Jazz /
Echoes
Mats Gustaffson and the Fire! Orchestra return with an album recorded in the company of Jim O'Rourke entitled Echoes and to be released on 14 April 2023 by Rune Grammofon. For the 14th anniversary the Fire! Orchestra presents itself with a gigantic line-up of 43 elements. Within the big band we also find the confirmation of singer Mariam Wallentin, as well as the addition of the voices of David Sandström and Joe McPhee (also present as tenor sax).
Echoes is a new chapter within the discography o…
Plum And Cherry
Following the April 2022 reissue of the album Shrimp Boats, We Are Busy Bodies presents companion titles Plum and Cherry and Deeper in Black to round out a Lionel Pillay and Basil Mannenberg Coetzee “trilogy” as part of the label’s As-Shams South African jazz archive series. The connection between these three albums is tight as the 1987 release Shrimp Boats compiled unreleased recordings from both the 1979 session for Plum and Cherry and the 1980 session for Deeper in Black. These two rare recor…
Requiem for Jazz
Composer, clarinetist, singer and educator Angel Bat Dawid announces the release of a new work, Requiem For Jazz. A 12-movement suite composed, arranged, and inspired in part by dialogue from Edward O. Bland’s 1959 film The Cry of Jazz, the album is a wide-ranging treatise on the African American story from one of its most astute narrators.
Itself an incisive critique of racial politics in the USA, The Cry of Jazz draws formal comparisons between the structure of jazz music and the African Ameri…
Ask The Sun
"Hamid Drake and Michael Zerang drum up a storm, to put things succinctly. This album of percussion duets features intricately interlaced drums, bells, shakers, and chimes. Rolling patterns, melodicism, and moods pervade this fine album. Forget your nightmares of the endless drum solos perpetuated by bloated classic rock dinosaurs; try to put aside more current preconceptions of deadhead drum circle revivalists and world beat wannabes. These two musicians are serious but not full of themselves a…
Mouth Eating Trees And Related Activities
*2023 stock* "Swedish multi-reed artist Mats Gustafsson was just beginning to come into his own at the time of this recording. The oddly titled Mouth Eating Trees and Related Activities catches him at the cusp when his prodigious technical abilities were starting to be subsumed into an impressive musical presence. It doesn't hurt that his companions for this freely improvised session are stalwarts like Barry Guy and Paul Lovens, who provide accompaniment that's creatively telepathic. While Gusta…
One To (Two)...............
*2023 stock* These 18 short duets between cellist/trombonist Gunter Christmann and Swedish new music provocateur and saxophonist Mats Gustaffson eschew all melodic pretension, leading to some very difficult, though rewarding listening. Christmann performs mostly on his stringed warrior, where scratches and little sounds lead the way. Somehow, when matched with the saxophonist's highly developed sense of rhythm and sporadic flurry, the results lure the listener into a den of revolutionary fervor.…
The "Wels" Concert
*2023 stock* This live recording from a 1996 Austrian music festival is a powerful interaction of three musicians from different countries, each of whom have extraordinary improvisational abilities and deep, grounded technique. A somewhat unusual instrumentation is heard from this free jazz trio: German saxophonist Peter Brotzmann also performs on e-flat clarinet and tarogato (a Hungarian single-reed woodwind), American percussionist Hamid Drake plays a drum kit, a frame drum, and tablas, and Mo…
Stone/Water
Featuring Ken Vandermark & Mats Gustafsson. Recorded live at Victoriaville in May of 1999. Fantastic live material from a very unique group – the instantly-legendary meeting of reedman Peter Brotzmann with the leading lights of the Chicago avant jazz scene in the 90s – brought together into a tremendous tentet that's maybe even better than the sum of its parts! The group features Brotzmann on tenor and clarinet, Ken Vandermark on tenor and bass clarinet, Jeb Bishop on trombone, Fred Lomberg-Holm…
Since Time Is Gravity
"The next chapter of the Natural Information Society is here. Since Time Is Gravity, credited to Natural Information Society Community Ensemble with Ari Brown, presents a newly expanded manifestation of acclaimed composer & multi-instrumentalist Joshua Abrams nearly 15 year, 7 albums &-counting flagship ensemble. Joining the core NIS of Abrams (guimbri & bass), Lisa Alvarado (harmonium) Mikel Patrick Avery (drums) & Jason Stein (bass clarinet) are Hamid Drake (percussion), Josh Berman & Ben Lama…
Blasé
Florida-born saxophonist, composer, poet, actor and playwright Archie Shepp was one of the most articulate exponents of politicized black culture in the late ‘60s, a time of enormous upheaval and radical thought. Relocating to Paris he made a number of highly influential albums, such as Blasé, that broached the essential themes of freedom and racial equality, and tapped into the bedrock of African-American music. Gospel and blues were a major part of the work, which also had a strong avant-garde…
Sonic Fiction
*2023 stock* After a duo album and two trio albums by Shipp and Walerian, all for ESP-Disk', we get a quartet album from them that continues their strategy of working with different musicians each time out. Bisio and Dickey are long-time collaborators with Shipp, but the addition of Walerian's Zen style changes the dynamics of their interactions. Walerian and Dickey, masters of restraint, were a match waiting to be made, and their instant rapport is one of the attractions of this album.
Kind Of Shadow
Four magnificent improvisers from different countries. Among them, legendary and iconic double bass master Barry Guy, one of the greatest jazz / improvised music drummers Ramon Lopez, Japanese living in Ireland classically trained piano master Izumi Kimura and polish trumpet and cornet wizard from Poland Artur Majewski. All of them, after Ad Libitum Festival 2021, after the initiative of FSRecords’ executive producer, Maciej Karlowski, went to the studio and recorded some improvised music that n…
Molten Gold
Four absolute masters in their respective instrumental fields! Ivo Perelman on tenor saxophone, the great trombonist and jazz legend Ray Anderson, the well-known Joe Morris this time with double bass in his hands, and the long-time companion of Henry Threadgill's musical journeys, drummer Reggie Nicholson! The quartet's latest studio recording was made in mid-November last year at Brooklyn's excellent ParkWest Studio recording studio by the invaluable Jim Clouse.
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*2023 stock* "Improvised music is invariably meant for live consumption, where the give-and-take between musicians is laid bare for all to hear and the ephemeral nature of the playing is intrinsically linked to that one moment that’s never to be repeated. In a way, recordings of improvised music negate the one arguably essential tenet of improv — namely, spontaneous composition: Even the most unusual and challenging music, once recorded, becomes permanent and obviously immutable. Though listenin…
Maulawi
Considered to be one of two Holy Grails on Strata Records, Maulawi Nururdin, 180 Proof presents a stellar reissue featuring a previously unheard instrumental version of ‘Street Rap’. This 180 Gram vinyl album has been remastered from the original reel to reel master tapes and is presented with an alternate cover artwork done by Ge-ology and Mr. Krum
Stumps
* 75 copies limited edition * In times of vinyl shortage and production backlog, resourcefulness is key. In keeping with his well-established practice of replacing original materials with surrogates to generate new sonic experiences, Sven-Åke Johansson has devised a digital reinterpretation of the historic flexidisc in the shape of a 10inch rubber disc with engraved QR codes that let buyers access the music online.
About the music: "The six compositions titled ‘stumps’ are based on a potential f…
Eric Dolphy Outward Bound To Out To Lunch Revisited
Tip! *In process of stocking* In his comprehensive 1966 Jazz Monthly article, “Eric Dolphy,” Jack Cooke reported that the advance buzz aboutduet passages for bass clarinet and bass, “Something Sweet, Something Tender” approximated the hinge-like ballads that were a perennial feature on Blue Note A sides. Given its dedicatee – the flutist renowned for recording works like Varèse’s “Density 21.5,” which Dolphy performed at the Ojai Festival in 1962 – “Gazzelloni” is surprisingly boppish, ending the…
Azur Et Tenebres
*Rare original* "As you can tell from the additional description to the album title, this album and the compositions on it are a collection of sound illustrations for performances, performances, dances, films and plays (mostly in the spirit of early cinematography and early century theatre, one would think). Illustrations, stylistically very different. From rather sad interludes, which for some reason remind me personally of films like Silence, Sadness, Silence with to 'saspienza' moments, with…
Ślina Trzaska
The Wrocław band Ślina returns with their third studio album, this time recorded with Mikołaj Trzaska. This is not the album of Trzaska + Ślina or Ślina + Trzaska. This is Ślina Trzaska (a kind of wordplay in polish, means: The saliva cracks). A kind of full, new band that was created in the outstanding Sudeten studio Monochrom and is sometimes continued live.
Free improvisations and Krautrock motility are still the hallmark of Ślina, but the organic, radical sound of Mikołaj Trzaska's saxophone…