Jazz /
CSW 14_03_2015
2016 release ** Established in 2013 and currently having over 50 floating members, the Warsaw Improvisers Orchestra acts as a resource for musicians to meet and work in a large improvising ensemble, or in smaller units within a larger context. Spontaneous music making is our remit, but on occasion, scores both regular and graphic may be used as well as visual cues presented by visual artists. The orchestra is a chance for people to develop a deeper understanding of the relationship of sound and…
Live at Cafe Amores
Edition of 300. Kang Tae Hwan plays alto sax with a rawness that's usually reserved for the tenor – a fantastic sound that really comes through beautifully here in this solo set of improvisations! The material was recorded around the same time as Kang's brilliant (and few) recordings for the Japanese market – and the long-overdue presentation of this performance comes as a much-needed accompaniment to his small catalog – the kind of record that boldly, brilliantly documents a completely unique t…
Oh My, Those Boys!
Edition of 300. Brilliant work from these two very inventive bassists – the legendary Barre Phillips, working on acoustic bass – and Motoharu Yoshizawa, playing an unusual homemade electric vertical 5-string bass! The combination of instruments is beautiful – and with one electric, and one acoustic, you can really separate the voice of each player – even though both Phillips and Yoshizawa resonate strongly together, and really have a complimentary sense of improvisation – a beautiful combination…
Fresh From The Ruins
Dog Life explores free improvised music on a high-energetic plateau, descending from the outskirts of free jazz, and further towards a harder, darker and undefined terrain. Their debut album was critically acclaimed in Europe as well as in the US. On their new album Fresh From the Ruins, Doglife continue to push the freejazz-punk limits and sets out new directions with elements of doom and noise.
Earlier Outbreaks of Iconoclasm
Three early recordings by the long lasting duo of Milo Fine (clarinet, percussion and piano) and Steve Gnitka (electric guitar). The first two sessions, HAH! from 1976 and The Constant Extension of Inescapable Tradition from 1977, were issued on two hat Hut LPs (with two tracks missing). The third, When I was five years old, I predicted your whole life from 1978, was scheduled to appear on Horo, but that label went bust before it happened, so this material is now making a very belated first …
Thinking out loud
Boneshaker are Mars Williams (reeds, toy instruments), Paal Nilssen-Love (drums & percussion) and Kent Kessler (bass), three prolific powerhouse musicians, carrying among them a Grammy nomination and decades of experience with the top ensembles in the world. Thinking Out Loud is their third album. Personnel: Mars Williams - reeds; Paal Nilssen-Love - drums; Kent Kessler - bass.
Hydro
300 copies. Devoting most of his time to performing with various international groups, Liudas Mockunas is hailed as an ambassador of Lithuanian jazz. He is a multi-reeds player and composer, whose name stands for masterly performance and intriguing compositions. His 'natural' idiom is an explosive mixture of free jazz, lyricism and expressionism combined with highly unconventional performance techniques. His in-depth exploration of the properties of sound and possibilities of harmonic series lea…
Distinction Without A Difference
A reissue of the long out-of-print first solo record by American violinist Billy Bang (1947-2011), recorded at Gaku Gallery in New York on August 12, 1979. Originally released on Hat Hut Records in 1980. Distinction Without A Difference features Bang's own compositions, extrapolated at length in an intimate live concert, as well as traditional and improvised material. Remastered from original tapes and augmented by newly discovered recordings from the same concert. Part of the large cache of his…
Nuclear Family
2016 release. Multi-instrumental master Joe McPheeand his longtime colleague, French saxophonist and clarinetist André Jaume, joined forces for this studio recording in 1979 that was prepared but never released. It is primarily structured around pairs of tunes by Charles Mingus, Thelonious Monk, and Duke Ellington (or Billy Strayhorn), adding Ornette Coleman's "Lonely Woman" for good measure. The results are stunningly intimate and show the twosome's capacity for creative interplay at a fairly e…
Axiom
2015 release. A reissue of arguably the rarest LP of European free jazz, Axiom, recorded in 1963 for the Swedish label Sonet. Test pressings were released to the musicians, but they were not approved and the label never printed more than the two first copies. Tom Prehn's music, which is exclusively known from a 1967 release that was reissued on the Unheard Music Series, is not only impossibly uncommon, it is also exceptionally wonderful, featuring an extended tenor saxophone solo by Frits Krogh …
Cut Air
Jim Denley has been playing flute since 1969 - after 50 years of a curious love/hate relationship with the instrument this is his first solo flute-only recording. He aims to situate this music within a global outlook, with a pacific perspective. Being from a continent, Australia, where there is no flute tradition, he’s taken cues and elements from flute traditions that still have power and currency — the European flute with it’s purity, brilliance and dexterity, the earthy simplicity of bamboos …
Refraction
I first met Mark sometime in the early 90’s when we were both working in Chelmsford. He was running Soundworld Records above the musical instrument shop of the same name, I was over the other side of town in an insurance brokers. I’d played quite a bit of free improvisation at that point, mostly at the old LMC in a quartet called Make Shift together with Peter Urpeth, Stuart Wilding and long-time colleague and playing partner Geoff Collins. But had been away from it for a few years and wa…
Prophecy
ESP-Disk present a reissue of Albert Ayler's Prophecy, originally released in 1975. Recorded in concert at the Cellar Cafe, NYC, June 14, 1964. Three weeks before this trio recorded ESP-Disk's first jazz album, the epochal Spiritual Unity (ESPDISK 1002CD/LP), it was captured "live" by Canadian poet Paul Haines, who also recorded the New York Eye and Ear Control soundtrack (ESPDISK 1016CD/LP). This is one of the most influential groups in jazz history, a coming together of like-minded innovators …
PEN
**500 copies** It is always a treat to see some major musical innovators in action. Especially in a mind-blowing line-up, at the top of their game and unrecorded until now on this impressive new Dropa Disc release.Evan Parker might be a member of some legendary trios – one with von Schlippenbach and Paul Lovens and one with Barry Guy and Paul Lytton – still this brilliant master of the saxophone and pioneer of free music managed to surprise us big time when he introduced his trio with John Edwar…
Port of Call
Port of Call is a studio-recorded duet by Klaus Treuheit and Lou Grassi. The latter is an American drummer who runs the gamut of ragtime (Max Morath) to no time (Gunter Hampel, Burton Greene). Treuheit is a German pianist who studied under Herbie Hancock and modern classical composer George Crumb. Mostly co-composed, this Port takes in the elemental blues, as on “Mysterioso IV”. This series of duos has a somewhat free-ish conversational cast, especially in “L’Space Sonore”, while “Lament #PB III…
Avocado
As listeners to the experimental, improvised, Jazz, Ethiopian and style-free music communities in Sydney will testify, Peter Farrar has been doing astonishing solos the last few years. He’s been honing techniques that use various extensions on his alto sax, (mainly plastic bags and bottles as mutes). Instead of an instrumental line, he produces startling layers of distorted tones and overtones with pervasive, insistent, generative rhythms. This is pioneering research — he has re-imagined the ins…
Untitled
The Département d’Éducation Psychique group - Dynamo Dreesen and SVN : Andreas and Sven = DRESVN & Jean-Marc Foussat - was born in Paris June 25, 2014 in La Java, at a concert organized by Xavier Ehretsmann. The proposal of Xavier and our deep desire at all was to “mix” various networks for the unexpected meeting, improbable, surprising… of artists referenced “techno”, here DRESVN, with others from the “improvised music” in this instance Jean-Marc Foussat. And so as the duo DRESVN the German has…
Live at Vilnius Jazz Festival
The music was performed in the frame of Vilnius Jazz and Music of Silent Film festivals. Adaptation of the silent film The Lost World was made by Artūras Jevdokimovas. Recorded live on the 17th October 2016 at Vilnius Jazz Festival by Valdas Karpuška.
The Final Concert
The Nu Band featuring: Roy Campbell Jr., Mark Whitecage, Joe Fonda and Lou Grassi "When Roy and I decided to start a project together in 2000 his only stipulation was that it not be another reshuffling of people he was already associated with in other projects. After some consideration I suggested Mark Whitecage and Joe Fonda. Roy accepted both suggestions immediately. He had great respect for them both and remembered playing with Mark once, many years before. Fourteen years later, after six hi…
Constant Change 1976-2016
This solo piano music has never been released before on disc. It covers a 40-year period stretching from 1976 to 2016 and contains both live concerts and studio sessions. "Paris / Debrecen are both Festival performances recorded at a period when I was concentrating on developing my own material / compositions, and before I had evolved my ‘with or without repertoire’ approach to solo playing, which explained in the ‘sleeve-note’ to Live With Repertoire on NoBusiness Records CD 58 (briefly: some p…