★Treader
Real Magic Vol.1
*300 copies limited edition* Treader is proud to announce the first solo release from label-founder John Coxon. Best known for his work in Spring Heel Jack and Spiritualized, as well as extensive collaborative work with J. Spaceman, Evan Parker, Charles Hayward, Han Bennink and Pedro Reyes to name a few, it was perhaps inevitable that recent times allowed Coxon the space and time to experiment on his own. Real Magic Vol. 1 is the result of a year’s worth of early morning recordings made during 2…
Masses
"Masses is an utterly unexpected, and utterly gripping, collaboration between the East London duo, Spring Heel Jack and a group of top-flight improvisers, drawn largely from New York’s ascendant free jazz network but also including Evan Parker and microtonal violinist Matt Maneri. If there are precedents for this particular mix, in which studio-processed audio environments are played back in real time as the triggers for, and fixed components in, a series of group improvisations, they feel few a…
Rubbed Out
2023 Stock. The very latest release on the beautifully presented Treader label comes Hot Chip frontman/vocalist and possible Gerry Anderson marionette Alexis Taylor, who threads together a series of instrumentals and pop songs with a little help from Garageband. There are some beautiful synth outings here: from opener 'Fireworks' straight into the creamy, organ-driven 'Plastic Man' which sounds uncannily like the intro to The Killers' 'All These Things That I Have Done' mixed in with a bit of Ca…
Cremated Thoughts
2023 stock. Very much in the tradition of Anthony Braxton's seminal For Alto, or Evan Parker's Monocerous, this wonderful new album by clarinettist Alex Ward is improvised free jazz at its most unencumbered and radical, charting a solitary musician's excursion into pure expression. Divided into four segments, this set was committed to tape at Abbey Road Studios at the beginning of the year, taking in all manner of logic defying techniques and virtuosic sequences, as well as stretching the parame…
Strange Songs (For Voice And Bird Calls)
‘Multiphonic trills and yodels, loops of ululations, sudden percussive outbursts, warbling glissandi… sculptural, oscillating, swirling tone-colours… the human voice dissolving into the sounds of birds, machines, electronics, scraps of otherworldly language.’Ute was a student of Henning Christiansen and Allan Kaprow; she is a collaborator of Rhodri Davies and Phil Minton, amongst many others.
Wonderful stuff; original, naked, visceral, transfixing, fun. Check it out.
John Tchicai With Strings
2023 Repress Knockout! Real spiritual jazz — frank, deep, reaching; no fakery. John Tchicai appears on Ascension and Albert Ayler’s New York Eye And Ear Control; he’s on Witchdoctor’s Son, with Johnny Dyani and Dudu Pukwana, besides landmark recordings with Archie Shepp, including Four For Trane; and his Mohawk LP on Fontana is a five-star affair. Yet still Richard Williams in The Guardian reckoned this ‘wise and lyrical’ album ‘one of his best recordings’. Here his playing is somewhere new, osc…
Confessions (Lp)
* In process of stocking * Fascinating, historically important and previously publicly unheard recordings of the great Irish author and playwright Brendan Behan.These tapes became the source for his book Confessions of an Irish Rebel, posthumously published in 1965 following his tragic death the year before. They were recorded by his friend and confidante Rae Jeffs in the Chelsea Hotel, NYC in 1960. Tranferred for the first time from the original 1/4” tapes, with a sleeve made from another unsee…
Play The Red Krayola Live 1967
* In process of stocking * Trems, feedback, metronomes and a music box………This recording was made during preparation for a joint performance by J Spaceman and John Coxon as part of : Art and Language: Letters to The Jackson Pollock Bar in the Style of The Red Krayola, Lisson Gallery New York, October 2019. The idea was to attempt to do a cover version of The Red Krayola’s radical and unrepeatable performance at the Angry Arts Festival in 1967. Spaceman and Coxon listened, separately, to the recor…
Monoceros
**Milestone reissue! His monumental LP of solo soprano saxophone improvisations, recorded direct-cut and issued by Incus in 1978. Lovingly reissued by Treader using the original stampers, in a gorgeous hand-assembled sleeve, with glossy front and matt back, flaps out. Unmissable.** Evan Parker's monolithic 1978 solo record Monoceros was originally released on Incus in 1978, and distinguishes itself in several respects: first, because it was recorded by the direct-cut process, whereby the sound …
Bombscare
A bit of a missing link in Low’s discography, Bombscare has been unavailable for almost two decades, originally released in late 2000 on Tugboat (Glen Johnson’s Rough Trade subsidiary), it’s now been reissued on vinyl by John Coxon and Ashley Wales’ remarkable Treader imprint and provides a bit of context for last year’s roundly acclaimed Double Negative.It’s mostly about the title track here really, Coxon and Wales’ (aka Spring Heel Jack) provide the sublime, electronic backdrop, offsetting Mim…
Evan Parker With Birds
One of Treader’s most requested recordings sees the great UK free saxophonist Evan Parker on soprano and tenor saxophones, duetting with European birdsong. A fitting tribute to his friend, the celebrated soprano saxophone player Steve Lacy, who died in the year of its initial release. A titan of British free jazz, Evan Parker needs no introduction. His output, both as a bandleader and collaborator, are the stuff of legend. Within the history of the European improvised music, he’s everywhere - ha…
Hackney Road
2019 Small Repress Electronic duo Spring Heel Jack return with a collaboration with the legendary American trumpeter and Pulitzer Prize nominee Wadada Leo Smith. Wadada was born in the Mississippi Delta and became immersed in the music of the great blues masters as a young musician. He then moved to Chicago and became an early member of the AACM alongside the likes of Muhal Richard Abrams, Anthony Braxton, Malachi Favors and Roscoe Mitchell.Recorded last year in London, this LP sees Smith’s auth…
The Sweetness Of The Water
Spring Heel Jack brings esteemed trumpeter and vanguard composer Wadada Leo Smith to the mix, along with reedsman and longtime Spring Heel collaborator Evan Parker, fellow Brit John Edwards on bass, and drummer Mark Sanders. The Sweetness of the Water, from 2003, is a strong offering from John Coxon and Ashley Wales (the masterminds behind Spring Heel Jack), with a more intimate, live feel than the group’s previous electro-heavy efforts. Parker returns with his bellowing, screaming sax juxtapose…
Rak
This second AG recording for Treader sees Charles Hayward passing the drumsticks to Rupert Clervaux. Together with John Coxon’s simple and insistent guitar themes, the elegant drum-work underpins four extended group compositions, containing a surprising collision of sounds and influences, bringing together Pat Thomas from the Improv scene, Floating Points-collaborator Susumu Mukai, and Alexis Taylor’s mooger-foogered rhodes. Somehow it all crystallises perfectly. The clearest precedent for this …
Guitar Loops
Breaking form from the more overtly free jazz-oriented agenda the Treader label has based itself upon, this release finds Jason Pierce of Spiritualized and Spacemen 3 tackling a lengthy piece of music assembled from electronically treated guitar loops (as you no doubt guessed from the title) and a bit of lo-fi percussion. The resultant thirty five minutes of music is an enormously dynamic, often rather difficult venture into the avant-garde, far-removed from the trance-inducing pop Pierce built …
Clarinet Record
A five part suite evoking the memory of Jimmy Guiffre and Giancinto Scelsi. Alex's brilliant clarinet playing perfecty complements Coxon's musical experiments in which the listener's spatial perspectives are constantly being challenged-extremely vivid recordings of guitars, kalimbas, 78rpm recordings,pebbles, metal objects and handbells form surreal landscapes as he takes the listener on an extended musical journey.
Clapham Duos
In the only studio recording of this duo, John Tchicai and Evan Parker improvise a set of pieces at once reflective and joyful, introspective and responsive by turns. Recorded in 2005 during John's visit to London at the invitation of John Coxon and Ashley Wales. A beautiful dialogue between these two great figures.
Jems
The extraordinary improvising duo of John Edwards and Mark Sanders have recorded together in countless groups, but only once as a duo [Nisus Duets Emanem 2002]. For this recording, Mark uses an unorthodox kit setup with horizontal orchestral bass drum. John's huge bass sound is captured in full by the old RCA ribbon microphone used in this recording. Constantly imaginative, thrilling playing.
Acoustic Trio
Acoustic trio with John Coxon [acoustic guitars] Ashley Wales [found percussion etc.] and AMM's Eddie Prevost. A slowly evolving and spacious piece originating from reading eddie's book 'minute particulars'. "I have a National Trojan guitar from the 1930s that i bought in a little shop in new orleans. I used this for the ‘acoustic trio’ recording with Ashley Wales and Eddie Prevost [amongst many other recordings]. I remember Eddie saying ‘the perfect instrument’ because it has both a membrane an…
Swallow Chase
First solo recording by Mark Sanders, one of the world's great improvisors. Recorded from the drummer's perspective, a beautiful virtuoso performance in 9 parts.