Jazz & Improvisation / Cosmic

What can be said about Don Cherry that hasn’t been said? He was a musical bridge between countless cultures - a titan of the avant-garde and jazz - one of the great, visionary voices of 20th century music for whom there was, and remains, no equivalent. A giant. Like Miles, Ayler, Mingus, Bird, Dizzy, Trane, Ornette, and Pharaoh, the power of his voice carved such a deep path that, more than half a century after he first emerged on the scene, you can still fear the earth shake.With this in hand, …

The planets align this October as the mighty Sun Ra Arkestra, under the direction of the maestro Marshall Allen, release their first studio album in over twenty years, ‘Swirling’. Recorded at Rittenhouse Soundworks in Philadelphia, the new recording represents the continuation of a heartfelt rebirth of the Arkestra under Allen’s guidance since Sun Ra left the planet in 1993, gaining new generations of followers from their regular touring across the globe. With a big band line-up featuring long-s…

Tip! **350 copies, to be released on 30.05.2020** Second release from Finland’s finest underground jazz collective, four new tracks in the same spiritual-energetic playful bag we dig! Limited edition 10", comes numbered and with download code insert.

Klondike's respectfully packaged edition of Sun Ra's legendary appearance at the Chicago Free Jazz Festival in 1988 pays homage to Ra's exuberant torment combined with the flamboyant weight of the Solar Arkestra and performing some of his most impressionist and avant-garde works

**edition of 200 copies** To be considered a twin release of the previous For Ornette 7". The single consists of two more short tracks - taken from the same Hayyam session - where the five-piece goes bebop, building some rhythmic and harmonic complexity filled by solo virtuosisms of core-members Korhan Futacı (saxophone) and Umut Çağlar (electric guitar).

**2019 stock, reduced price** Big Jim Sullivan was a well-known session musician in his time and was asked by many bands including The Who, The Rolling Stones, The Animals, Lulu, The Kinks to name just a few. Going to a music school must have been a novel idea as Big Jim had been playing guitar on sessions since 1957, resulting in his presence on more UK hits than anyone else. He studied with a famous Indian sitar player who gave Jim the necessary insight to be a creditable player. The result wa…

Edition of 300 copies, newly remastered for optimal sound.The meeting of Masahiko Sato with Albert Mangelsdorff in a recording studio was planned in summer ‘71. Sato, Japan’s leading pianist, had recorded with Wolfgang Dauner, Attila Zoller, Jean-Luc Ponty, Gary Peacock and Charles Mingus. He wanted to play on a record with Albert Mangelsdorff and as both were invited for the Berlin Jazz Festival 1971 there was a good opportunity to record them there. This – first released as an original ENJA pr…

A compilation of poems by the jazz musician and poet Sun Ra, in a bilingual edition (English / Spanish). The adventure began in a library that looks like a spaceship, next to a monument in the shape of a burned marshmallow that celebrates the first atomic reaction generated by humans. A plaque in the monument suggests that the powerful energy should be used for beneficial purposes. Inside this lunar library is the Special Collections Centre at the University of Chicago, that keeps the archive of…

Original cosmonaut Sun Ra was one of the jazz world’s most individual and eccentric talents. Born Herman “Sonny” Blount in Alabama in 1914, he became Sun Ra during the 1950s, proclaiming that he was born on Saturn and focusing on outer space due to what he saw as the perpetual faults and failures of mankind on earth. Pursuing an unorthodox musical method which meant that no two recordings nor performances were ever alike, he persued various incarnations of his Arkestra throughout the decades. Th…

**2019 stock, reduced price** Still riding high from Listen Here, Eddie Harris really started experimenting here with a dazzlingly eclectic LP that must have left his new fans wondering just who the real Eddie Harris was. There is good old Latinized funk in the opening cuts, Free at Last and 1974 Blues, but what was one to make of the next one, Smoke Signals, with its interplanetary Echoplexed electric sax and ethereal wordless female voices? Then it's on to a long-limbed Coltrane tribute on pia…

Featuring some of the most innovative players from Beirut, Cairo and Istanbul, Karkhana met for the first time in Beirut in 2014, bringing together influences from the three major experimental music scenes of the region and beyond. Through their live shows, the band’s seven multi-instrumentalists build a transcendental atmosphere developing what could possibly be called Free Middle Eastern music. Shades and traces of shaabi, tarab, sufi and much more are heard in the distinct blend of free jazz …

My Favorite Things October 14, 1977 presents a superb collection of tracks recorded by the great Sun Ra and his Arkestra at the Variety Recording Studio, NYC. One of the rarely heard documents of the El Saturn label of the ‘70s, these recordings catch Sun Ra and John Gilmore firmly in the foreground, especially when performing on masterly interpretations of John Coltrane’s My Favorite Things and Nat King Cole’s Nature Boy. The performance shows that both are capable of masterfully reflecting the…

Musicism is the core concept of transcultural artistic research that rose to prominence at the beginning of the 80s thanks to the ingenious mind of Karlton Hester. Composer, flautist and saxophonist Hester set himself as the promoter of a multidisciplinary idea in which musicians, visual artists and poets collaborate in a synergic manner to produce new art forms. Hesterian Musicism is an avant-garde spiritual jazz record composed and issued by Hester on his San Francisco based label Hesteria in …

Pan-African manifesto It's Nation Time — African Visionary Music, out of print since 1972, is available once again via Motown. A poet, writer, theater director, activist and more whose career spanned five decades, Imamu Amiri Baraka (born LeRoi Jones) fearlessly vouched for racial equality until his passing in 2014. For It's Nation Time, his first album, Baraka was backed by many threads of African-American musical expression, including a funk band led by James Mtume and a free jazz quartet feat…

Killer! Seminal and much sought after Afro Jazz session recorded in Paris in 1979 featuring Senegalese percussionist Cheikh Tidian, produced by Jean-Paul Rodrigue for his cult Freelance label. The session features saxophone player Jo Maka - leader of the Celestial Communication Orchestra but perhaps best known for his work with Angolan singer Bonga - and regular Steve Lacy collaborator Bobby Few, in a Parisian answer to Black Jazz and Strata East. A Brilliant leftfield spiritual jazz release fr…

**First ever CD reissue, containing three Pathways session recordings left off the original, one never before issued** Intrinsic energies of mythic worlds! Pathways was originally issued on LP in 1975 as part of Sun Ra’s ill-fated and short-lived ABC/Impulse! partnership. This Modern Harmonic edition has been exquisitely mastered from the four-track session reel. The Impulse! LP was formatted as “Quad Compatible”—short for “quadraphonic”—which you could enjoy if you had four speakers, a custom q…

**Completely sold-out at source, few copies avaialble** Cymbals has finally landed… and brought a 2nd saucer with it! Originally recorded for the Impulse! jazz label in ’73, Cymbals makes its first legitimate release on vinyl, paired with a second LP of unheard material from the same sessions. Hear Sun Ra’s Baroque soundscapes, electrolytic clusters and dithering Moogs catalyze images of monoliths, space stations, computers malfunctioning and galaxies imploding on pristine red and green vinyl wi…

Recorded in 1973, “Morning Flight” by trombonist Hiroshi Fukumura is a stunning modal and spiritual jazz album! Genius work from Japanese trombonist Hiroshi Fukumura – working here at the helm of a twin-trombone group that also features the talents of Shigeharu Mukai – in a style that's filled with soul and free-thinking imagination! The two players work together beautifully here – avoiding any of the cliches of trombone-heavy groups from the past – and instead, using the open-ended Three Blind …

2012 Release. 80 Minutes of previously unreleased recordings from 1969-70, not to be found on the tenor player's regular "Moshi" album. Dark and trance-like amalgam of Afro-blues, acid-rock jams, polyphonic rhythms and spiritual jazz influences from the likes of Coltrane or Sanders. Recorded 1969-1970 in Africa by Barney Wilen on Nagra (Stereo/ Mono). Unreleased archive sounds, transferred on Telefunken and Nagra from original tapes found in the estate of Barney Wilen. Moshi: trance utterance by…

"FPE Records is thrilled to release Intergalactic Beings, Nicole Mitchell's second avant-jazz suite based on the Xenogenesis novels of Octavia Butler, recorded live on April 30, 2010, at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago. Black Earth Ensemble features a cast of Chicago's most respected players and improvisers. This is their eighth album, and their first to see release on vinyl."

From deep within the Australian Outback comes Yaraandoo, the 40,000 year-old sound of antediluvian Aboriginal folklore channeled through Mellotron, hypnotic washes of Moog oscillations, Bamboo flutes and tape delay. Welcome to the unearthed, unheard of and indefinable genre of Australian Dreamtime Psych. Re-presented for the first time, The Roundtable announces a much-anticipated reissue of this mythical Australian Lo-fi concept recording composed by Jazz guitarist Rob Thomsett. Working in a …

**Very Last Copies - Original 1983 copies of this obscure classic, slightly warped** few copies available. Over the last decade we’ve begun to form an image of Italy’s long neglected musical avant-garde. This movement, with artifacts stretching from the mid-1960’s to today, remained landlocked for decades, almost entirely unheard beyond the country of its birth. With a small number of exceptions, despite the remarkable creative diversity reissue culture has managed to represent, the majorit…

The holy grail for Sun Ra collectors and fans, his original album previously released on Jackpot, with Tip-on Gatefold Jacketand Transparent Blue Colored Vinyl and an album that forever gave them a slogan to live by! The record's different than some of the other Arkestra work from the time – in that it's a bit tighter and more spiritual, more in keeping with the style of the Blue Thumb label, for which it was recorded – and soaring along on a wave of post-Coltrane spiritual jazz enthusiasm…

**Gatefold double 180g vinyl LP, with 12" booklet of liner notes and photos**Industrial Records presents the much-anticipated two album release Desertshore/The Final Report, a unique collaboration by Chris Carter, Peter "Sleazy" Christopherson, and Cosey Fanni Tutti. This is a two album release celebrating both the progress inherent in change and the fulfillment of two exceptional, yet separate projects. The Desertshore project is a "re-imagined" cover version of Nico's seminal 1970 album, f…

RESTOCKED! april 2009 release: deluxe reissue of emeralds long o/p august 2007 gods of tundra tape, a production-value-heavy edition consisting of two lps (each in their own metallic-ink inner sleeve) housed inside a full-color stoughton gatefold sleeve ; yowza ...for many the original cassette release was the one that made emeralds’ unique combination of stasis-heavy analogue synth wave-shifting stick (certainly was the one that “did it” for me) ; this majestic record-object does everything to …

Editions Mego present one longform exploratory performance from Sunn 0)))'s Stephan O'Malley, recorded in Paris during the winter of 2006 and recently excavated, revamped, and mastered at Piethopraxis in Köln. The first in a series of three cassette releases for EMego, the 40+ minutes of 'Cocon & Oiseau De Nuit' are similar in form to his 'Keep An Eye Out' LP for Table Of The Elements and the 'Salt' album for iDEAL recordings, wresting the blackest sub-harmonics and inherent micro-tonal s…

'Returnal' is the fourth album from Daniel Lopatin's Oneohtrix Point Never project, after 'Betrayed In The Octagon' (Deception Island, 2007), ÔZones Without People' (Arbor, 2009) and 'Russian Mind' (No Fun, 2009). All 3 albums being superbly compiled on the 'Rifts' double CD set (No Fun, 2009). It sees Lopatin fine tune his craft for creation of deep atmospheres and texture even further. Starting off with the mind blowing triptych of 'Nil Admiari'-'Describing Bodies'-'Stress Waves', which …

III is as immediate as a truck with failed brakes crashing through your living room wall. The third and final installment of a trilogy entitled Ceremony, its opening moments rage and wail, with distorted guitars pulling out in front of the drums like hellhounds that have slipped their master's leash. But this isn't a mono-dimensional freak-out. Smith paces himself, pulling back into brooding drones and pensive picking before lashing out once more. As befits a journey that's taken three di…

Chapter Seven, Bengt Berger’s Swedish supergroup of three saxophones, two basses and two drummers, on its 1988 Jazz in Sweden album: West African and Indian accents, with tunes by Ornette Coleman and Offenbach.

2412 South Western Avenue, Los Angeles. A mansion the Arkestra members had taken over for communal living. They called it the Great House. In the late 1970s, Michael Session - the Pan-Afrikan Peoples Arkestra's tenorist - brought a young pianist named Kaeef Ruzadun Ali through the front door. "When I walked in there," Kaeef recalled, "it was like this whole rush came over me, just from going in the front door. It was like a very, very warm feeling of love. I went and I came out with 'Flashback o…

Flesh and Bones is the latest release from drummer, composer, and poet William Hooker. The album marks his third full length effort for Org Music, following “Big Moon” (2021) and “Symphonie of Flowers” (2019). Hooker has also referred to the new work as his “Black Lives Suite”, a multi-disciplinary event which uses music and poetry to address the social issues of the times. Recorded at NYU Steinhart Studios, the recording features fellow New York based players Ras Moshe, Charles Burnham, On Davi…

Carried by a blast of pure joy comes Black Sweat’s latest LP, the self-titled debut by the mysterious Milan based ensemble Fusione. Channeling free and spiritual jazz, funk, and a globally minded ear, all carried by heavy dose of druggy psychedelic experimentalism, it’s one of the most exciting sonic journeys that we’ve taken all year.

Includes three albums:   MJJ423CP - Eternal Now (LP, Pink)   MJJ424CB - Brown Rice (LP, Brown)   MJJ425CY - Hear And Now (LP, Yellow)

Alika Rising is a precious, 1989 recording from what may not necessarily be the “best” version of Kahil El’Zabar’s Ritual Trio, if such a thing could be said to exist. This is, after all, art. Yet, this may be the most iconic, or at least formative version. Kahil, with Ari Brown and the late, great Malachi Favors. Over 50 minutes, for three extended improvisations in which the artists with deep understandings of each other reached for that moment. That transcendent moment in which all three find…

Recorded in 1978, In The Midst Of Chaos is this western CT free-jazz group's only release. It would become improv jazz sax player Paul Flaherty's 1st record, who, as a youth, was smitten by the world, it's creator and Pharoah Sanders. Chaos is also the only release of legendary guitarist Barry Greika, who, along with bassist Bob Laramie and drummer Glen 'Hobbit' Peterson, remain the most under - recorded trio in history. A screamin', howlin', blisterin', slap of a record that defies categorizati…

2015 release. Strut follow up their hugely successful Marshall Allen - curated ‘In The Orbit Of Ra’ compilation with a newly curated set from the immense 125 LP back catalogue of jazz maverick, DIY philosopher and self-professed member of an “angel race”, Sun Ra. ‘To Those Of Earth… And Other Worlds’ is a hand-picked selection from BBC 6Music / Worldwide DJ Gilles Peterson, long-time champion of Ra’s music and the UK’s leading tastemaker for jazz-based sounds. It serves as perhaps the best intro…

On Tragedy & Geometry, Steve Hauschildt, one-third of Cleveland’s neo-kosmische revivalists Emeralds, crafts an hour’s worth of instrumental synthesizer vignettes. His pieces tend to evoke thoughts of bygone eras of technological pop culture — many of these tracks could be placed seamlessly into Blade Runner, or into some lost Playstation-era (you know, when Final Fantasy VII was cutting edge) videogame. Hauschildt doesn’t craft wholly formed songs so much as he works with detached, technologica…

In recent years, Boston has become an epicenter for some of the best experimental music emerging out of the USA. A native of Brazil, Ricardo Donoso has floated under the radar until recently, but has become an integral piece of the Boston puzzle. Not only is he half of the exquisite Perispirit and the brains behind the Semata label, but he's also a member of avant-metal outfit, Ehnare. Donoso's previous two solo efforts were both cassettes (on Digitalis and Razors & Medicine, respectively) bu…