Reissues

Lonnie Liston Smith's first album under his own name, 1973, straight out of the Pharoah Sanders band and the Thembi sessions where the title track was born on a Fender Rhodes. Cecil McBee, Joe Beck, Badal Roy on tabla, Mtume on congas, a tamboura. Six pieces, produced by Bob Thiele for Flying Dutchman.

RCA Studios, 19 and 20 April 1971. Gil Scott-Heron's first studio album, with Brian Jackson on piano, Ron Carter, Hubert Laws, Bernard Purdie and Burt Jones, produced by Bob Thiele. The band version of The Revolution Will Not Be Televised, Lady Day and John Coltrane, Home Is Where the Hatred Is.

A New Black Poet: Gil Scott-Heron's first record, 1970, a book of poems read in front of an audience with three percussionists, Eddie Knowles, Charlie Saunders and David Barnes, produced by Bob Thiele. The first version of The Revolution Will Not Be Televised, Whitey on the Moon, and the title piece.

New York, 21 and 22 October 1969. Leon Thomas's first album under his own name, made months after Karma, with Pharoah Sanders credited as Little Rock, Lonnie Liston Smith, James Spaulding, Cecil McBee, Richard Davis and Roy Haynes. A shorter Creator Has a Master Plan, Echoes, and the Malcolm X elegy Malcolm's Gone.

Los Angeles, 1969. The first record of the John Carter - Bobby Bradford Quartet, the West Coast free jazz band Ornette Coleman had brought together in 1965, with Tom Williamson on bass and Bruz Freeman on drums. Five Carter pieces for Bob Thiele's new Flying Dutchman, from Call to the Festival to Domino.

Ornette Coleman's loft at 131 Prince Street, Valentine's Day 1970. Dewey Redman, Charlie Haden, Ed Blackwell, and whoever was in the room singing the title chant. The only Coleman album on Flying Dutchman: six pieces, Ornette on alto, trumpet and violin, taped as a party rather than a concert.

Bobby Jones played tenor in the last Mingus bands of 1970-72, toured Europe and Japan with them, and then, with emphysema closing in, moved to Germany, where he died in 1980. Hill Country Suite is one of two records under his name, made at Trixi Studio in Munich on 30 August 1974 for Enja, in trio with George Mraz on bass and Freddie Waits on drums. Six pieces, all his, and the titles say where he came from: Bringin' in the Sheep, Old Jack Daniels, Halleluja! Y'uns All Come to the Weddin' Dance,…

Berkeley Jazz Festival, 1974. Prince Lasha, the Fort Worth altoist and flautist who had made The Cry! with Sonny Simmons and Iron Man with Dolphy, with Hubert Eaves on piano, Ron Carter on bass, Roy McCurdy on drums and Kenneth Nash on percussion. Three pieces, including the sixteen-minute Mayflower.

Nuremberg, East-West Jazz Festival, 6 July 1984. Takeo Moriyama, the drummer of the first Yosuke Yamashita Trio, with his own quartet: Toshihiko Inoue on tenor and soprano, Shuichi Enomoto on flute and saxophones, Hideaki Mochizuki on bass. Recorded live and issued by Enja the same year. Moriyama had left Yamashita in 1975 and spent the following decade building a group sound of his own. The Vap record East Plants (1983) was the studio version of this band; Green River is the same lineup, less o…

Munich, Vielharmonie, 11 June 1981. Akira Sakata, two years out of the Yosuke Yamashita Trio, with his own trio, Hiroshi Yoshino on bass and Nobuo Fujii on drums, recorded digitally for Enja. Alto sax, alto clarinet and voice; four long pieces, including a version of Brigitte Fontaine's Comme à la radio.

Vanguard Studios, New York, 15 November 1981. Mal Waldron with Clifford Jordan on tenor, Cecil McBee on bass and Dannie Richmond on drums, two weeks after the same quartet had played a Columbia University concert. Produced by Horst Weber for Enja, released in 1982. Three pieces. Jordan's Charlie Parker's Last Supper; Waldron's Hymn from the Inferno, twelve minutes; and the title track, eighteen minutes, which takes the whole second side. Ron Wynn at AllMusic gives it three stars and two words: d…

One of the first Enja records, the fourth in the catalogue according to AllMusic, recorded live at the Domicile club in Munich in June 1971. Mal Waldron in trio with Jimmy Woode, the former Ellington bassist, and the Swiss drummer Pierre Favre. The same trio made Mal Waldron Plays the Blues for the label the same year. Four Waldron originals (Sieg Haile, La gloire du noir, The Call, Rock My Soul) and Woode's brief M.C.. AllMusic's note describes a master of repetition and brooding chords in exce…

Moonwalker, Aarburg, Switzerland, 29 March 1992. Sun Ra, fourteen months from the end, at synthesizer and piano with a ten-piece Arkestra: Marshall Allen, Michael Ray, Ahmed Abdullah, Tyrone Hill, Buster Smith. Ten pieces in fifty-six minutes, mostly repertoire, groove over improvisation. Released by Enja.

Villingen, 26 February 1971. Friedrich Gulda's self-portrait in the form of a course, a double LP mostly of solo piano with Klaus Weiss on drums, Fritz Pauer and a horn section including Benny Bailey and Sahib Shihab. Prelude and Fugue, Play Piano Play, a set of variations on Light My Fire, and a Goethe setting.

Berlin, 30 August 1961, two Südwestfunk sessions: Eric Dolphy at 33, on his second European trip, with Benny Bailey, Pepsi Auer, George Joyner and Buster Smith. Hot House, Hi-Fly, God Bless the Child on bass clarinet, and Dolphy's own G.W. and 245. Unheard until Enja issued it in 1978. Christgau gave it an A.

1967. Joachim Kühn had left the GDR the year before and settled in Hamburg; Rolf Kühn, his elder brother, had come back from six years in New York (Benny Goodman, the Tommy Dorsey band) to run the NDR television orchestra. They had already played Newport together. Transfiguration, on SABA, is the Rolf + Joachim Kühn Quintet with Karl Berger as guest on vibraphone, made in the months before Joachim moved to Paris for good. It sits between two records the brothers made the same year: Re-Union in B…

Berlin, Teldec Studio, 7 November 1971, the same day Terumasa Hino was cutting Vibrations for Enja across town. Joachim-Ernst Berendt, who had brought Masahiko Satoh's trio to the Berliner Jazztage, put them in a studio with the Hungarian guitarist Attila Zoller: Satoh on piano, Yasuo Arakawa on bass, Masahiko Ozu on drums, Zoller on guitar. MPS released it in 1972. Six pieces. Meet, nine minutes, opens; Sazo is short; the traditional Black Is the Color of My True Love's Hair is the ballad; Clos…

Heidelberg Jazztage, 6 June 1975. The Yosuke Yamashita Trio with Akira Sakata and Takeo Moriyama in its second European season, recorded by Carlos Albrecht for MPS. Piano and drums duets, a Moriyama drum solo, and the fourteen-minute Hachi. Forty minutes of the loudest trio of the decade.

Jef Gilson (born Jean-François Quiévreux, 1926) had played clarinet with Claude Luter in Boris Vian's band, switched to piano in 1947, and in 1963 formed the big band through which half of French modern jazz would pass. In 1965 he was musical director of Les Double Six. That year Woody Shaw and Nathan Davis played in his orchestra. New Call From France, released by SABA in 1966 and credited to the Jef Gilson Nonet with Jean-Louis Chautemps, is the record he made for the Black Forest label at the…

Gunter Hampel's first record, 1965, on SABA: a quintet with Manfred Schoof on trumpet, Alexander von Schlippenbach on piano and Buschi Niebergall on bass, a year before Globe Unity. Down Beat gave it five stars. Hampel on vibes and flute, Dolphy and Ayler in the room, nobody screaming.

Donaueschingen, October 1979. Karl Berger brought the orchestra of his Creative Music Studio from Woodstock to the German contemporary music festival, and Südwestfunk and MPS recorded it. The roster reads like the CMS guest book: Don Cherry on trumpet and bamboo flute, Lee Konitz on alto, Oliver Lake on alto, soprano and flute, George Lewis on trombone, Leroy Jenkins on violin, Trilok Gurtu on tabla and congas, Peter Apfelbaum on drums and baritone, Ingrid Sertso singing, Berger on vibes and pia…

Donaueschingen, 21 October 1967. Archie Shepp with Roswell Rudd and Grachan Moncur III on trombones, Jimmy Garrison on bass, Beaver Harris on drums. One piece, One for the Trane, forty-three minutes, three months after Coltrane's death, opening with a seven-minute Garrison solo and ending in The Shadow of Your Smile.

MPS studio, Villingen, 14 September 1980. Cecil Taylor alone at the Bösendorfer Imperial the studio had bought for Gulda, after two days of practising. Eight pieces, one of them fifty-three seconds long, the first side running as a suite. Berendt heard Tatum, Bud Powell and boogie in it. Taylor wrote the title in the guest book.

Hamburg, 1969. A drummer recently arrived from Westphalia, known around the Jazzhouse on Brandstwiete as a capable timekeeper who could swing in 4/4 and play rock beats, which is why Klaus Doldinger had hired him for Passport. His name was Udo Lindenberg. Free Jazz Goes Underground, released by MPS in 1970 under the name Free Orbit, is the first studio album of the band he led, and he sings on it, in English, alongside a second vocalist. MPS's own note on the reissue admits you need careful list…

Wolfgang Dauner's 1967 SABA septet: Jean-Luc Ponty on violin, Gerd Dudek on tenor and clarinet, Eberhard Weber on cello, Jürgen Karg on bass, and two drummers, Mani Neumeier and Fred Braceful. Mingus-like themes that dissolve into free playing, Neumeier on tabla for the Spanish disguise. Out of print for forty years.

Two years after Free Action, a different record. The Oimels, MPS 1969, is the Wolfgang Dauner Quintet playing pop: Dauner on piano, organ and voice, Eberhard Weber on bass, cello and voice, Siegfried Schwab on guitar and sitar, Pierre Cavalli on guitar, and Roland Wittich on drums and voice, who also did the cover art with Dauner. The programme mixes Dauner originals with a Gershwin tune, a traditional, and a Lennon-McCartney song. A RateYourMusic listener puts it plainly: a different kind of ja…

Villingen, 27 and 28 June 1968. Barney Wilen, the tenor of Ascenseur pour l'échafaud, with a young Joachim Kühn on organ and piano, Aldo Romano and Wolfgang Paap on two drum kits, Mimi Lorenzini's guitar and Günter Lenz's bass. Ode to Billie Joe, Respect, Lonely Woman and the Supremes, dedicated to Timothy Leary.

1967, SABA. Tony Scott, the clarinettist of Music for Zen Meditation, with Bubi Chen's Indonesian All Stars: Jack Lesmana on guitar, Marjono on saxophone, gamelan gongs under the rhythm section. Jazz standards and Indonesian songs, with Summertime and Djanger Bali. One of the first Jazz Meets records.

Another of Berendt's meetings, SABA 1967. George Gruntz, the Basel pianist who would later run the Berlin Jazz Festival for twenty years, with Sahib Shihab on saxophones and Jean-Luc Ponty on violin, and a group of Tunisian musicians: a bendir and darbuka drum ensemble and Salah El Mahdi on ney flute. The title turns Dizzy Gillespie's tune on its head. UK Vibe, reviewing the Nicola Conte compilation that includes Djerbi, points out that the famous names are not the point: it is the lesser-known …

Villingen, 23 October 1967. Irène Schweizer's trio with Mani Neumeier and Uli Trepte, a year before Guru Guru, meets Dewan Motihar's sitar, tabla and tambura, with Manfred Schoof and Barney Wilen. Three pieces, two of them long, and the seventeen-minute Sun Love. All About Jazz calls it an unqualified success.

Baden-Baden, Südwestfunk studio, 12 to 14 December 1969, the annual Free Jazz Meeting. Steve McCall had persuaded the organisers to invite the Chicago musicians living in Paris: Lester Bowie, Joseph Jarman, Roscoe Mitchell, and the pianist Dave Burrell. They met sixteen Europeans: Albert Mangelsdorff, Kenny Wheeler, John Surman, Willem Breuker, Terje Rypdal, Tony Oxley, Alan Skidmore, Heinz Sauer, Gerd Dudek, Eje Thelin, Bernt Rosengren, Hugh Steinmetz, Leo Cuypers, Claude Delcloo and Karin Krog…

December 1966, a month after the premiere at the Berlin Philharmonie: Alexander von Schlippenbach's Globe Unity, fourteen players, Brötzmann, Schoof, Hampel, Mangelsdorff, Dudek, Breuker, Kowald, Niebergall, Liebezeit, Neumeier. Two pieces, Globe Unity and Sun. European free jazz declaring itself.

Donaueschingen, 17 October 1970, and Berlin, 7 November: Sun Ra's first German concerts, commissioned by Joachim-Ernst Berendt, with the Black Forest Myth written for the astrological moment and never played again. Berendt cut five hours of tape into forty minutes. Der Spiegel called it cosmic chaos.

CD eissue of Don Cherry's classic Eternal Rhythm Group, recorded at the Berlin Jazz Festival, 1968. An amazing line up of: Cherry (cornet, gender and saron [gamelan], flutes), Albert Mangelsdorff (trombone), Eje Thelin (trombone), Bernt Rosengren (tenor sax, oboe, clarinet, flute), Sonny Sharrock (guitar), Karl Berger (vibes, piano, gender), Joachim Kühn (piano, prepared piano), Arild Andersen (bass), & Jacques Thollot (drums, saron, gong, bells, voice). Two "side-long" pieces with gamelan under…

Big tip! A pioneering figure in Japanese improvisational music, Toshimaru Nakamura has collaborated and performed with artists including Otomo Yoshihide, Sachiko M, Keith Rowe, David Sylvian, and Christian Fennesz. Personally curated by Nakamura himself, this Early Best Album traces the formative years of his singular musical journey. Through the groundbreaking technique he developed known as the No-Input Mixing Board, Toshimaru Nakamura has established a truly unique musical language. For nearl…

Big tip! Sixty years after the groundbreaking premiere of In C forever changed the course of contemporary music, Terry Riley celebrates the work's enduring legacy with a historic live recording captured at Kyoto's Unesco World Heritage site, Kiyomizu-dera Temple. One of the most influential composers of our time, Terry Riley has continually redefined the possibilities of music through a career marked by innovation and originality. Described by Riley himself as his signature composition, In C (19…

Deathpile's G.R., a power electronics album about the Green River Killer, begun during the hunt and finished after Gary Ridgway's arrest.

*150 copies limitede edition* Originally released by Umor Rex on cassette in 2018, Rafael Anton Irisarri’s Sirimiri is now available on vinyl for the first time, newly remastered for this edition. This LP marks the fourth and final installment in a series of four reissues released throughout 2026 to celebrate the 20th anniversary of Umor Rex. It is a fitting way to close such a special anniversary year. Rafael is not only an artist who has released three albums on Umor Rex, but someone who has …

Japanese 200 gram vinyl edition. Totally essential LP re-release for the first collaboration between Robert Fripp and Brian Eno in over 30 years, that nearly equals the effuse beauty of their celebrated 70s works. "Ambient is a spacious, electronic music that is concerned with sonic texture, not songwriting or composing," says the All-Music Guide. That seems reasonable, although I suspect Brian Eno might take issue with the notion that his music is somehow unconcerned with composition. As wit…

*200 copies limited edition* This year’s Aube tribute release from advaita records is Entangle Spirant, originally released in 1995 by Drahtfunk-Products. Using only steel wire as its sound source, this unique noise—in which various friction sounds intertwine to create a hypnotic soundscape blending chaos and order—embodies the quintessential Aube aesthetic. We have faithfully reproduced the original artwork, which perfectly complements the music.