Jazz /
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.
Closer
When Oscar Peterson moved from Montréal to New York in 1949, then-17-year-old Paul Bley took over Peterson's residency at the Alberta Lounge on Peterson's recommendation; in his 20s, Bley played with Charlie Parker. Bley incorporated maverick pianist Lennie Tristano's approach to improvisation and collaborated with Charles Mingus, and in 1958 in Los Angeles famously put together a band with Ornette Coleman, Don Cherry, Charlie Haden, and Billy Higgins. His move into free improvisation in the gro…
1973: Live in Zonderschot
Incredible vinyl release of a previously unreleased live recording of a Belgian concert by the Freddie Hubbard Quintet in 1973. It was recorded by Belgian radio & television broadcasting service (BRT) and is now remastered. It is a sweet electric set recorded right in the middle of his classic years for CTI – and with a sound that's maybe even more sublime than his work for that legendary label! The group here is a hip quintet – with Junior Cook on tenor, and George Cables on some especially gr…
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…
King Alcohol
A reissue of King Alcohol, recorded for the German FMP label in 1972. King Alcohol is one of the landmark recordings of free jazz in Europe, a mind-blowing studio session featuring Rüdiger Carl on tenor saxophone, Günter Christmann on trombone, and the astonishing Detlef Schönenberg on drums. Volatile and precise, anticipating much of the future sound of free music in Europe but also paying homage to American antecedents like Roswell Rudd and Archie Shepp, King Alcohol is truly a lost jewel. Fir…
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 …
Glasses
2012 release. A reissue of Joe McPhee's Glasses, originally released on Hat Hut Records in 1979. Glasses was recorded in October, 1977, during a highly significant period in McPhee's work, as he was pioneering the transatlantic, collaborative spirit that has helped to define the last three decades of his career. Documented in Tavannes, Switzerland, the set contains sensational tenor work, including the title piece, which finds McPhee ringing out a rhythm on a half-full wine glass, from which he …
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…