Jazz & Improvisation / Avant-Garde Jazz

Reissue, originally released in 1971. Solaire, Siegfried Kessler, that is the least you can say! Aged four: learns piano. Aged six: his first concert. After this: studies classical music like everyone else... until the jazz of Jack Diéval and Stan Kenton turned everything upside down. So, it was goodbye to Bach... And hello to Dexter Gordon, Joe Henderson, Ted Curson, and Archie Shepp (who he would accompany over a long period). In 1969, with Yochk'o Seffer, Didier Levallet, and Jean-My Truong, …

Strut proudly presents a special edition, deluxe repress of Sun Ra’s classic ‘Lanquidity’, for the 25th anniversary of the label. Housed in a tip-on sleeve with  OBI strip, this new special editions features an A2 poster including a rare Veryl Oakland photograph of Sun Ra in his home, as well as liner notes by Tom Buchler (Philly Jazz), Michael Ray and Danny Ray Thompson (Sun Ra Arkestra) and Bob Blank. “Enter the sober, tranquil chambers of the next moment. Soft angles of lights into space, cho…

If 577 Records had a house-band, this would be it—a group of longtime friends, collaborators and established jazz musicians who are mainstays of the 577 Records’ catalog, here playing together. The Telepathic Band named themselves after the sort of improvisational style that can only be accomplished with a decade or two of collaboration, playing a signature, boundary-pushing music between friends. Now, with their fifth album, Daniel Carter (Saxophone, Clarinet, Trumpet), Patrick Holmes (Clarinet…

'Amiri Baraka (LeRoi Jones) spoke the truth (and the truth under his tongue was sometimes a hammer, sometimes an anvil, sometimes a sickle, sometimes just a breath or a blast). Baraka had no tongue in cheek. Sometimes he drew his language (his thought) and in the barrel of his language (his thought), there was the cartridge of criticism, the cartridge of ranting, the cartridge of analysis, the cartridge of sedition, the cartridge of poetry, the cartridge of music. Heroes Are Gang Leaders have th…

*200 copies limited edition. 2024 stock* Electric Telepathy Vol. 2 is the latest installment from legendary multi-instrumentalist Daniel Carter (Tenor Sax, Soprano Sax, Trumpet, Flute) together with Patrick Holmes (Clarinet), Matthew Putman (Keyboard), Hilliard Greene (Bass) & Federico Ughi (Drums), also known as the Telepathic Band. This new LP follows their previous albums Telepathic Alliances, Telepatia Liquida, and Electric Telepathy, Vol. 1, and Telepathic Mysteries, Vol. 1, further explori…

“A blissfully ecstatic sprawl of spiritual-jazz explorations of the most transcendent order” – Brooklyn Rail

2024 stock. The trio pays homage to legendary pianist Paul Bley, drawing on both his tunes and improvisational approach. Bley’s music encompassed latin-inspired grooves, deceptively simple and catchy melodies, as well as freer improvisations. His willingness to collaborate openly with European improvisers as well as being part of the American tradition was an attractive template to follow.Pat Thomas, Dominic Lash and Tony Orrell grew up in the UK with the children’s tv series Play School and whe…

*2024 stock* Matthew Putman and Michael Sarian found a home in a makeshift studio, using a borrowed 20-year-old keyboard, a good microphone, and in cramped apartment acoustics, to improvise throughout the pandemic. What they called their “weekly pilgrimages” gave them a sense of much-needed sanity, grounding their friendship and keeping them afloat, as Sarian describes, “much like a lifeboat.” The resultant project was an exploration of cadences, rhythms, and full of searching and synchronicity.…

*2024 stock* In the first lockdown, Matthew Putman (on keyboard) and Michael Sarian (on trumpet and flugelhorn) began to meet up (with precautions) for semi-regular sessions in Sarian’s makeshift home studio. The conditions were less-than-ideal—a borrowed 20-year-old keyboard, an inadequate microphone, and cramped NYC apartment acoustics—but they continued their “weekly pilgrimages, searching for [their] cadences, rhythms and melodies through the Fall.” The sessions gave them much-needed sanity,…

*2024 stock* Exploring the iconic trio format, Sean Conly (Bass), Francisco Mela (Drums) and Leo Genovese (Piano) mix composition and improvised music into a shared language. Inspired by both contemporary and traditional musical arrangements, the musicians’ distinct inclinations blend together in playful form, delivered in an easy dialogue between the members of the trio. The Buzz’s 10 tracks are gentle and warm, displaying the comfort that the artists have with each other, and lending the album…

2024 stock. The Telepathic Band is named after the sort of improvisational style that can only be accomplished with a decade or two of collaboration, playing a signature ghostly, boundary-pushing music between friends. In their fourth album, Daniel Carter, Patrick Holmes, Matthew Putman, Hilliard Greene, and Federico Ughi exemplify the possibilities of in-person improvisation, offering extemporized performances with their characteristically daring instrumentation. Telepathic Mysteries, Vol. 1 ma…

CD edition, comes in mini LP replica with obi & Japanese insert. Art Yard continues their voyage into the omniverse of unreleased Sun Ra tapes with I Roam The Cosmos, an unreleased, previously unheard 1972 live session recorded at Slug's Saloon in New York. Fronting a stellar 18-piece incarnation of the Arkestra, I Roam The Cosmos finds Sun Ra taking the listener on a poetic journey to the outer limits of planetary awareness. While the captain of the space-ship declaims his message with Arkestra…

Jinya Disc presents The complete works of Jojo, 2 DVD set, valuable footage of Action Direct and duo. This release contains 2 DVD: The Complete Works Of Jojo: Action Direct Masayuki Takayanagi: guitars, motors, tape recorders, ring modulators, analog effects, megaphone speakers, etc. Filmed by Yasunori Saito and Kyoko Saito at the New Direction for the Arts Regular Concert Vol. 69 (1, 2) and Vol. 70 (3, 4), at Jean Jean, Tokyo, August 4 and December 17, 1990. Recorded by Masaki Shimada (1, 2) an…

*2024 stock* "The opening and closing tracks from the Blazing/Freezing album on a 7" single by the genre-merging Downtown NY trio of Sam Day Harmet (mandolin), Sana Nagano (violin) and Zachary Swanson (upright bass) deconstructing Americana roots music by slicing and dicing it with jazz/improv, electronica, sample sources, and inexplicable errata." - squidco.com

Un Drame Musical Instantané were founded in 1976, featuring Jean-Jacques Birgé, Bernard Vitet and Francis Gorgé. Their aim was to promote collective musical creation, co-signing their albums, which they consider as artworks in themselves, or their live shows which they tried to renew every time they played. Their sound was created with many influences: They borrowed their sources from rock (synthesizer player Birgé and guitarist Gorgé, both authors of the album, Défense de); jazz (trumpeter Vite…

** Edition of 500 ** Horoscope is an Occult Jazz masterpiece from 1973, never before reissued on vinyl. In 1967, Matti “Rag” Paananen decided to compose his own vision of the Western astrological signs. Each one has its own composition on the 12-song theme album that was originally released in 1973. For the compositions he studied every astrological sign and made his own interpretation of how it would sound as music. Although the compositions were already made in 1967, they weren’t recorded unti…

Joshua Abrams' second album with group from 2012, superb avant-jazz, newly remastered at Dubplates & Mastering and released in an edition of 999 copies on 180gr. vinyl.

Joshua Abrams’ first Natural Information album from 2010, superb avant-jazz, newly remastered at Dubplates & Mastering and released in an edition of 999 copies on 180gr.

Tip! 'Frijazz mot rasisme' or ‘Free Jazz Against Racism’, as you may have guessed, is a compilation of Norwegian contemporary and outsider music. There’s plenty to get your teeth stuck into here. Highlights include Sanskriti Shrestha & Andreas Wildhagen cut a percussive groove, there’s the strange processed sounds of Propan and the subversive Agnes Hvizdalek. Stitched and compiled by Anja Lauvdal and Tine Hvidsten, the set features 18 outsider Jazz burners centered around a varied and diverse ca…

To experience this music, over the relocations of time and place, is an opportunity to confront complex truths and seductive mysteries, discover the poetry in sound, and share a rare “ecstatic instant.” – Art Lange Ran Blake pianoDave Knife Fabris electric guitar (tracks 11-18)

Temporary Super Offer! Don Cherry cornet, Gato Barbieri tenors saxophone, Pharoah Sanders, tenor saxophone  & piccolo, Karl Berger vibes & piano, Henry Grimes & J.-F. Jenny-Clark double bass, Edward Blackwell drums. Following a 1964 Albert Ayler tour, trumpeter Don Cherry remained in Europe, working on new concepts of improvising based on form itself, developing his concepts with saxophonist Gato Barbieri, vibraphonist Karl Berger & bassist J.F. Jenny Clark, composing two brilliant albums: 1966'…

Together, ‘Spirits Rejoice’ and ‘Bell’s encapsulate a four month period where long-gestating ideas of Ayler’s were birthed, helping to usher in a conception of music unlike virtually anything else extant, paving the way for his own adventures of the next several years and, perhaps more importantly, providing an extremely fertile bed for a generation or two of musicians to come. – Brian Olewnick Albert Ayler’s recording career was a short one, spanning only the years 1962 – 1970, yet he went thro…

Temporary Super Offer!  We can only answer that question from an individual perspective, based upon our perception of place, and space, and time, and stimuli. Each of these categories exists within a complex of contexts – for example, there is the stimulus of personal relationships, the stimulus of our health and that of others around us, the stimulus of political events, the stimulus of work, the stimulus of art. A work of art provides an interactive opportunity to ignite our perception with th…

Temporary Super Offer! In 1908, Charles Ives wrote a work called “The Unanswered Question”. It was for the unusual instrumentation of offstage string ensemble, woodwind quartet and, most significant for our purposes here, solo trumpet. Though it was inspired, we think, by Ralph Waldo Emerson’s poem “The Sphinx”, Ives provided his own explanatory text. The trumpet asks “The Perennial Question of Existence” seven times, to which the woodwinds provide only six increasingly disordered answers, while…

Temporary Super Offer! It is surely significant that both Lovens and Stoffner use all four limbs to control their instrument. Lower limbs used principally to play bass drum and hi-hat in the case of Lovens, volume control and effects pedal for Stoffner. Right and left limbs, right and left brain hemispheres  It is not surprising that there is plenty going on in their music. “Whatever happened to the Art of the Individual?!” Han Bennink once asked rhetorically to a crowded backstage.  Well here i…

He is la giusi, I am il piera. We'll explain why we have these nicknames another time. We started rehearsing in 1996. Three years and three recordings passed before we decided to release our first CD, "19 Calefactions" Takla Rec. Since then we have never stopped seeing each other and sharing experiences and paths. As a duo we have released three more works: "Due" Z.rec., "Big Margotta" Brokenresearch, and "Nel margine" Red Toucan. We have always liked trio collaborations and we have released the…

In the second half of the eighties, I heard the duo of Charles Gayle and Peter Kowald at the Jazz Days in Novi Sad. A few years later, when Szilárd Mezei and I met, and played music together, I told him a lot about the experience that this concert had given me. I remember that the intensity, the density, the strikingly different quality of Gayle's music-making was beyond my comprehension, or even my measure. And then the world changed, and what seemed unattainable at the time became reality. A j…

This year, one of the greatest pianists of improvised music, Marilyn Crispell became the winner of the famous NEA Jazz Masters 2025 award, thus joining the ranks of such jazz wizards as, among others. in Miles Davis, Ornette Coleman, Sonny Rollins, Cecil Taylor, Dizzy Gillespie, Sun Ra, Gil Evans, Sarah Vaughan, Herbie Hancock, Chick Corea, Keith Jarrett, Muhal Richard Abrams and Anthony Braxton, with whom, by the way, Marilyn spent several years in his second great quartet. As all of us intrigu…

"The starry floor/The watery shore/Is given thee til the break of day.“ - William Blake Music records a dream in which your other body goes out for a walk with a friend or two or more and brings back things you can grasp in the real world. If the ground beneath you is water and reflects the stars you may dream you're walking on stars. One morning, the Somnambulist woke up from his dream-walk with a record in his hand and miraculously they were all there: the uncanny encounters, spooling elucubra…

Everything is True is an album of a personal and sentimental nature, where various musical styles blend, influenced by music from different cultures, contemporary, orchestral, and electronic music. The instrumentarium is equally diverse, combining acoustic, electronic, and even unconventional instruments such as lithophones or prototypes of string instruments like the bassdesmophon. This fusion creates timeless-sounding pieces with exceptional tonality. Most of the tracks on the album were recor…

A tribute to NY reedist & wind player Mark Whitecage, who passed away in March 2021, in a concert at Rochester's BopShop in 2018 by the band he is probably best known for: Nu Band, with trumpeter Thomas Heberer taking Roy Campbell's original seat, plus Lou Grassi on drums and Joe Fonda on bass, a great concert blending modern creative jazz with passionate playing and a bit of hard bop.

Último Sosiego is a collaboration between Chilean musicians Benjamín Vergara on Trumpet and Amanda Irarrazabal on Double Bass, both active South American musicians. Both artists have previously released music with the label, but this is the first project where they unite forces for a 577 record. On the album, textures, melodies and spaces draw from Chile’s extreme southern territory and soundscape, building slowly from open, sparse arrangements to the explosive, like a silent eruption of a volca…

Iconic New York music master Daniel Carter is perhaps best known for his masterful command of saxophones, trumpet, and many other instruments. However, his immense talent doesn’t just manifest through his considerable musical ability, Carter’s genius also lies in his ability to create ensembles. Daniel knows how to put just the right musicians together even when externally everything about them seems completely different. Once he’s created these groups, Daniel operates in gentle ways to guide ar…

Building off of their debut album last year, legendary musicians and 577 mainstays reunite for a second volume. As in the first, saxophonist and multi-instrumentalist Daniel Carter, pianist Leo Genovese, bassist William Parker (also playing Gralla and Shakuhachi on this album), and drummer and vocalist Francisco Mela, unite for another cosmic album. This project again draw from classic jazz arrangements, juxtaposed with a modern experimentalism and a huge range of instrumentation. Shine Hear, Vo…

Award-Winning Master Pianist Leo Genovese Releases First Solo Album with 577 Records. For over 20 years, master Pianist Leonardo Genovese has been traveling the globe playing unforgettable cosmic music for the people.  As one of 577 Records’ main collaborators, he has made many popular albums with the label.  Now they’re teaming up again for his debut solo release with the company. The dreamlike, two-track Forward features captivating abstract music that can only be described as wild, free, and …

PolyTropos / Of Many Turns is the highly-anticipated new release from influential saxophonist / composer Steve Coleman. Comprised of two live sets recorded during a tour in France, it features his band Five Elements, with long-running partners Jonathan Finlayson on trumpet and Sean Rickman on drums, with new addition Rich Brown on bass. Recorded in concert in Paris and Voiron, the performances are raw, relying on spontaneous conversions of rhythmic and tonal shapes that weave musical figures int…

‘The Susceptible Now’ is the new record by drummer and 2024 Pulitzer Prize winner Tyshawn Sorey, who on this occasion offers covers of some of his favourite tracks. With his trio consisting of Aaron Diehl on piano and Harish Raghavan on bass, Sorey continues in the wake of his masterful ‘Continuing’, a record that placed fourth in the 2023 rankings voted by over 150 jazz critics in the Francis Davis Poll and was described by The Guardian as: ‘5 stars: seething with reinventions of ancient magic.…

Zealous Angles is the first documentation of pianist/composer Matt Mitchell’s long-running trio featuring bassist Chris Tordini and drummer Dan Weiss.Pi Recordings’ not-so-secret weapon, Mitchell now has six releases as a leader or co-leader and fourteen appearances on the label. His 2024 release Illimitable (on his and Kate Gentile's Obliquity Records) was called “one of greatest albums of spontaneously composed solo piano music, ever…. a masterpiece of twenty-first century solo piano music” by…

Bassist Kim Cass is among a vanguard group of Brooklyn-based improvisors who are creating works at the leading-edge of rhythmic acuity. Levs, his debut with Pi Recordings, features pianist Matt Mitchell and drummer Tyshawn Sorey, who called Cass “a singular composer and player: the man can do things that don’t seem possible on the bass, displaying a technical command of the instrument on the level of the most celebrated virtuosic performers in any genre of music.”The compositions on Levs were in…

Unknown Rivers is bassist Luke Stewart’s debut for Pi Recordings. An omnipresent and galvanizing force on the music scene, Stewart is a leader or co-leader of such bands as Irreversible Entanglements, Exposure Quintet, Blacks’ Myths, Heart of the Ghost, and Remembrance Quintet. He is also among the most in-demand collaborators, having performed with the likes of David Murray, Nicole Mitchell, Moor Mother, Jaimie Branch, Nate Wooley, Ken Vandermark and countless others. Stewart is also a curator …