Great Star Theater, San Francisco
Joëlle Léandre and Lauren Newton have been performing together for nearly 30 years, having met in the mid-1990s in Paris. Throughout that time, they have always favored exploring the textures of music that are not arranged conventionally but rather are scattered, diffused, and dispersed through layers of sound. The voice’s high notes forge a variety of color fragments, while the low notes of the double bass create substance and depth. These two components remain inseparable as the sound settles …
Medea
Duo in the mirror that, in a continuous game of doubling and multiplication, ventures into another world, dense with unexpectedness and vital thrills. Sun Ra and post-rock, as well as Chicago experimentation and echoes of the world of Suzanne Ciani and minimal music, are the hints one can sense while listening to Medea, a journey to the edge and beyond. Star Splitter's new album comes five years after the debut album, a period in which the two artists experimented with the infinite possibilities…
Dead Slow
Michalis Siganidis seems to narrate through the strings in this absolutely physical, organic way his experiential, intellectual and emotional relationship with the instrument. The accompanying electronic commentaries by Jannis Anastasakis refers to a dialectic of question and answer. Through this pulsating sound environment, the listener receives a musical world deeply internal, a circuit - extremely subtle but also coarse with a fierce intensity in places - of rare in expressiveness psychic vib…
Knækket Smil
In an exhilarating convergence of sonic exploration, experimental noise guitarist Nina Garcia and danish trombone virtuoso Maria Bertel have teamed up to create a heavy-hitting, collaborative record that pushes the boundaries between extreme improvisation and harsh noise. Both renowned in their respective fields, Garcia and Bertel bring their unique styles and influences to create a masterpiece of collaborative improvisation.
Knækket Smil (meaning „broken smile“) is a living, breathing, moving e…
Wood/Metal/Plastic/Pattern/Rhythm/Rock
**7-Color heavy "tip-on" jacket w/ textured paper and fold-out poster insert. ** 75 Dollar Bill, a project by Che Chen and Rick Brown present Wood/Metal/Plastic/Pattern/Rhythm/Rock. "Che's interest in the Arabic modes of Mauritanian music has marked our sound quite a bit but I have brought some things, too. The plywood crate I play is a big factor, defining, by its positive qualities (a nice warm 'boom' sound) as well as by its simplicity, what we're likely to do in the percussion realm. Wood/Me…
At Sound 323
Originally released by Confront in 2013 on compact disc as The Complete August 15th 2001. Now freshly remixed and remastered in 2023 for release on a delux double 180g white vinyl LP set and digital. Recorded at Sound 323, London by Tim Fletcher on 15 August 2001
Tubes
Tip!
Sam Newsome – Soprano Saxophone, Horn Preparations, ToysMax Johnson – Double Bass
Recorded at Conveyor by Jason Borisoff on March 18, 2023Mixed and Mastered by Max JohnsonPhoto by Peter GannushkinDesign by David Mirarchi
All music by Max Johnson (Max Johnson Music ASCAP and Sam Newsome (Some New Music BMI), except “Blue Monk” by Thelonious Monk
Cielomoto
*50 copies limited edition* Although we play other instruments, this recording is focused on the sounds of electric guitar and saxophone. We are inspired by silence, the phenomena that break it and their effects and in cosmic and natural drifts as well. Vision plays a fundamental role. Together, we understand sound as the result of our relationship and our way of building and destroying. The result is a story that becomes a future visual story, because when we play, we see.
Miniatures
Since emerging in the early 1980s the French bassist, composer, and vocalist Joëlle Leandre has ignored the gaps between improvised and composed music, jazz and new music, inventively braiding post-Cagean concepts with the free jazz ferment she witnessed first-hand growing up in Paris. Accordion master and fellow countryman Pascal Contet was initially rooted in contemporary music, helping to bring it back as a viable, versatile instrument in experimental music, but throughout his long career he’…
Troubled Water
*300 copies limited edition* Casimir Liberski, pianist, improviser and composer widely recognized in Belgium as one of the most gifted jazz musicians, joins forces with renowned Japanese drummer and composer, Tatsuya Yoshida, founder of the group Ruins, he is considered a monument in the realm of Japanese avant-garde music. This duo brings together two generations and two distinct worlds of sound to deliver free improvisation and syncretic new music on their debut album “Troubled Water". Ranging…
Sessione Pre Angiou
*2024 stock* "In late February we played our first concert together in a wonderful space in Savignone Liguria near the town of Busalla about an hour from Genova. A beautiful old barn or cascina as it is called in Liguria , Cascina Pre Angiou run by Associazione Altravallescrivia a crew of great enthusiasts and fantastic hosts. Friends and families were all invited and we all eat a great minestrone and pasta and drank good wine at long tables before the concert began. There were several children …
Live / Studio
Recorded partly at London’s Cafe Oto and Cable Street Studios, 'Live / Studio' represents the debut by established British improvisers Phil Durrant and Daniel Thompson. Moving within and between close textural territories, the duo explores shifting sonic patterns and a dynamic interplay resulting in an intimate listening experience
Obsidian
The first release of 2024 is in! After their well-received debut duo album Puncture Cycle (released five years ago on A New Wave Of Jazz - this album you find here), British key improviser Benedict Taylor (viola) and Dirk Serries (archtop guitar) are back with a new duo album. An album they recorded at the fantastic Oude Klooster chapel in Brecht (Belgium) on August 11th, 2023. Full-on interaction, fast-paced dialogue while still listening and corresponding in depth with the sublime acoustics …
Earthworks
Following 'Gargoyles' and 'Light Industry', Colin Webster and Dirk Serries recorded their third studio album at the Sunny Side Inc. Studio in May 2022. With Colin on the baritone, the pressure is high. Carefully selected from a way longer session, this shorter album is just that : full-on free interaction with no boundaries hold, spiced by the friendship of both musicians and the respect for each other' skills and approaches.
Ilog3
"Ilog3 was recorded only a little more than a year after the epic Ilog2 session. In-between the two album releases the duo has performed a few high profile festivals like Jazz Em Agosto in Lisboa, A’Larme in Berlin, Meaksuma in Eupen or La Nature in Wallonie. While Ilog3 originally was only intended to be a video shooting session the duo put down another suite of incredible music and decided to release it in triple format as DD, CD and LP. The music is a succession of densely improvised electro-…
Altered Alchemy
*2023 stock* Achim Kaufmann and Ignaz Schick met for the first time in 2015 when they performed together on a Finland tour with Sestetto Internazionale. Both musicians work with refined textures and strongly abstracted sounds, thus a more intimate and direct collaboration in a concentrated duo format was a logical fit. At that time, Ignaz Schick also immediately asked Kaufmann to join his large ensemble Circuit Training, as he felt the pianist, with his subtle playing, would enrich the sound of …
Fine Tuning: The Gradisca Concert
The ubiquity of Coxhill’s sax lines are here answered, cherished, enhanced by the excellent guitar touch of Enzo Rocco. It’s a sort of subtle anarchic dance, intriguing and true.
Sinopia
Huge Tip! 250 copies. A sinopia is an ancient preparatory sketch technique for a fresco. If you scrape the final work off the wall, the sketch remains; simplified and powerful in it’s starkness. Alessandra Novaga, an experimental guitarist/composer based in Milan, Italy found this historic technique resonated with an album she recently recorded with NYC-based drummer Kid Millions (aka John Colpitts of Oneida, Man Forever and many other projects). Italy’s cultural past is the often transcendent a…
Crusts
"Piano and reeds duet. More precisely, Didier Fréboeuf, the pianist, is also credited for clavietta and objects and the prompter Jean-Luc Petit, tenor and sopranino sax as well as contrabass clarinet. Three Crusts. Not badly chosen title compared to the improvised music that they play towards each other: these two do not stay on the surface of things. They work in depth on their exchanges by developing a nice variety of playing modes both on the keyboard and in the strings and on the reeds.
I ap…
Les Beaux Jours
"Intense and stormy "vintage" electronic music - ethereal loops or organ or keyboard effects - synalgias of the unresolved - (AKS by Jean-Marc Foussat) goaded and torn by the extreme bites of the soprano saxophonist (Guy Frank Pellerin). The feeling of duration of their improvisations (22, 19 and 25 minutes) diminishes as the spells fall in this weather of the emerging moment. A nice variety of games in the game phases means that we no longer follow the order of the music, nor its logic. We find…