★Tzadik
Talisman (Live In Nagoya)
2025 stock Bringing together three of the most voracious and energetic musical minds in new music, Painkiller was one of the most intense live bands ever. Here they are captured at their absolute peak. Culminating their legendary 1994 tour of Japan in a masterful set featuring one of their longest and most inspired improvisations, the thirty-five minute Batrachophrenoboocosmomachia. Beautifully recorded by the unsung fourth member of the group sound engineer Oz Frith and packaged in deliriousl…
The Prophecy
2025 stock John Zorn and Bill Laswell are two of the Downtown scene’s most consistently intrepid musical explorers, and PainKiller, formed in 1991 is their longest running project together. “The Prophecy,” the first official PainKiller release in over ten years, was recorded live in Europe in 2004–5 and pulls together music from several concerts into a powerful and mind blowing suite unlike anything the group has ever released before. Featuring master drummer Yoshida Tatsuya (Ruins, Korekyojin)…
Hyderomastgroningem
2025 stock Along with the Boredoms, Naked City and very few others, this amazing drums/bass duo are masters of quick-change, stop/start tempos, time-signatures and textures. Ruins' explosive and intricately composed tunes are sung in a peculiar language of their own invention. Yoshida cites Magma, This Heat, Debussy and Webern as influences. Masuda's favorites are James Brown and Fred Frith.
Hardcore, art rock, psych, heavy metal, funk and lots more - if Ruins have heard it, they are likely to…
Mandala 2000 / Live At Kichijoji Mandala II
2025 stock A blistering live performance at one of Tokyo's longest running avant garde venues by one of Tokyo's longest running avant garde bands. A breathtaking performance of over twenty stop-on-a-dime Ruins classics, Mandala II captures the raw power and visceral energy of this dynamic band better than any studio recording ever could. Also included is twenty minutes of encores featuring the versatile and dynamic violinist Katsui Yuji. Intense, powerful and frighteningly complex sonic masterp…
Sands
2025 stock Tzadik is proud to release a new recording by Steve Lacy, MacArthur Fellow and for 40 years the undisputed master of the soprano saxophone. Recorded at his home in Paris from February to April 1998, Sands is Steve Lacy's most personal and remarkable solo document, and explores a wide variety of musical and dramatic subjects. Portraits of close friends Barney Wilen and William Burroughs; collaborations with the texts of Allen Ginsberg and Samuel Beckett; and of course his own peculiar…
Tao-Njia
2025 stock A breathtakingly beautiful document of new compositions from a founding member of Chicago's AACM and one of the world's most important contemporary creative musician/composers. Featuring his ensemble Nda-Kulture and the California E.A.R. Unit, Tao-Njia blends jazz, blues, poetry and the cultural traditions of Africa, Asia, Europe, Indonesia and America into lyrical and profoundly moving music. Wadada Leo Smith-trumpter, multi-instrumentalist, composer and improviser-has been active f…
On Alligators
2025 stock Four masterpieces by one of the world’s greatest composers of classical concert music, including three pieces that have never been released before. The fourth quartet is perhaps Wuorinen’s most complex and exciting composition, and it receives a passionate performance by the prestigious Brentano Quartet. Also included is the intense and colorful chamber piece On Alligators, conducted by the composer, and a moody piece for organ performed by one of the world’s greatest organists on on…
Great Jewish Music: Burt Bacharach
2025 stock A double-CD collection of Tzadik artists and special guests paying tribute to one of the great geniuses of American music. Burt Bacharach's compositions explode the expectations of what a popular song is supposed to be. Advanced harmonies and chord changes with unexpected turnarounds and modulations, unusual changing time signatures and rhythmic twists, often in uneven numbers of bars. But he makes it all sound so natural you can't get it out of your head or stop whistling it. Madden…
Animal Magnetism
1995 release ** "These pieces for just-intoned electric guitar, bass violin, cimbalon, percussion and horn section emphasize dynamics and sonorities, achieving stunning acoustical effects. American composer Arnold Dreyblatt (now living in Berlin) studied under minimalist greats LaMonte Young, Pauline Oliveros and Alvin Lucier, and formed the Orchestra Of Excited Strings in 1979. Dreyblatt has released previous albums on India Navigation and Hat Art (Switzerland). The musicians of the Orchestra O…
50⁶
2004 release ** "Hemophiliac is an experimental musical act. This group is billed as improvisational music from the outer reaches of madness. Mike Patton does voice effects along with John Zorn on saxophone and Ikue Mori on laptop electronics. Volume 6 of John Zorn's 50th birthday party series of concert CD's (ten volumes in total) is the first fully commercially available showcase for the trio's mad improv collision."
Of Ghosts And Goblins
Ikue Mori's album "Of Ghosts and Goblins" is a collection of instrumental miniatures inspired by Lafcadio Hearn's Japanese folk tales, featuring themes of ghosts, goblins, and the supernatural, with tracks like "Fragment," "A Passional Karma," and "Lafcadio's Garden". Lafcadio Hearn is an author who spent much of his life researching, documenting, and preserving the ancient folk tales of Japan. He published a series of books in the late 19th and early 20th century including In Ghostly Japan, Kwa…
The Great God Pan
The third chapter of this extraordinary trilogy by the world's most extreme musical explorers—John Zorn, Bill Laswell, and Mick Harris.
The Bagatelles vol. 3
Volume three of the recording of John Zorn's renowned Bagatelles, chosen from the more than 300 works that the American conductor and composer created in a span of three months at the beginning of 2015 and later compiled into a book. In this performance, the experimental band Trigger tear through fifteen of the collection's most wackiest and chaotic pieces.
The Bagatelles vol. 2
The Bagatelles Vol.2: Erik Friedlander and Michael by John Zorn is a captivating album released by Tzadik, showcasing the exceptional talents of cellist Erik Friedlander and pianist Michael Nicolas. This album is a beautiful fusion of classical music with avant-garde jazz, creating a unique and mesmerizing listening experience for music enthusiasts.
The Bagatelles vol. 1
May 2015, John Zorn composed 300 new tunes that were eventually collected into a book of music he called “The Bagatelles.” After five years of performances around the world in venues large and small, the choicest ensembles have gone into the studio and the results are some of the most exciting and varied music Zorn has ever presented. This first volume features the remarkable Mary Halvorson Quartet. Dynamic, fiery and endlessly imaginative, this is a fascinating first peek into the world of Zorn…
The Complete String Quartets
Chris Otto (violino), Austin Wulliman (violino), John Pickford Richards (viola), Jay Campbell (violoncello). The world class JACK Quartet, both individually and as an ensemble, have had a personal relationship with Zorn for well over a decade. Here they deliver passionate and virtuosic recordings of his complete string quartets. Zorn’s writing for strings is legendary, and his eight string quartets, written in a thirty-year period from 1988–2017, are some of the most important and original works…
The Equinox
The Equinox is PainKiller's much anticipated sequel to their critically praised 2024 album Samsara, and it has a more varied and adaptable style than their previous work.
Theme Park
Performed by virtuosic madman William Winant, who has worked with John Cage, Anthony Braxton, Mr. Bungle, Pierre Boulez, Steve Reich, Thurston Moore, Terry Riley, Cecil Taylor and countless others, Theme Park is a major new work by Alvin Curran and one of the most dynamic solo percussion compositions of the decade.
Coupled with a kaleidoscopic tribute to jazz giant Charlie Parker, this newest CD by one of today's most important musical pioneers incorporates minimalism, structuralism and post-mod…
Animal Behavior
Alvin Curran, a persistant innovator in today's new music world, brings the whole environment into unpredictable focus through his sonic fireworks, sharp wit and timeless lyricism. Curran studied with Elliott Carter at Yale in the early 1960's and in 1966 co-founded the legendary Musica Elettronica Viva with Richard Teitelbaum and Frederic Rzewski. He has composed for the Ursula Oppens, and is a close collaborator with the Trisha Brown Dance Company. He is a guest faculty member at the prestigio…
Ou Phrontis
Brian Marsella, Jorge Roeder, Ches Smith. "Ou Phrontis" means 'who cares' in Greek. Inscribed on the lintel above the door of Thomas Edward Lawrence's cottage on Clouds Hill, it symbolized a place where Lawrence felt at home, free from the cares of the world. This fourth CD by the dynamic piano trio of Brian Marsella, Jorge Roeder and Ches Smith ("Suite for Piano," "The Fourth Way," "Ballades") features eight challenging Zorn compositions inspired by Stoic philosophy and science. The telepathic …