Jazz /
Motions, Vol. 2
Shinya Lin: Piano, prepared pianoFrancisco Mela: Drums
Recorded October 24, 2021 by Yushu Bao and Hao Jen Lam at Berklee College, Boston, MARecording assistants: Qi Wang, Yimu Feng, Ziyan WangMixed and mastered by Yushu Bao
The Art of Not Playing
Master pianist, New York-based, originally from Argentina, Leo Genovese, just won a grammy as a ‘Best Improvised Jazz Solo’ - an award considered by many as ‘mainstream’. This certainly did not stop his creative path, only to encourage him towards further researching creative music. His debut album ‘The Art of Not Playing’ with fellow musicians John Lockwood on bass and drummer Nat Mugavero proves it. The trio celebrates the practice of disappearing during the process of creating. Trusting the ‘…
Teiku
"Teiku arranges our unique family Passover melodies into vehicles for sonic exploration. This ancestral music, much like the tradition of Creative Music through which we interpret it, is liberation music. As its humble stewards we offer it as a call for justice for all oppressed peoples; as Jews, we decry the senseless violence, displacement, and killing perpetrated in our name." - Josh Harlow and Jonathan Barahal Taylor, bandleaders Teiku’s origin story feels almost pre-ordained. Co-leaders pi…
Words Unspoken
The album title – Words Unspoken – alludes to the instant musical understanding found by the members of this nimble quartet assembled by great British reedman John Surman. „My idea was to put together some musical ideas that would offer a collective sense of purpose but still be open enough to allow each of us to suggest other ways of developing the material together. Everything fell into place immediately. But I soon realized it wasn‘t so much the musical ideas that made it work, it was the mus…
Road To Saint Ives
*2024 stock. Deluxe packaging* "A gentle, introspective, yet adventurous solo work... The entire album is a one-man effort, from the composition to all of the instrumentation, with Surman building strata of sound over keyboard and percussion structures using bass clarinet and the soprano and bass saxophones he is known for. The resulting work communicates a unique vision and mood, unsullied by the conflicting interpretations of other performers." - Stacia Proefrock
Hellbound Train (An Anthology)
*2024 stock* Hellbound Train is a double-album retrospective from Steve Tibbetts with music selected by the US guitarist from 40 years of recordings on ECM . Neatly divided into electric and acoustic chapters, the anthology juxtaposes pieces originally featured on the albums Northern Song, Safe Journey, Exploded View, Big Map Idea, The Fall Of Us All, A Man About A Horse, Natural Causes and Life Of. With its liquid melodies and textures and hypnotic patterns and pulsations subtly influenced by…
Belonging
Tip! "Belonging is a studio album by American jazz pianist Keith Jarrett, recorded over two days in April 1974 and released on ECM later that year—the debut of Jarrett's "European Quartet", featuring saxophonist Jan Garbarek and rhythm section Palle Danielsson and Jon Christensen. Because Jarrett's contract with ABC/Impulse! prevented him from performing with the quartet under his own name, the group became known as the 'Belonging' quartet." - Wikipedia
Androide Scrip
Androide Scrip is a jazz record - not mainstream, but plain and simple: piano, drums, bass. Full stop. Influenced by artists such as The Bad Plus, E.S.T., Thom Yorke, Bush and Muse, the debut is not a pop, rock or electro album, even though it repeatedly makes use of song structures from these varieties of current music styles. Together with pianist Florian Kästner and bassist Philipp Martin, the trio led by Jörg Wähner (Apparat, Bodi Bill, The DAS) explores the possibilities in such a way that …
Berlin Baritone
*2024 stock* "Nature rejoices in simplicity. And nature is no fool, as Isaac Newton knew. A tree. A fruit. A touch. A look. A flavour that awakens memories. A sound that transports us to a foreign land and back to ourselves. Like that of Kurt Rosenwinkel and his baritone guitar on these eight, with one exception, completely improvised solo pieces. This music is much more than the skilful ordering of notes. It is intoxication and clarity, calm and movement. And because there is only one musician …
Spectral Fiction
For the first time, a compact version of Rob Mazurek's magisterial Exploding Star Orchestra – Exploding Star Orchestra/Small Unit – commits its music to CD.
Recorded live at Corbett vs. Dempsey's Chicago gallery space in March, 2023, the six-piece band featured Mazurek on trumpet, Tomeka Reid on cello, Damon Locks on voice and electronics, Angélica Sánchez on Wurlitzer, Ingebrigt Håker Flaten on bass, and Chad Taylor on drums. Spectral Fiction consists of two tracks, the deeply exploratory "Equ…
Aleksandre Kiladze's Jazz Choral
One of the rarest Georgian [Soviet] releases ever. Previously unreleased song "Borjomi Valley", new Georgian Reissue label TBILISI Records from Vodkast.
Smash And Grab
When Ballister hit the stage at the Catalytic Sound Festival in Chicago in December 2022, no one in the band was quite sure what to expect. Although they’d done a two-week tour of the US in April of that year, their first reunion following an almost three-year break due to the pandemic, you never know what might happen after several months apart. Sometimes that first gig is magic. And sometimes it swims around searching for a center. That’s just a danger of the art form.
But drummer Paal Nilssen…
Un Exceso de Luz
Ensamble Acústico was conceived in the early 1980s by Billy Pereyra and Eduardo Roland in Blancarena, a resort on the coast of the Río de la Plata, east of Colonia, Uruguay. In 1989, after only a few performances, the duo released their first and only album: a cassette of eight songs titled ‘Un Exceso De Luz’ (‘An Excess of Light’), co-released by independent labels Perro Andaluz (Uruguay) and Circe (Argentina). Despite being limited to just 500 copies the album was critically acclaimed and laud…
Jodo
*2023 stock* Takehiro Honda joins forces with Reggie Workman on bass and Motohiko Hino on drums in this outstanding trio session. The album showcases a freer side of Honda, exploring open and lyrical modes that were gaining prominence in Japan during that period. Despite the freedom, a strong rhythmic sense prevails. While one track features Honda on electric piano, the acoustic numbers stand out with a proud and righteous energy.
Rainbow Revisited
I travelled to Los Angeles and the USA for the first time in 2019. Although I had not met Carlos Niño in person, we connected via Instagram where he saw a video of me playing a piano motif (titled ‘The One’ in this sequence) that he really liked and expressed a wish to record. This was around 2017. We tried a few times to get me over to Los Angeles, but the timing was always off. Through a performance organised by a creative collective called The Nonsemble at The Ford Theatre we finally got the…
Murmuration Without End
Murmuration Without End is a collection of rhythmic studies by producer, composer, percussionist & multi-instrumentalist Ben Lumsdaine. Whereas the tracks began as meditative synth drones recorded by Lumsdaine when quarantined in the basement studio of his friend’s home, over time they became multi-textural, poly-rhythmic sound worlds as he disrupted the meters and pulses implied by the synths’ inherent modulations with each instrumental layer added. He also enlisted guest musicians to help him …
Enraku's Playboy Chapter 12 - The Playboy's Manual
*Limited Edition* This late '60s Japanese "Playboy Manual" features a sexy cover and a unique format. Each track begins with Japanese spoken segments from Norio Maeda, possibly on seduction, followed by groovy instrumental music. The blend of jazz and easy modes, with romping piano, blasting horns, and mod rhythms, makes it a stylish and lively record.
Flash
*Limited Edition* This trio, led by drummer Motohiko Hino and featuring Masahiko Satoh on piano and Nobuyoshi Ino on bass, delivers truly unique work that transcends the typical piano trio conventions of its time. The trio breaks open the format with their creative exploration on the album. Satoh's piano work initially leans towards lyricism before expanding, while Ino's bass rolls and dips with its own beautiful sense of melody. Hino's drumming diverges far from a straight rhythm, often adding …
First Flight
*Limited Edition* This Japanese trio session from the 70s is precisely the kind of record that has us exploring this era so fervently. Filled with warm, soulful sounds, inventive changes, and engaging rhythms, the album maintains a subtle funk undercurrent without overpowering the best lyrical lines of pianist Kichiro Sugino. The trio, featuring Kishio Kitahara on bass and Mitsaki Katayama on drums, is perfectly synchronized, soaring elegantly throughout the record, living up to the "flight" in …
Valencia
*Limited Edition* Percussionist Masahiko Togashi collaborates with the exceptional piano accompaniment of Takashi Kako in a unique and captivating musical journey. Kako's piano work, marked by a distinctive sense of touch and tone, complements Togashi's drumming. Kako's ability to extract guitar-like sounds from the piano, characterized by an airy chromatic quality, adds a warm and poetic dimension to the moments of freer improvisation on the record. While the music remains rooted in free jazz, …