposites
A couple of the pieces on Nick Fraser's If There Were No Opposites, the quartet’s fourth album, were adapted from Fraser's compositions for dance productions by Decidedly Jazz Danceworks." But while the original versions of “Shoe Dance” and “The Fashion Show” had to adhere to rigid timing requirements in order to coordinate with the rest of the stage production, the quartet lets the music flow in more free-wheeling fashion. The quartet first recorded in 2012, and its personnel has never changed.…
Complete Communion & Symphony For Improvisers
Super Tip! Don Cherry cornet, Gato Barbieri tenors saxophone, Pharoah Sanders, tenor saxophone & piccolo, Karl Berger vibes & piano, Henry Grimes & J.-F. Jenny-Clark double bass, Edward Blackwell drums.“The 1960s were a decade of diversity and discovery for Don Cherry. They began with him an important part of Ornette Coleman’s pathbreaking quartet, and ended as he ventured deeply into the process of. defining his distinctive approach to a world music. But the first six years plot a course of ex…
Chasin The Trane, The Village Vanguard 1961
Temporary Super Offer! John Coltrane is the steady catalyst, channeling galvanizing thoughts and energy through the tangible mechanics of his horns and sometimes running momentarily afoul of the lacunae between intent and implements. That it was all accomplished from the comparatively cramped confines of a basement jazz club stage is both the miracle and promise of momentous jazz music. The boon of emotional reciprocity between band and audiences was in optimal effect across these nights, even i…
Free Form & Abstract, Revisited
Unheard music from this key reedman on the British avant scene in the 60s – This double album features Joe Harriott working with a quintet that includes Shake Keane on trumpet, Pat Smythe on piano, Phil Seaman on drums, and Coleridge Goode on bass – playing in territory that's somewhat in the neighborhood of his Abstract and Free Form albums. 'Abstract is split over two dates some months apart, with some change of focus over the set. Free Form has more of the drama of a single creative moment. B…
New York Eye And Ear Control 1964, Revisited
Temporary Super Offer! Ezz-Thetics presents New York Eye And Ear Control 1964, Revisited. Albert Ayle tenor saxophone, Don Cherry cornet & trumpet, John Tchicai alto saxophone, Roswell Rudd trombone, Gary Peacock double bass and Sunny Murray drums.
As a visitor of the Albert Ayler Quintet concert 1966 in Lörrach, Germany and producer of his recordings since 1982, I like to present New York Eye And Ear Control by Albert Ayler, remastered, given permission for it by Desiree Ayler-Fellows of the Al…
Die Unwucht
Neither musician has to be dominant to prove that he has something to say. Instead of trying to outdo each other, they develop a compelling, very soulful world of their own. In the history of jazz they are two more rhapsodists continuing the tradition, while changing the context of the stories and thus making them plausible. What is amazing is their calm maturity that does completely without the frills of elec- tronics. Dense and compact but at the same time transparent and delicate the music pr…
Free Fall Clarinet 1962, Revisited
Temporary Super Offer! The trio of Jimmy Giuffre, pianist Paul Bley, and Steve Swallow on acoustic bass, through their previous recordings and live concerts in Europe, had reached the precipice of complete improvisational freedom. The leap came with Free Fall. What I feel to be the more revealing and revolutionary aspects of this album, however, are to be found in the five unaccompanied clarinet pieces. – Art Lange
With this release we like to celebrate Jimmy Giuffre at 100. (26. April 1921 – 24…