Jazz /
Euganea
Upperground Orchestra is the hybrid Jazz band of Rabih Beaini and his fellow musicians Tommaso Cappellato (drums), Piero Bittolo Bon (woodwinds / electronics) and Alvise Seggi (Bass / Oud). The band returns with a new LP, years after The Eupen Tapes.Euganea is a 5 tracks LP recorded during the Musica Veneta residency, promoted by FAI (Fondo Ambiente Italiano) in the great context of Villa dei Vescovi. Working around Veneto music, the band developed pieces that merge deep roots of original fusion…
Dead Leaves Drop
**300 copies** The term ‘supergroup’ often comes with tacky connotations, but this is the real deal. Through hard work and a tirelessly inquisitive spirit, Nate Wooley, Dave Rempis, Pascal Niggenkemper and Chris Corsano have become some of the most versatile improvisers of their generation. As From Wolves To Whales, they turn their imposing collective strength into a relentless new whole. Relentless, not just because of the energy levels or the generous amount of freedom, but because of the cons…
End of a Cable
**100 copies** Improvising duo Ed Lucas and Graham Dunning explore texture, timbre, dynamics and drones.Ed Lucas plays trombone, sometimes augmented with controlled feedback, and has had many associations with improvising musicians in London and beyond.Graham Dunning uses turntable with field recordings pressed to dublate, along with snare drum and objects, focusing on tactile soundmaking.End of a Cable is their first album together. Graham Dunning: turntable, snare drum and objectsEdward Lucas:…
Caura
**100 copies** Caura is a long-distance collaboration by Masayuki Imanishi (Osaka, Japan) and Marco Serrato Gallardo (Sevilla, Spain), which takes the form of two long improvised tracks made with double bass, field recordings, contact microphones and manipulated speakers. Masayuki Imanishi: field recordings, speaker, contact microphoneMarco Serrato Gallardo: double bass Recorded in Sevilla and Osaka by Masayuki Imanishi and Nacho García, December 2018 / January 2019.Mixed by Masayuki Imanishi, …
Free Percussion
**100 copies** Tsss Tapes is a new tape label from Italy and this is their first release. Snares, bells, sticks, cymbals, pinecones, rattles, brushes, bass drums, mallets and other objects that make a sound if you hit them, stroke them, let them bounce. A compilation of improvisations by twelve percussionists from different parts of the world mastered by Nacho García. Includes tracks by Claire Rousay, Rie Nakajima, Chris Dadge, Håkon Berre, Ted Byrnes, Tim Daisy, Will Guthrie, Simon Camatta, Kev…
Désordre
**250 copies** Two instruments linked, calling to each other, leaping around, recalling and fooling around with the music of Joëlle Léandre, improviser, composer and double bass player, and Alexandra Grimal, composer, singer and saxophone player. With chaos, a joyful mess of unique moments, bright, plural and playful, the two musicians have no care for determinism: the music just is, and they simply follow it.
Solid Bottom
Two basses and a lower-end saxophone from the trio of Damon Smith on double bass, Andrew Durham on electric bass, and Danny Kamins on baritone sax, Durham also adding effects and "Radio Manipulation" to their deep sound, Durham & Kamins the core of Carl with Damon Smith adding extra underpinnings to their slowly developing, sometimes pensive, sometimes cantankerous, profound improvisation.
Templo del sonido
**500 copies** A few years ago I had this crazy idea... Why not ask Obnox aka Lamont "Bim" Thomas to make a free jazz record? After seeing him on tour playing drums with Cleveland out-rock legends X_X, I just had to try and make it happen. Bim, who is no stranger to making out-there genre defying records, surprised me a bit by happily agreeing. It seems a bit of a cliche to try and get rock people to make jazz records, or jazz folks to make rock records, but what the hell? Of all people, Obnox s…
Kozmik Bazaar
**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…
Five Spontaneous Ones
Five Spontaneous Ones was recorded by Albert Cirera (tenor and soprano saxophones), Rafal Mazur (acoustic bass guitar) and Nicolas Field (drums). The three improvisers are featured stars of the avant-garde jazz scene. Albert Cirera has an organic and expressive playing technique, impressive virtuosity, wide musical knownledge and unique sound. Rafal Mazur fuses together the tendencies of contemporary academical and experimental music, basics of avant-garde jazz and the newest tendencies of exper…
Solar Wind
Solar Wind was recorded by Robert Dick (glissando flute, bass flute, contrabass flute, piccolo, voice), Joëlle Léandre (contrabass, voice) and Miya Masaoka (koto, percussion). Three independent jazz masters base their music on different characters, styles and expressions. All three of them have original and expressive style, rich musical language, wide musical knownledge and unique sound. Musicians are the central figures of international free improvisational music and avant-garde jazz scene. T…
Silver Cycles
**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…
Palina'tufa
Empty Editions presents Palina’tufa, the newest work from saxophonist Seymour Wright and percussionist Paul Abbott’s long-running duo XT. Wright and Abbot’s respective practices have been marked by a simultaneous engagement (with) and desire to challenge the limitations (of) the British tradition of improvised music - represented by groups such as AMM and John Stevens’ Spontaneous Music Ensemble. This album charts a new trajectory for Wright and Abbott, as they draw on recent live collaborations…
Geometría del vínculo
Based in the city of Buenos Aires, Argentina, Sales de Baño is a group that brings together musicians of different nationalities. Led by Colombian composer and bassist Carlos Quebrada, their sound explorations have led them to expand the languages of jazz, and incorporate elements of experimental rock, contemporary music, and free improvisation. Geometría del vínculo (Geometry of the Bond) is Sales de Baño's third album, can be understood as an avant-garde jazz album which is also connected with…
New American Songbooks Volume 2
After the stunning success of last year's New American Songbooks, Volume 1,
Sound American is proud to present another chapter in their attempt to
find new points of view on the concept of the American Songbook. Last year's release found three distinctive voices--Mary Halvorson, Ron
Miles, and Greg Saunier--working together to arrange works from mass
media. Their collaboration, only a few days in total, culminated in a
recording that felt equal parts wild and warm; intimate and
revolutiona…
Fayrus
More than ten years after the demise of Sun City Girls as an entity, something wild and weird has now surfaced, grown and ripened in the heat and dust of the same desert. Described as “deep spirited, Arabic-music-tinged free jazz-punk and harsh exotica”, Sunn Trio’s ever-evolving ensemble digests a number of genres, spitting them back out in “creative destruction.” Carrying on a long tradition of sun-beaten Phoenix punk, Sunn Trio evokes the sweltering and hallucinatory Arizona desert. Echoes of…
Carte Blanche
It took more than just some time and imagination to believe that 'Carte Blanche' , this piece of astonishing contemporary music by some of the most talented and able musicians of the international avant-circuit, could be realized. Karkhana, a highly explosive mostly Middle Eastern / Mediterranean ensemble - Sam Shalabi Land of Kush, Shalabi Effect, Dwarfs of East Agouza), Sharif Sehnaoui (“A” Trio), Michael Zerang (Peter Brötzmann, Hamid Drake, Jaap Blonk, Vandermark, etc.) Mazen Kerbaj (“A” Tri…
Electric Smog
The newest installment in Unrock’s ongoing Saraswati Series is the most rebellious and wildest to date. Again an intercontinental output. A dangerous, electric brew filled with exotic aroma from Cairo’s sound guerilla, Alan Bishop (Sun City Girls), Maurice Louca (Karkhana) and Sam Shalabi (Land of Kush, Karkhana). The always changing face of Dwarfs of East Agouza, shows them in a feverish mode and adrenalin rush. Massive eruptions fight genuine flow. Sultans of Unrock. Chris Corsano and Bill Or…
Aamm
Back in August of 2015, the legendary London Grand Seigneurs of improve pioneers, AMM (John Tilbury and Eddie Prévost) joined forces with Lebanese electro-acoustic-free-jazz outfit "A" Trio (Mazen Kerbaj, Sharif Sehnaoui & Raed Yassin). Two generations of improvisers with a very differing approach to work, captured dancing slowly along a very thin line of fine tuned, both, clear and crackling improvised sounds. Harsh at times with magic mellow moments of intense, fragile, broken noises. No overd…
Burj Al Imam - Extended Version
**2019 stock** 140-gram LP in gatefold sleeve with a special drawing by Mazen Kerbaj + bonus 7". Mastered for vinyl by Harris Newman. Edition of 500. Entirely recorded at Tunefork Studios on the outskirts of Beirut, Burj al Imam's five tracks include three largely improvised numbers, a loose reworking of Sun City Girls track "The Imam", and a cover of traditional Americana song "Gently Johnny" (a highlight of Alan Bishop's live Alvarius B. shows). True to their habits, the Lebanese trio of trump…