Jazz /
Invite Your Eye
With drummer Kenny Wollesen (Tom Waits, John Zorn, Norah Jones) and Dave Harrington (of electronic duo Darkside) guitar/bass/electronics, New York-based Swedish/Turkish saxophonist, composer, club-label owner Ilhan Ersahin captures the vibe of impromptu, cross-pollinating, and heavily grooving late-night jam sessions at Nublu, his “East Village Club where everything goes” (New York Times).
The telepathy and intuition that flows between these three musicians is one that has developed over many ye…
Concept Of Freedom
2005 release ** "Recorded at the Institut fur Elektronische Musik und Akustik in Graz, Austria during the first week of August 2003, Anthony Braxton's (+ Duke Ellington) Concept of Freedom is a dazzling exercise in collective creativity. Braxton does not perform on this recording. Neither does Ellington, for that matter. Both men and their substantial accomplishments are honored and invoked by a quartet of skilled improvisers. These are trombonist Roland Dahinden, pianist Hildegard Kleeb, violin…
Drum Sketches
2007 release ** "Susie Ibarra is a percussionist, but she doesn’t hit you over the head with the fact. Rather, her powerfully delicate, insistent sounds seem to emanate from the landscape of drums and tuned gongs by themselves. Drum Sketches, Ibarra’s first solo CD following several Tzadik ensemble releases, is inspired by various images and sounds of her native Philippines. Among her glowing array of percussion are tuned bronze Kulintang gongs and a Surunay xylophone that blend with field recor…
Monumental
1991 release ** "Combining rhythic rock strength with the unrestrainable consequence of free improvisation. In the course of playing, amazingly sharp contours arise. There is no expression for style that can describe this audacious mixture of precision and imagination. Music as a celebration of the moment with the undertone of euphoria, reflection, pure desire and wild anger. Mobile architecture, movable sounds, moving and hair-raisingly beautiful. Jon Rose: Cello, Violin, Keyboards - Peter Holl…
Nightmare Alley
1993 release ** "The leading New York avant jazz harpist has appeared on hundreds of free improvisation recordings in collaboration with artists such as Fred Frith, John Zorn, Elliott Sharp, Lee Ranaldo, and Ikue Mori, among many others. During the '80s and '90s, she pioneered the electric harp of her own design, an instrument which thrives on the rich tonalities of the traditional harp matched with the flexibility of an electric guitar. The instrument was so unique that it shaped and influenced…
50⁶
2004 release ** "Hemophiliac is an experimental musical act. This group is billed as improvisational music from the outer reaches of madness. Mike Patton does voice effects along with John Zorn on saxophone and Ikue Mori on laptop electronics. Volume 6 of John Zorn's 50th birthday party series of concert CD's (ten volumes in total) is the first fully commercially available showcase for the trio's mad improv collision."
Deathdisco2000
1998 release ** "This big band, led by T.S. Heg (alto sax & keyboards) is nominally a 'jazz outfit', but since in addition to lots of reeds, brass, bass and drums, they work with guitars, synths, sampling, etc., it's a fairly safe bet that this isn't 'just' a jazz album. Mostly structured with some very crazed, free parts, I guess you could compare them to Doctor Nerve in that regard, even though they sound nothing like Nerve."
Soul At The Hands Of The Machine
2002 release ** "Drummer Guillermo E. Brown burst onto the progressive jazz circuit via his performances and recordings with forward-thinking saxophonists David S. Ware and Rob Reddy amid various projects and sessions. His first solo release finds the artist carrying the torch for Thirsty Ear's somewhat futuristic "Blue Series." Brown, with assistance from multi-reedmen Daniel Carter and Andre Vidal, among others, delivers a decisively high-tech outing, awash with funk, trip-hop, and more. The d…
To Much Togethers
2010 release ** "over 2 years in the making, to much togethers is the follow up album to ashley paul’s 2008 ‘d.o.l’ release. patiently crafted and paced to much togethers continues on ashley’s unique path of ‘song’ style. combining clattering strings, (her custom green-box string set up), psycho acoustic sustain and decay, bowed metal, expressive saxophone, subtle and ear grabbing sense of color and distant voice all slowly creating mood and thought provoking miniatures, that succeed in fitting …
Jyotis
2007 release ** Packaged in oversize cardboard sleeve.
SoundEnergyTransformation
2018 release ** "Multi-reedist Udo Schindler is captured live at Ars Musica, in Stemmerhof, Munich performing on clarinet, soprano sax, and euphonium in a trio with sound artist Korhan Erel and trombonist Sebastiano Tramontana, a uniquely voiced concert that places intricate reed and brass playing against unusual electronic interactions, balancing energetic and spacious moments. This is not your typical ea-improv, Erel adding a unique set of concrete interventions and unexpected rhythmic ornamen…
News
2007 release ** "NEWS is a new work, whose ingredients, on the surface, are quite simple. Lukas Simonis wrote the music, while Takayuki Kawabata wrote the lyrics, which are featured on the CD cover, and also spoken or sung, in Japanese or in English. Simonis plays the guitar, which mostly appears as "sound" (the main exception being an arpeggio sounding halfway between Thinking Plague and Pink Floyd which appears more than once in the track titled Original NEWS), and also "effects", which judgi…
Return To Street Level
1994 release ** Featuring as guest Elliot Sharp, Christian Marclay, Tom Cora, Nick Didkovsky and Paul Hoskin.
Friedrich Gulda, Ursula Anders, Barre Phillips, John Surman, Cecil Taylor, Stu Martin, Albert Mangelsdorff
Nachricht Vom LandeFriedrich Gulda (16 May 1930 – 27 January 2000) was an Austrian pianist, composer and musical crossover artist. Coming from a classical background, he began playing the piano at the age of seven. At the age of 12, he began his musical education with Bruno Seidlhofer (piano) and Joseph Marx (music theory and composition) at the Vienna Academy of Music, now the University of Music and Performing Arts in Vienna. At the age of 16, he won the Geneva International Music Competition and quickly rose to…
Brown Paper Business
2025 stock Suddenly, there was a stick to dig a hole. Now countless years into the future, we await, anticipating more than competition and violence. I am drawn in, and ultimately mesmerised. Later that night, I began to clearly see the de-centralised nature of an awakened awareness, baked to a crisp by a relentless sun on the inside AND the outside. Unobserved, the need for acknowledgement will run away with the spoon leaving nothing to chance. It must be said that no two instances are ever the…
Istet Serenade
2009 release ** ""Istet Serenade" is foray into the area of music space that represents the core of Roland's sound philosophy, Isophonics. The theory of composed improvisation of stillness in the fluidity of constant change. The thingness of actualized sound in the nothingness of acoustic evaporation and recreation from the source of the indwelling presence. This occurs at a speed which defies conscious comprehension but which reveals abundant spiritual revelatory aspects. It requires a state of…
Waterway
2025 stock ** "The quirky acoustic trio of German improvisers Udo Schindler on clarinet, saxophone, cornet, and Euphonium, Johannes Ollinger on acoustic guitar and toys, and Dine Doneff on double bass, waterphone, and toys, the odd instrumentation adding surprising textures and disorienting angles to really fine dialog, technically, melodically, and eccentrically. Two preformances are captured, one at Pollat Pavillon in Munich, Germany in 2015, the other from Schindler's own Salon fur Klang+Kuns…