Jazz /
Soundmusication
Tip! “Soundmusication” is the third and final album by Jamaican born tenorist Fitz Gore, another rare and beautiful spiritual jazz LP from the late 1970s. “Fitz had a very deeputopian faith in the right music, which could change the world and develop a real condition of peace, because it was supposed to move people`s feelings and actions to spiritual truth. He was convinced that music owned the healing power of the world” (Ulrich Kurth).
Other players include Lukoki Mampasi on electric piano, Ob…
Golden Hearts Remembrance
Tip! *2022 stock* 'Recorded in 1997, Wadada Leo Smith's N'da Kulture has created a music that transcends all forms by integrating many of them into an amorphous yet deeply moving whole. This sextet, which uses Eastern and Western instruments, authors into being a kind of folk music for the emerging century, one that relies deeply on poetry, improvisation, subtleties in tone, timbre, and rhythm. The six pieces here reflect Smith's ongoing concern with marrying the vanguard jazz tradition he comes…
The Cricket: Black Music in Evolution, 1968–69
A rare document of the 1960s Black Arts Movement featuring Albert Ayler, Amiri Baraka, Milford Graves, Sun Ra, Cecil Taylor, and many more, The Cricket fostered critical and political dialogue for Black musicians and writers. Edited by poets and writers Amiri Baraka, A.B. Spellman, and Larry Neal between 1968 and 1969 and published by Baraka's New Jersey–based Jihad productions shortly after the time of the Newark Riots, this experimental music magazine ran poetry, position papers, and gossip al…
The Call
ESP-Disk present a vinyl reissue of Henry Grimes Trio's The Call, originally released in 1966. It has occasionally been assumed that Henry Grimes got this December 28, 1965 recording date as a reward for his long service in the avant-garde of jazz. Having already honed his musical conception with a varied range of players, from Benny Goodman and Arnett Cobb to Lee Morgan, Gerry Mulligan, and Sonny Rollins to McCoy Tyner, Steve Lacy, Albert Ayler -- including Spirits Rejoice (ESPDISK 1020CD/LP)--…
Smashing Humans
*In process of stocking. 2022 stock* The Brooklyn-based noise-jazz violinist Sana Nagano often finds herself at the center of the storm. As other instruments crash and careen around her, her assuredly melodic violin works to ground and stabilize the overall sound. And nowhere is this better heard than on Smashing Humans, her new quintet album coming March 19th on 577 Records. Featuring Peter Apfelbaum on sax, Keisuke Matsuno on guitar, Ken Filiano on bass, and Joe Hertenstein on drums, it’s an L…
Sweet Nothings (for Milford Graves)
*In process of stocking.* Two masters of wind instruments blowing in from the Windy City. In 2003, as part of the seventh annual Empty Bottle Festival of Jazz & Improvised Music, Joe McPhee and Evan Parker squared off for a round of intimate dialogues. The resulting recording is just the second time they had played as a duet, the previous also being in Chicago, at a studio in 1998, where the limited their instrumentarium to tenor saxophones, resulting in the Okka Disc classic Chicago Tenor Duets…
To Live And Breathe...
*In process of stocking* An international trio (USA/FR/IT) recorded live in Italy during their 2017 European tour.
Witch's Scream
*Includes 20 page booklet.* Each with five decades of musical knowledge and experience in free improvisation under their belts, the trio of saxophonist John Tchicai (also heard, for the first time on record, on vocals), bassist Reggie Workman and drummer Andrew Cyrille got together in New York in September 2004 to record Witch's Scream. Although they are all veterans of improvised music going back to the vital free jazz scene of New York City in the early 1960s and have often played together in …
Sudden Happiness
Sudden Happiness is a live recording by Triot, which includes the leading young Finnish saxophonist Mikko Innanen and two of Denmark´s most in-demand young jazz musicians, bassist Nikolai Munch-Hansen and drummer Stefan Pasborg, with the saxophone legend John Tchicai as their special guest. The album was recorded during their joint tour in Denmark and Sweden in 2002. The music of Triot is an amalgamation of the introverted and melancholy Finnish character and the more extroverted Danish personal…
Reflections
Reflections features three giants of improvised music in an open dialogue built on both their shared influences and their different backgrounds: Juhani Aaltonen on tenor saxophone and flute, Reggie Workman on bass and Andrew Cyrille on drums. The album can be seen as a companion to Strings Revisited, which featured the trio together with The Avanti! Chamber Orchestra conducted by Henrik Otto Donner. On Reflections, the music is improvised within only a loose compositional framework. Composed the…
Heart Of A Bird
Heart of a Bird is an intimate collaboration between two kindred spirits, pianist/harpist Iro Haarla and bassist Ulf Krokfors. The music represents free improvisation within a compositional framework. The duo shares with the listener a beautiful, intense musical conversation, which reflects their own private feelings. On four tracks, the duo is joined by saxophonist Rasmus Korsström, adding another voice to the duo´s intimate sound. Heart of a Bird was composed in equal shares by Haarla and Krok…
Sacred Ceremonies
*Including a 52 p. booklet.* Sacred Ceremonies represents a meeting of three true giants of contemporary creative music. On this three-CD boxed set, Wadada Leo Smith joins forces with the barrier-breaking electric bassist Bill Laswell and the late, great master drummer Milford Graves in three separate one-day sessions. The boxed set comprises a duo CD featuring Smith and Graves, a duo CD featuring Smith and Laswell and a trio CD featuring Smith, Laswell and Graves. Sacred Ceremonies brings toget…
Trumpet
*Including a 44 p. booklet.* Trumpet is a unique extended collection of solo trumpet music. Fourteen new compositions by Wadada Leo Smith are included on this recording and spread over three CDs. The Album was recorded during a beautiful summer week in July 2016 at St. Mary's Church in the town of Pohja on the southern coast of Finland. it is a culmination of Smith's solo trumpet work to date, which totaled six albums prior to Trumpet. That legacy begins with his very first album as a leader, 19…
Visions In Black & White
*2022 Stock.* ‘Visions in Black and White’ is a collection of rare jazz and improvised themes by one of the greatest Russian film composers Mikael Tariverdiev (1931-1996). Transferred from the original tapes and beautifully remastered, these recordings manage to retain their original ambience and capture a master at work. Originally composed for cinema and TV movies of the 1960s and 1970s, it centres on Mikael playing at the piano and keyboard. Many of the compositions can be described as jazz, …
With(Exit) To Student Studies, Revisited
'Cecil Taylor’s whole career was a wave-front of exploration. The analogy with light is apposite enough. He evolved so fast most of us never quite caught up and relied instead on a few safe generalisations that momentarily applied around 1962 and only occasionally thereafter. Taylor rarely referenced the space programme, and admitted towards the end of his life that he had found the moon landings “banal”. Like Sun Ra, he was a cosmonaut of sound, breaking free of gravity and showing us the music…
At Slugs’ Saloon 1966, Revisited
'Among the jazz innovators, Albert Ayler is still considered a solitary figure to this day. From 1964 on he pursued his vision with firm determination. Like no other artist he used well-known melodies from military, marching, blues, gospel and minstrel show music as a starting point, and from these biographical earworm references he set out with the greatest expressiveness into an unconditionality that caused productive disturbance, which his music still does. On the one hand, there are catchy t…
Blue Notes for Johnny
Otoroku is proud to present the first vinyl reissue of "Blue Notes for Johnny" - a defining statement by one of the greatest ensembles in the history of jazz. Recorded in mid-1987 by Blue Notes - then reduced to the trio of Dudu Pukwana on alto sax, Louis Moholo-Moholo on drums and Chris McGregor on piano - it encounters the band 25 years after their founding embarking on an inward meditation through collective music making dedicated to Johnny Dyani, their former bandmate and friend.
Blue Notes…
Geduldig
Tip! This record shows two special musicians - drummer Steffen Roth and guitarist Konni Behrendt - in battle as well as in close embrace with their instruments. Exploring, struggling, enjoying, finding their way off the beaten path. Steffen Roth and Konni Behrendt, both living in Germany, studied music together and have maintained their friendship ever since. This joint solo project follows their bands PALAWA and Groundfields. The A-side belongs to Steffen Roth. His style of playing music is cha…
The Hilversum Sessions
Our Swimmer present a reissue of Albert Ayler's The Hilversum Sessions, originally released in 1980. "Recorded in the Dutch city of Hilversum, The Hilversum Sessions presents Albert Ayler in all his blowzy, testifying glory, fronting a quartet that includes trumpeter Don Cherry, bassist Gary Peacock, and drummer Sunny Murray. The repertoire includes five Ayler originals, notably his signature tunes 'Angels,' 'Ghosts,' and 'Spirits.' It's easy to forget how starkly original Ayler was, given the u…
Scylla
This fourth record by the long-standing improvising ensemble Rempis/Abrams/Ra, and the third featuring now-regular band member Jim Baker, was recorded in a watershed moment for these musicians during a pandemic that had gutted lives across the planet. After 15 months of being closed to the public, the band's home base Elastic Arts had re-opened for live events. And Rempis decided to relaunch his weekly Thursday-night concert series, a hub of the Chicago scene since 2002, with a performance by th…