Jazz & Improvisation / Avant-Garde Jazz

An album of piano / drums duets that Louis named for his beloved, and now tragically departed, wife Mpumi. The recordings took place in London in September, 1995, though the album was not actually released until 2002. "Louis Moholo-Moholo, Son of the soil, has embarked on this musical journey with two of South Afrika's treasures - pianists Mervyn Africa and Pule Pheto. The third Pianist being his old favourite and friend, Keith Tippett. Louis's vibrant, warm and marvellous sounds celebrate the m…

Ogun presents From Granite to Wind by Keith Tippett Octet. A 2011 CD release (currently out of print) on the Ogun label, recorded by the Octet at the Real World Studios on 30/31 January of that year. "Keith Tippett has been one of the UK's most inventive solo improvisers and composers since the 1970s, and this continuous-performance suite is a fine representation of those skills. It's a framework for the impressionistic poetry of his vocalist wife Julie Tippett, and the sax-playing of four fine …

Ogun presents For the Blue Notes, Louis Moholo-Moholo's 8-piece Unit recorded live at the Theatre Manzoni in Milan, Italy, on 4 March 2012.

This famous recording previously released as an LP now on CD with extra music launched the Ogun label. Recorded live at the Willisau Jazz Festival, Sept. 1974. Chris McGregor's Brotherhood of Breath big band was exciting packed audiences throughout Europe, and needed an outlet provided by this new label, home of the South African family. The cover was designed by Niklaus Troxler with sleeve notes by Val Wilmer. Recorded live at Willisau, Switzerland, 27 January 1973 by Roland Janz. Edited and re…

King Crimson/Soft Machine alumnus Mark Charig played in Keith Tippett's group and Centipede big band, and here on his sole Ogun album Keith and vocalist Ann Winter formed a trio to create a gem of free improvisation. Recorded over two cold days in January 1977, in a Bristol church, it was released on LP as OG 710, then reissued in 2010 on CD (OGCD033) with an extra previously unreleased track.

Ogun presents Coxhill on Ogun by Lol Coxhill. Packaged in a double-gated cardboard sleeve including a short biography of Lol Coxhill, portrait photo and visuals on inner panels. Artwork [Inside Etching] – Claire Coxhill. Artwork [Inside Painting] – Stephen Cochrane. Executive Producer – Hazel Miller. Layout – David Ilic. Mastered By [CD Mastering] – Shawn. Photography [Portrait] – An Italian Friend. Soprano Saxophone, Producer – Lol Coxhill. Visuals: "Diverse" illustration (front) from Victorian…

Precious artefacts from the Miller family's box of tapes. This album presents three tracks recorded in London (1973) with a line up of Harry Miller, Louis Moholo-Moholo, Chris McGregor, Mike Osborne, Nick Evans. Four more tracks come from a French festival (1976) with Miller, Moholo-Moholo and Osborne joined by Keith Tippett, Mark Charig and Malcolm Griffiths.

**300 copies** After two critically acclaimed albums with the Japanese avantgarde / noise icon Keiji Haino, Konstrukt return with a new inspiring collaborative mind: Ken Vandermark, who for three decades now has been a highly prolific musician in contemporary jazz and free improvisation. With various groups like NRG Ensemble, Spaceways Inc., The Vandermark 5, Made To Break and his latest project Marker or the Peter Brötzmann Chicago Tentet (to name just a few) and various spontaneous collaborati…

** AAA Transfers from analogue mastertapes. Audiophile-grade vinyl – single one-off batch limited-edition pressing. New artwork authentically recreated on heavyweight gloss sleeves. Cut at Abbey Road Studios by Grammy award winning engineer, Sean Magee. Manufactured at Pallas Group GmbH, Germany. Metallic hype sticker **  Through the combination of Dave Pike’s vibes and Volker Kriegel’s exploratory electric, acoustic guitar and sitar stylings, The Dave Pike Set was a visionary quartet with a uni…

** 2021 Stock ** The young Paul Bley earned his spurs playing with legends including Charles Mingus, Art Blakey, Chet Baker, Jimmy Giuffre, Ornette Coleman and Bill Evans. As the 1960s progressed, he increasingly embraced the avant-garde, with arguably his greatest successes coming in the piano trio format. Originally broadcast on Nordewestradio in the autumn of 1966, and featuring material by Bley and his wife Carla, this fiery set typifies his approach at the time, and is accompanied by backgr…

** 2021 Stock ** Solo is a solo album by American jazz saxophonist Roscoe Mitchell which was recorded in 2003 and released on Mutable Music as a three CD set. Disc one, titled "Tech Ritter and the Megabytes," is the most varied and interesting of the set. Released by itself, it would have a claim as Mitchell's best solo effort ... This CD offers a compelling balance between composition and improvisation, long and short, abstract and melodic. The second disc, titled "Solar Flares," is entirely de…

First-ever American CD edition of this lost classic, recorded "live" during ESP's 1966 New York State College Tour. The "piano harp" credit is Burton Greene's way of noting that he plays inside the piano, directly on the strings – the first jazz pianist to do so on record, taking a page from avant-gardist Henry Cowell's book. In his notes to the original LP, included complete in this reissue, Greene writes, "The tour found people largely unexposed to this music. They were often shaken up. Some w…

** Two LPs (Border Crossing + Marcel's Muse) on one CD, in a six-panel digisleeve ** Reissue (from 2004) of the two Mike Osborne albums released by Ogun on LP format now together on CD: 'Border Crossing', featuring the renowned Trio with Louis Moholo and Harry Miller, recorded live at the famous Peanuts Club in Bishopsgate, London, in 1974, and 'Marcel's Muse' recorded in 1977. "Uneven and raw, but full of unflinching magic and flinty beauty." - John Fordham, The Guardian

The title of Horace Tapscott's debut release is apt, if not self-referential, for indeed a giant of West Coast jazz had awakened with this, the pianist / composer / bandleader's 1969 album for the Flying Dutchman label. Tapscott went on to form two groups crucial to the flowering of modern jazz in the Los Angeles area, the Pan Afrikan Peoples Arkestra (or P.A.P.A.; the name is an homage to Tapscott's predecessor and peer, Sun Ra), which eventually became part of a larger umbrella organization, U…

Astral Spirit presents Nights on Saturn (Communication) by [Ahmed]. Recorded live at Cafe OTO, London, December 5th, 2019. Recording: Shaun Cook. Mixing: Billy Steiger. Mastering: Mikey Young. Inner-sleeve text: ' Origins Revisited' by Pat Thomas (2004). Cover photo of Ahmed Abdul-Malik at the Cabana Club, New York City, 1965. "The journey of self-discovery, communing with the eternal sound. A musician steeped in multiple worlds; oceans apart yet closely connected in ancestral memory. Musicians …

If there was one sound guaranteed to shock in British jazz during 1966 it was that of the Spontaneous Music Ensemble, the free-improvising collective centred around drummer John Stevens which that year helped establish London’s Little Theatre Club as a stronghold of the ‘new wave’. Although the avant-garde were slow in gaining a toe-hold on British jazz tastes, every so often a grass roots jazz club would take a chance on the new style, such as the night in June 1966 when the SME alighted on Gre…

** 2021 Repress ** A great reunion of the Jeff Parker/Rob Mazurek duo – a pair who've only continued to grow strongly in the years since their Chicago Underground classics – and who bring all that sense of energy to play in their music! The sounds here represent the deeper, more mature styles that both musicians have hit – a way of almost being more powerful by being less aggressive – especially from Mazurek, who's got this wonderfully gentle touch on his horn at times – wrapped up in these wave…

Endless Happiness presents Kulu Sè Mama by John Coltrane. Reissue for this classic album from '67 on Orange Impulse Rec. Considered to be the last Coltrane's lifetime release it includes the all-time classic "Welcome", as defined by Coltrane himself as the song is that feeling you have when you finally do reach an awareness, an understanding which you have earned through struggle. It is a feeling of peace. A welcome feeling of peace."

**CD edition** Fire! Orchestra tracking new paths and reaching new levels of excellence, still honoring their 12-year-old vow of presenting a fresh approach to improvised music. Their debut album, You Liked Me Five Minutes Ago, was released in 2009 to wide international acclaim. "The basic strategy of pairing the expressive energy of free jazz with a sturdy sense of groove has yielded something potent and self-contained" --New York Times. Between this and Defeat there´s been five albums, includi…

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…

One more step into the eclectic world of Krzystof Komeda. This is the second Naked Lunch release dedicated to the music of the great late Polish pianist and film music composer. An outstanding compilation based on Komeda's early production featuring a variety of live and radio recordings between 1957 and 1962. Four different line ups including the Komeda trio, quartet and sextet, plus another quartet shared with tenor sax player Bernt Rosengren. A bunch of true pioneers for Jazz in Eastern Europ…

If you thought that Rafael Toral’s quartet was named after some reference to Sun Ra’s spatial jazz, here is the confirmation that there’s much more at stake than that, even if the many allusions to the Saturn envoy are also true. Space is the valorization of pauses, interstices, a certain measure of expression and narrative, a way to create transparencies and, most of all, a return to a human dimension, aware of its heart beating, its organic, silent thinking/ inner living of bodily functions. I…

Clean Feed presents Nature Hath Painted the Body by Jonas Cambien Trio. André Roligheten  soprano and tenor saxophone, bass clarinet | Andreas Wildhagen  drums | Jonas Cambien  piano (soprano saxophone on track 4, organ on tracks 6, 11). Belgian-born, Oslo-based pianist Jonas Cambien couldn’t have chosen better partners than Andreas Wildhagen and André Roligheten to perform his cleverly constructed compositions. On its third studio album, his trio shows itself as a tightly interacting ensemble, …

"Alternative Fox present a reissue of Archie Shepp's The Tradition, originally released in 1978. Avant-garde giant Archie Shepp made an indelible contribution to experimental jazz. Double-LP The Tradition was recorded in Rome in 1977 for Horo Records with drummer Clifford Jarvis and bassist Cameron Brown; the raucous Hooray For Mal has shades of be-bop, while Duke Ellington's Sophisticated Lady is largely tackled by Shepp on upright piano (with gorgeous soloing by Brown); Things Have Got To Chan…

** 2021 Stock ** Alternative Fox presents Live at Berliner Jazztage, Berlin, November 6, 1971. A legendary show from the Miles Davis Group recorded from SWR in Germany in 1971, and featuring a breath-taking line-up including no less than Keith Jarrett on electric piano and organ. Live at Berliner Jazztage in Berlin on November 6, 1971.

** Limited Grey Marbled edition ** Sdban Records presents Utopic Cities: Progressive Jazz in Belgium 1968-1979 featuring twelve essential compositions from a highly creative period in Belgian jazz. The release follows Sdban's critically acclaimed Let's Get Swinging: Modern Jazz in Belgium 1950-1970, released back in 2017. Utopic Cities is an eclectic selection of forward-thinking jazz from the Belgian underground, including the left-field fusion of Marc Moulin's Placebo, Koen De Bruyne and Solis…

** In process of Stocking. 2021 Stock ** Cadillac presents Don't Worry 'Bout Me by Bobby Wellins Quartet. Recorded At – The Vortex Jazz Club, Stoke Newington, London 16 Feb 1996. Tenor Saxophone, Bobby Wellins, Piano – Graham Harvey, Bass – Alec Dankworth, Drums – Martin Drew, Engineer, Mixed By – Dave Bernez, Mixed By – Victor Schonfield, Dave Bernez, Bobby Wellins, Producer – John Jack for Cadillac Music & Publishing with financial assistance from Shirley Thompson, Photos by Kent Matthews and …

** In process of Stocking. 2021 Stock ** Cadillac presents The Last Night At The Old Place by Mike Westbrook Concert Band, recorded at Ronnie Scott’s Old Place 25 May 1968. Exactly 50 years on, a unique event featuring the music of the most exciting British jazz group of its time in full swing, released for the first time. Remembering John Jack
 Mike Osborne, Harry Miller, Paul Rutherford. So many good things were contained within the Mike Westbrook Concert Band of 1968 that it’s hard to know wh…

Unbelievable new compilation of deep spiritual music by John Coltrane, Charles Mingus, Oliver Nelson, Pharoah Sanders, Archie Shepp and other groundbreaking Impulse Artists.

"A primal force of something... real. I have listened back and forth to the new album of Anna Högberg's “Attack” numerous times now and it hit me like a split axe in a split second: this music is for real! Wham Bam! This is liberating music. Allowing music. It hits me just as the split axe hits the wood. Without hesitation, but still very sensitive. Pure power does not cut the wood automatically. No fancy flirts with post-this and post-that. Just the force. Of itself. This music is definitely co…

Roland Dahinden's first release of his own compositions, the two parts of Free Lines, with his readings of Coltrane's Naima and Braxton's Composition 136, joined by Anthony Braxton, bassist Joe Fonda and drummer Art Fuller.

2020 stock. 2014 release. One of the most celebrated folks in improvised music, Swedish saxophonist Mats Gustafsson made three ultra-limited edition vinyl LPs, each featuring a different dedication to a favorite musician from the past. Released in batches of 99, these records found Gustafsson playing compositions by Duke Ellington, Albert (and his brother Donald) Ayler, and the important post-bop baritone player Lars Gullin. Long out-of-print, these priceless slabs of free music have quickly bec…

Superb performance recorded in Paris, March 1967, and broadcast on French radio station ORTF.From the very beginning, Los Angeles-raised Don Cherry (1936) displayed an anti-virtuoso attitude that contrasted with the ruling dogmas of jazz music. Cherry shunned both acrobatic exhibitions and radical experiments in favor of humility and pathos (thus appealing more to the rock crowd than to the jazz crowd). His style focused on the idiosyncratic timbres of his pocket trumpet and on languid phrases t…

In 2002 Misha Mengelberg was invited for the second time to the AngelicA Festival in Bologna. That edition, the twelfth, took part entirely in a squatted social centre of the city, and, in collaboration with Tristan Honsinger, was conceived as one large opera lasting six days – an opera within which the performances of many national and international artists fitted in like individual mobile “modules”. Especially for this occasion and on the festival director’s suggestion, who had attended a perf…

** Edition of 103 hand-numbered copies. Gold vinyl ** Pianist and composer Alice Coltrane shimmers on a set of her original tunes and honors the legacy of her husband, saxophonist John Coltrane. She also duets with host Marian McPartland in Trane's "Giant Steps" and "Miles' Mode". Coltrane opens the program with two of her compositions: "Transfiguration" and "Prema". Her skill as a harpist is reflected in the sparkling, light treble notes of her right hand; with the other hand, she brings the br…

This previously unreleased limited edition legendary live concert, CJQ 'The Black Hole,' 180 Gram 2xLP Gatefold vinyl of 1000 copies was remastered from the original reel to reel master tapes. The original artwork has been restored and includes the original design sketches for the album. Due to the unpredictability nature of live recordings, there is some noise distortion that we tried earnestly to fix! - 180 Proof Records

"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 Vit…

**Numbered edition of 100. 2021 Stock** Silent Water presents November 16, 2014, a live performance by Manuel Mota: electric guitar, Giovanni Di Domenico: Fender Rhodes, and Tatsuhisa Yamamoto: drums. Recorded at Zuiderpershuis, Antwerp, on november 16th, 2014. Recorded by Koen Vandenhoudt. Mixed by Giovanni Di Domenico. Mastered by Frederic Alstadt.

Trost presents Music of Inevitable Sounds by Luc Ex, recorded in Bologna, Teatro San Leonardo and Den Haag, Korzo, 2018. Mixed by Mika Szafrowski, mastered by Martin Siewert. Joost Buis - trombone, Saartje van Camp - cello, Luc Ex - ac. bass, Renato Ferierra - bass/tenor sax, Pepe Garcia - percussion, Yedo Gibson - reeds, Nora Mulder - piano, Mika Szafrowski - guitar, Veryan Weston - piano/keystation, Nina Hitz - cello, Vladislav Psaruk - trombone.

Restocked, very last copies ** Private edition, limited to 107 hand-numbered copies ** Broadcast from SWR, recorded at 10th Deutsches Jazzfestival Frankfurt, Germany, on March 24, 1968.  This is is Cherry at his absolute best, encountering him with a stellar line up comprised of Don Cherry (tpt, cnt, bamboo fl); Steve Lacy (ss); Karl Berger (vb, p); Kent Carter (b); Jacques Thollot (d). This live set captures a pitch perfect image of his roving, restless and ambitious creative mind – an artist p…