We use cookies on our website to provide you with the best experience.Most of these are essential and already present. We do require your explicit consent to save your cart and browsing history between visits.Read about cookies we use here.
Your cart and preferences will not be saved if you leave the site.
John Coltrane played the long game. Longevity in life wasn’t his lot; his fortieth year being his final bow. That circumscribed career, particularly in its final decade, evinced a trajectory of creative ascendancy that was as indelible to improvised music as it was omnipresent in impact. Charlie Parker arguably wears the posthumous mantle of most influential saxophonist, but Coltrane suggests a close contender in terms of ineluctable clout on those who play the instrument.
Practice and the pursu…
Founded in 1968, The Maciunas Ensemble took Fluxus founder George Maciunas (1931 - 1978) score 'Music for everyman' (1961) as an invitation to explore the infinite space of sound patterns and musical structures. This exploration still continues after more than forty years. With Paul Panhuysen, Remko Scha, Jan van Riet, Leon van Noorden, Hans Schuurman, Helena Koning, Vincent Panhuysen. 'Since its foundation in 1968 the musicians of the Maciunas Ensemble always recorded their music with taperecor…
Quartet Records, in collaboration with GDM and Universal Music Publishing Italia, presents our first seven-inch single with the premiere release of Teo Usuelli’s infectious score for Marco Ferreri’s 1969 cult film Dillinger e’morto, starring Michel Piccoli, Anita Pallenberg and Annie Girardot. The story is a darkly satiric blend of fantasy and reality. It follows a bored, alienated man over the course of one summer night in his home. Teo Usuelli had previously scored five films for Ferriri, a…
**Edition of 500 copies pressed on white vinyl, Includes an 8 page graphic score and sticker for modular artwork creation** A 480 is a collection of repetitive, process-oriented virtual signal process pieces rendered entirely in the digital sphere. The pieces consist of originally composed, data rendered sample sources. A 480 are vocal pieces. All the sounds are sourced from the 'voice' and confront the nature of the voice in the age of data. The virtual choirs are convoluted versions of actual …
**In process of stocking** Following two successful volumes of ‘Journey Into Deep Jazz’ on BBE, proprietor of London’s ‘IF Music’ record store and walking musical encyclopedia Jean-Claude kicks off a new “Introduction To…” album series with this affectionate retrospective of sister labels Black Saint and Soul Note. Cited by some as Italy’s answer to Blue Note, Black Saint and Soul Note have together amassed a catalogue in excess of five hundred albums between 1975 and 2008.
Founded by Giacomo Pe…
**In process of stocking** BBE Music presents the fourth release in their acclaimed J Jazz Masterclass Series: Topology by Makoto Terashita and Harold Land. Originally released in 1984 on the cult Aketa’s Disk label, Topology captures a surprising yet fascinating and engaging collaboration between a young Japanese jazz pianist and an elder American statesman of jazz.Reissued by BBE Music for the first time since original release 36 years ago, Topology showcases the extraordinary compositional an…
**2022 stock** Rodion Ladislau Rosca grew up and got his musical education in Cluj, the third biggest city in Romania, during the relatively ‘open’ years of 1965-1972, before Ceacescu’s regime cracked down viciously on the cultural opportunities (and freedoms generally) available to the Romanian people. In this period he absorbed the influences that filtered through the Iron Curtain from the ‘decadent west’ and local eastern European musical traditions. Cluj had its own prog-rock bands, Cromatic…
**Beautifully packaged lacquer-press 180g vinyl. Flip-back sleeve. Strictly limited pressing run of 500 copies worldwide. Extensive liner notes by legendary British music broadcaster and journalist Richard Williams** Jazz in Britain presents Forget To Remember: Live Vol.2 1970 by The Ray Russell Sextet featuring Harry Beckett. Previously unreleased live session recorded at the Aeolian Hall 2, New Bond Street, London on the 2nd January 1970. All tracks from the Ray Russell tape archive.
The untold early history of Amsterdam's seminal collective. Founded in 1967 by three of European free music's leading lights -- pianist Misha Mengelberg, drummer Han Bennink, and saxophonist and clarinetist Willem Breuker -- the Instant Composers Pool (ICP) was simply one of the most important vehicles for experimentation and improvisation in the history of creative music. Culling ideas and materials from jazz, modern and contemporary classical music, Fluxus, traditional music from the Balkans a…
The duo of saxophonist Larry Stabbins and percussionist Roy Ashbury was a mainstay of the London improvised music scene in the early 1970s. They recorded their lone LP, Fire Without Bricks, in 1976, and issued it in a tiny edition on the cooperatively run Bead label. Stabbins has toggled between more pop-oriented projects like Working Week and Jerry Dammers Spatial AKA Orchestra and adventurous free music in bands led by Peter Brötzmann and Tony Oxley. Born in Wolverhampton and based initially i…
Unearthed by The Mighty Zaf for BBE Music, Into A New Journey by Ambiance is an impossibly rare and sought-after private label spiritual jazz masterpiece from 1982 with Latin, Brazilian and Afro overtones. Ambiance was the ‘nom de guerre’ of an ever-shifting jazz collective headed up by Nigeria-born, LA-tutored multi- instrumentalist, arranger, producer and photographer Daoud Abubakar Balewa.
Balewa studied composition and jazz improvisation at the feet of innovators such as Frank Mitchell (Art …
**Limited edition of 300 audiophile 140 gr white premium vinyl. Full color gatefold sleeve with lyric inner sleeve.** This is (another) strange one. It’s a genuinely ‘lost’ album, by which I mean it is one the band and I recorded then abandoned because I couldn’t find a suitable theme when it came to writing the lyrics. The music evoked a fantasy world, but I had already covered that subject on ‘Duel’ and ‘Grimm’ and felt I couldn’t justify writing more songs about Kings, Queens, castles and dec…
Original Glued Prints on Thick Cardboard / handily gluing / Original Black and White Private Press artwork/ 100 copies limited edition worldwide. Legit reissue of this obscure privately pressed album from 1975. Black Fairy is a fairy tale, but not in the traditional sense. When writing this play, i did not want to re-create the types of fantasies which are so common in Childrens theater. There is no kind of magic that can relieve black children from the oppression that retards their development.…
**2021 stock. In process of stocking** Jazz trios have an economy that makes them risky. Yet it’s that risk that makes them exciting; how to get the most out of three musicians. Trios made up of rhythm instruments – piano, drums and bass – are particularly special. In the case of Ruben ‘Baby’ López Furst, the Argentinian pianist, and the trio session for ‘Jazz en la Universidad’, that special feeling is abundant. The balance of lightness and air with muscularity and drive makes the album worthy …
**2021 stock. In process of stocking** Heavyweight Vinyl, Original Glued Prints on Thick Cardboard 700 gram / 2 Separated parts handily gluing, PVC Outersleeve. Originally released in tiny numbers in Israel in 1977. The fascinating thing about jazz is not so much where it came from, but where it went, how it changed and how it seemed to effortlessly mix with local styles and traditions. In some ways, it’s no surprise that jazz found a fertile home in Israel. Much has been written about the conne…
**CD digipack edition** Recorded by composer and multi-instrumentalist Giuliano Sorgini between 1974 and 1976 in his studio in Prati district in Rome, a stone’s throw from Italian television offices, Africa Oscura is a set of tracks inspired by the wildest and most obscure secrets of those lands, intended to be the background of some tv documentaries.Some tracks were recorded during the same session of Zoo Folle, the album widely recognised as his masterpiece, celebrated today by the most influe…
An absolutely stunning accomplishment, Piero Umiliani's L'Uomo Elettronico delves into the composer's electronic works created between 1972 and 1983. Featuring 3 previously unreleased tracks, as well as rarities and hidden gems - all remastered from the original analogue tapes - it's an absolute must for seasoned Library music fans, devotes of late 20th century electronic music, or anyone just beginning to explore the incredible world to which it belongs.
Among the fiercest and greatest documents of Free Jazz is a lone LP - Al-Fatihah - self-released in Ohio by Black Unity Trio in 1969, the official reissue of which stands before us now. A hard cut diamond of pure fire and artistry, it’s a good as improvised music from this era gets and absolutely not to be missed
** Edition of 500. Includes booklet with photos and texts in Portugues and Spanish ** The second album by the legendary Swiss artist and composer, based in Brazil, Walter Smetak, opened a new field of exploration within his own musical horizon. With the publication of “Smetak” (1974), a musical universe had been defined where Afro-Brazilian ritual traditions, studies of microtonality and open processes of collective improvisation converged, always under the influence of theosophy, which allowed …
**Edition of 500. Gatefold Edition. Includes booklet with photos and texts in Portuguese and English ** Walter Smetak was a Swiss cellist, composer, inventor of musical instruments, sculptor and writer who developed his career in Salvador, Brazil, and became an emblematic figure of the Bahian avant-garde and a key part of the cultural climate that made the rise of tropicália possible. Since 1969, he has carried out various workshops of experimental music at University of Bahia. His music was mat…