Jazz /
Old and New Dreams Chapter-1
The opening of the pair of simultaneous releases, "Introduction," is a new wave of free jazz born from an intergenerational improvisation session with Takashi Sugawa (b) and Shun Ishiwaka (ds). Guitarist/composer Otomo Yoshihide has been active all over the world, from movies, plays, TV to commercials, without being confined to the framework of free jazz. The live recording of December 27, 2024 at Shinjuku Pit Inn, which has been his "core" since his teenage years, is not only a "milestone" in O…
Solhverv
Bomb! Danish pianist Tom Prehn was one of the first Europeans to deeply explore free music. With his quartet featuring Fritz Krogh on tenor saxophone, Poul Ehlers on bass, and Finn Slumstrup on drums, Prehn recorded Axiom in October, 1963, for Sonet, though it went unreleased until 2015 because the band felt that their music had moved beyond it already. To hear the music they were talking about, one could only turn to two privately-made reel-to-reel tapes, Centrifuga and Sohlverv, recorded in Au…
Relations
Musical messages from Oslo, New York, Basel and Lugano – recorded between 2018 and 2022 – are juxtaposed and recombined on an absorbing recording that features Norwegian drummer Thomas Strønen solo and in a series of duets . With such partners as Craig Taborn, Chris Potter, Sinikka Langeland and Jorge Rossy, the musical frame of reference is very broad. Elements from Langeland’s’s archaic-sounding folk to Potter’s post-Coltrane saxophone and Taborn’s whirlwind modernist piano each find their p…
Innocence
1992 release ** "In 1984, Joe Gallivan settled in London and organized the avant-garde big band Soldiers of the Road, featuring Elton Dean, Evan Parker, Marcio Mattos, and, later, Ashley Slater, Paul Rutherford, Jim Dvorak, Claude Deppa, and Guy Barker. This ensemble recorded eight pieces for the BBC, performed often in London including at the London Jazz Festival, and, in 1992, made a critically acclaimed CD, Innocence."
Štiri Dela
*2025 stock* "The CD surprised me because it could be listened to with many ears. At first I felt I could not separate it from contemporary composed music, soon after that I could still place it in the context of contemporary improvised music, and finally the fantasticness of a journey that takes the best both worlds have to offer revealed itself to me. Much of the merit can be attributed to the sensible arrangement of the four movements, which, despite being at least superficially similar proce…
Adyton
Edition of 200. Japanese free jazz legend Akira Sakata and Greek avant-garde guitarist Giotis Damianidis present Adyton, their first-ever duo recording. Having collaborated since 2018, the two musicians have developed an intuitive and electrifying musical dialogue, culminating in this live performance at Haekem, Brussels -- the final concert of a two-week tour with Entasis in September 2023. Sakata, who turned 80 on February 21st, 2024, delivers his signature fiery alto saxophone, evocative clar…
In Der Fabrik Hamburg
2012 release (RARE - light storage wear) ** "E.M.T. started focusing on ecstatically free improvisation in an explosive and expressive manner. Over the years E.M.T. gradually extended their musical language by incorporating dada like spoken words and improvised recitations inspired by Schönberg (Pierrot Lunaire), noise, improvised structures and composition fragments from European composers like Grieg, Schumann (the song Ich grolle nicht) a.o. Alfred Harth extended his instruments to electric z…
Live at Moldejazz
2025 stock In 2020, a live recording was made at Moldejazz by the piano trio Kongle Trio. A live recording where the listener gets the feeling of sitting in the hall as an audience and witnessing three people who really ooze music. "Live at Moldejazz" is proof of why this band, in a very short time, captured the hearts of large parts of the Nordic jazz scene, and we at Øra love it!
Kongle Trio is the result of three people who were in the right place at the right time. Their meeting at Norway's …
Death Rattle
2025 stock “Death Rattle” is the noise of two forces of nature in collision. Like a pair of clashing typhoons, Philadelphia based avant guitarist James Plotkin and Norwegian free jazz drummer Paal Nilssen-Love generate chaos, disturbance and a terrifying beauty in their first ever collaborative recording. Free jazz and metal-edged rock never chimed so exhilaratingly together before. ‘Paal’s precision and constant invention/reinvention is mind-blowing, only matched by its intensity,’ James enthus…
Planetary
2010 release ** "Following the success of their 2010 collaborative CD with Nels Cline Singers, Rova returned to the classic acoustic quartet format for the first time on CD since 2007. “Planetary” brings the listener to several of Rova’s music worlds and shows that the band, as always, was still refining that “Rova sound,” still pushing the envelope, and still looking for new sound worlds to inhabit and make their own. This also marks Rova’s reconnection with the Russian music scene. The band m…
The Indeterminate Existence
2008 release ** "Jack Wright lays down a whole disc's worth of monumentally impressive solo alto sax recordings on The Indeterminate Existence, taking some cues from the idiom-expanding sonic experimentation of Evan Parker, whose vocal-styled squawks and splutters are incorporated into Wright's impressive sense of melody and bebop fluency. Clocking in at over an hour , only the bravest of free improv explorers need apply, but the reward will be ample. Anyone who was floored by Paul Flaherty's un…
Diciannove Calefazioni
1999 release ** "Very idiosyncratic and very beautiful improvisations by one half of the Takla Records collective, these nineteen pieces sound like nothing much else on the planet. Individual notes hang in the air; no particular statement lasts for long, and yet the duo manage to sustain a sense of momentum across the silences. They've programmed unusually long pauses between the tracks, perhaps in an attempt to encourage the casual listener to hear distinct pieces. On in the background, these p…
John Blum Astrogeny Quartet
2025 stock John Blum (piano), Denis Charles (drums), Antonio Grippi (alto sax, alto clarinet), William Parker (bass). Studio recordings from 1998. There are few sessions to rival this one for sheer urgency and gusto. It's as if something pent-up in these four musicians waited for this combination of players to unleash it... the music explodes into action. Pianist John Blum is a secret hero of New York's free jazz community, known as a proficient and forceful improviser in the tradition of his me…
We Don't
2025 stock We Don't is a previously unreleased 1981 session pairing Jemeel Moondoc with Denis "jazz" Charles (1933-1998). in the 1970s, Moondoc was a member of ensemble muntu with William Parker. Moondoc's quirky & vivid alto style suggests the influence of Ornette Coleman, but the comparison "does not do justice to Moondoc's originality" (the penguin guide to jazz). Moondoc's grandfather, the original 'moondoctor' & the family namesake, sang & danced in medicine shows at the turn of the century…
A Hero's Welcome: Pieces For Rare Occasions
2025 stock Alan Silva's playing and live composition have been a highlight of the avant garde's living history for the past 35+ years. from his work with sun ra's arkestra, through extended relationships with Bill Dixon, Cecil Taylor, and Albert Ayler, on into the celestial communications orchestra and the frank wright center of the world band, silva has been one of the music's most consistently valuable thinkers. A child of alan silva's other-worldly strategies for double bass, William Parker i…
Velvele
Velvele : Beating the usuls of Ottoman/Turkish Music, dividing them by section.
Vilvoorde
*50 copies limited edition. 2025 stock* Introducing morosphinx, a squeaky trio from Brussels. Recorded in Vilvoorde, on the outskirts of the Belgian capital, this album probes impressions of relative distances within a sound space. morosphinx projects us into a musical context that is both strange and familiar, where sounds blend together and define their own landmarks.
The A side of Vilvoorde is experienced as a long, unresolved breath. Silence is its latent base and reminds the listener of it …
Ghost Notes
1998 release ** "This CD represents the pinnacle of IST's achievements so far. Phil Durrant's Sowari For Ist, concentrates upon texture and timbre as opposed to pitch and rhythm. The resulting music is detailed, fragile, abstract and beautiful, pushing acoustic instruments further into a sound-world more often associated with acousmatic forms. In Mark Wastell's Ritmico the emphasis is upon rhythm and the particular sonorities produced by the percussive possibilities of the wooden parts of each i…
PRCDR
After completing her master's degree at the Anton Bruckner Private University in 2018, Judith Schwarz has been working nationally and internationally as a drummer and composer in the field of jazz and improvised music. Judith is active as an instrumentalist, bandleader and composer in the following projects: Other:M:other, chuffDRONE, Beyond the Beat, Little Rosies Kindergarten, Schülande Engaling, Duo Hofmaninger/Schwarz, Mel*E. She has collaborated with Maria Portugal, Sylvie Courvoisier, Ange…