New Arrivals
Near Blue-A Taste of Melancholy
"Near Blue – A Taste of Melancholy is a soundtrack for being unstuck in time, if just for an hour. It is a glide through a rich past and present, with glimpses of a future worth reaching." - Bill Shoemaker
Franz Koglmann - flugelhornGert Schubert - violinKurt Franz Schmid - clarinetSandro Miori - tenor & soprano saxophones & alto fluteRudolf Ruschel - tromboneRaoul Herget - tubaRobert Michael Weiss - piano
Hellbound Train (An Anthology)
*2024 stock* Hellbound Train is a double-album retrospective from Steve Tibbetts with music selected by the US guitarist from 40 years of recordings on ECM . Neatly divided into electric and acoustic chapters, the anthology juxtaposes pieces originally featured on the albums Northern Song, Safe Journey, Exploded View, Big Map Idea, The Fall Of Us All, A Man About A Horse, Natural Causes and Life Of. With its liquid melodies and textures and hypnotic patterns and pulsations subtly influenced by…
Nice Guys
*2024 stock. Deluxe packaging* Nice Guys is an album by the Art Ensemble of Chicago, recorded in May 1978 and released on ECM the following year—their debut for the label. The quintet features trumpeter Lester Bowie, saxophinists Joseph Jarman and Roscoe Mitchell and rhythm section Malachi Favors Maghostut and Famoudou Don Moye.
A German Jazz Story
**English edition. 200 pp. Hardcover** Eberhard Weber is a central figure in the evolution of European jazz. A virtuoso who revolutionized jazz bass playing - he brought his instrument from the far corner of the stage into the spotlight – and turned it into a solo force. He began his career as a jazz bassist in the 1960s, and his band Colours, with the saxophonist Charlie Mariano, became one of the most successful jazz groups in Europe. His record Colours of Chloë (made for ECM) was a cult albu…
Mensagem
One of the greatest musicians in the history of Brazilian music. Conductor, composer, arranger, band leader and, without a doubt, one of Brazil's most brilliant sax and flute players. In 1968, Paulo Moura brought together a notable group from the country's jazz and instrumental music to record the album Mensagem. He walked between African rhythm and American and European avant-garde, transforming the Brazilian soul. Licensed by Halina Grynberg. LP deluxe edition, 180g vinyl. Features hard cardbo…
Socha
Czarnoziem is a band created by Dawid Dąbrowski (modular synthesizer) and Michał Giżycki (bass clarinet, saxophones). The duo boldly creates its own independent language, using the possibilities of a wide spectrum of genres - from experimental electronics, improvised music to echoes of free jazz and contemporary electroacoustic music. Czarnoziem's sound became more precise during an intensive process of rehearsals, sessions and concerts, it became expressive and texturally transparent: from stil…
Zartir
The third album from Levon Eskenian’s remarkable ensemble is its most adventurous to date. As well as reclaiming the music of esoteric teacher G. I. Gurdjieff for folk instrumentation, Zartir situates Gurdjieff in a tradition of Armenian bards and troubadours including Ashugh Jivani, Baghdasar Tbir and the legendary Sayat-Nova. In parallel, an emphasis on pieces for sacred dance reaches its apex in The Great Prayer, an entrancing collaboration between the Gurdjieff Ensemble and the National Cham…
Belonging
Tip! "Belonging is a studio album by American jazz pianist Keith Jarrett, recorded over two days in April 1974 and released on ECM later that year—the debut of Jarrett's "European Quartet", featuring saxophonist Jan Garbarek and rhythm section Palle Danielsson and Jon Christensen. Because Jarrett's contract with ABC/Impulse! prevented him from performing with the quartet under his own name, the group became known as the 'Belonging' quartet." - Wikipedia
End To End
*2024 stock* Barre Phillips was the first musician to record an album of solo double bass, back in 1968, and he has always been an absolute master of the solo idiom. In March 2017, Barre recorded what he says will be his last solo album, the final chapter of his “Journal Violone”: it is a beautiful and moving musical statement. All the qualities we associate with Barre’s playing are here in abundance – questing adventurousness, melodic invention, textural richness, developmental logic, and dee…
Thunder
Stephan Micus is a unique musician and composer. He collects and studies instruments from all around the world and creates his own musical journeys with them. This is his 25th solo album for ECM and its sound is dominated by the four-metre long Tibetan dung chen trumpet, an instrument he has recently learned and is using for the first time. It was the thunderous sound of this instrument that led to the album’s name and its nine tracks celebrating deities around the world. “I dedicate this music …
Androide Scrip
Androide Scrip is a jazz record - not mainstream, but plain and simple: piano, drums, bass. Full stop. Influenced by artists such as The Bad Plus, E.S.T., Thom Yorke, Bush and Muse, the debut is not a pop, rock or electro album, even though it repeatedly makes use of song structures from these varieties of current music styles. Together with pianist Florian Kästner and bassist Philipp Martin, the trio led by Jörg Wähner (Apparat, Bodi Bill, The DAS) explores the possibilities in such a way that …
Brasileira
Maria Rita is a musical pioneer that was ahead of her time. On first hearing her song, 'Cântico Brasileiro No.3 (Kamaiurá)’, we thought it sounded like a contemporary remix that an artist such as Carl Craig could have produced. In fact, it came out in 1988 and was taken from Maria's 'Brasileira' album, released on the Brazilian, independent Acorde imprint. The song would go on to gain cult status with its inclusion on John Gomez's superb 'Outro Tempo' compilation, released on the Music From Memo…
Legend Of Lizard Lake
*Much needed repress* Dream Division presents an album of reptilian synthesiser psych 'Legend of Lizard Lake' takes the listener on a journey with its fantasy inspired soundscapes with brooding electronics and psychedelic guitars building on an immersive Dungeon Synth backdrop. Pressed on 180gm ‘Poison Dusk’ vinyl, in a mirror board sleeve
Shelter of the Opaque
Vanishing is the unique creative project of Gareth Smith, a working class time-served engineer turned artistic world builder who has traded in his toolbox for the means to write evocative music and resonant lyrics. His stunning new album Shelter Of The Opaque seizes quotidian reality and either scrapes away at the veneer to reveal the awful machinery of how things are underneath or overlays it with a gossamer filigree to suggest how they could be instead. The musician – who was born in Hull but …
Outerlands
A quietly influential guru among electronic and experimental circles since the late '90s, Berlin based sound artist Hanno Leichtmann has been developing a sprawling and idiosyncratic vision both as a creator and curator. With a keen sense for charting new territories, Leichtmann's work spawns a multitude of languages that go from delicate ambient excursions to techno explorations or abstract sceneries on numerous sound installations, releases on such esteemed labels like Entr’acte, Karl Records,…
Cinéma
*2024 stock* Sophie Hunger is a master of image creation, and this LP is a testimony and archive of her heartfelt compositions and recordings for various soundtracks of the last decade. "I feel like someone who worked undercover for ten years," says the Swiss musician and composer in view of her hidden work for series, documentaries and feature films as well as the Oscar-winning stop-motion film "Ma vie de Courgette", which has now been compiled and carefully curated on this release for retrospe…
On A Dark Night
*2024 stock* Berlin Strings is a string quartet consisting of Lisa Marie Vogel, Johanna Wundling, Tabea Haarmann-Thiemann and Luisa Babarro Fernández. Since meeting in the National Youth Orchestra and founding Berlin Strings 13 years ago, they have developed into explorers of their own sound. A sound that has always been imbued with the discipline of classical music, pure craftsmanship, the sublime rules of composition that make communication wordless. But also experimentation, flirting with dis…
Apo Calypso
At that time the tenth Embryo LP, recorded in India in 1976 and in Switzerland in 1977, released in 1978 on the April label. Again in the well-known Embryo style: progressive jazz-rock with strong world music influences and only occasional vocals. The vinyl has never been reissued, there was a CD edition in 1999 on Disconforme, but it has long since been cancelled. A very relaxed album, and while there are occasional highlights in individual contributions, the overall impression is that it just …
Both Sides
*2023 stock* Before the Munich krautrockers turned more strongly in the direction of world music in the following years, at this gig they once again delivered their mix, moving between funk and jazz, as it defined the mid-70s. Fixed song structures never played a role with Embryo. Apart from the - despite difficult meter - extremely loose-floppy 'Getalongwithasong' (from the 1977 studio album Apo-Calypso), they mainly played new improvisations in Vlotho."
Spiritual Jazz 15: A Tribute to 'Trane
Many artists achieve greatness but very few produce work that is so moving it's considered sacred. Whether you choose to call them hymns, psalms or spirituals, their songs are a healing force for troubled times. Jazzman's Spiritual Jazz series would not exist without the inspiration and leadership of the spiritual messiah that is John Coltrane. It can therefore only be right and proper that a whole album is dedicated to his legacy and lasting influence. Spiritual Jazz 15: A Tribute to 'Trane shi…