Jazz /
Quartet & Quintet - Double Vortex
**300 copies, 2019 stock** "Understated, tightly controlled, minimalist music always gets the better deal. There is something mature and cultured about an artist who distills and reaches for the essence instead of provoking and dabbling in exuberance, volume and a cluster of diverging ideas. In a world that is nearly driven to total chaos by a maddening abundance of impulses, Goethe’s worn out adage - that it is in self-limitation that a master first shows himself - has become the ultimate compl…
I
**300 copies, 2019 stock** "(...) Lisle, Serries and Webster reconvened again in October 2015 for another studio recording at the same studio in London, now calling themselves the Kodian Trio. This trio is supposed to be a working group and is already touring the Netherlands and the United Kingdom.The interplay on their debut release is much more energetic and experimental than the one explored on Apparitions. Serries and Webster alternate the leading roles, both sounding aggressive and assertiv…
Apparitions
**300 copies, 2019 stock** "Apparitions, unlike the volatile spirit of Live at Café OTO, stresses a different approach for this set of four collaborative free improvisations. Here the four musicians explore a kind of a slow-cooking interplay, a calm and conversational one. Apparitions begins and ends with the minimalist I and IV, where all restrain their playing to low whispers, skeletal guitar lines and brushing of the cymbals, building the tension tension patiently and methodically until reach…
Cinépalace
**300 copies, 2019 stock** "Dirk Serries and his wife, double bass player Martina Verhoeven, meet British tenor sax player Colin Webster, who also participated in the Dead Neanderthals’ Endless Voids, for a live improvisation, recorded at the DIY club Cinépalace in Kortrijk, Belgium in May 2015. A month earlier Serries performed with Webster in a quartet that was recorded as Live at Cafe Oto, and released on Webster’s Raw Tonk label. This recording, titled after the club name, highlights the hig…
Cult Exposure
**300 copies, 2019 stock** "This free improvised sax-electric guitar duo has nothing to do with previous duos of similar instrumentalists. The meeting between the muscular Brötzmann-ian sax wails of American, Amsterdam-based sax player John Dikeman, known from the free jazz bands Cactus Truck and Universal Indians, and the reserved, serene playing of the effects-laden guitar of Dirk Serries forced the two to transcend any possible comfort zone. On the first piece the two still struggle to find …
III
Kodian Trio's third studio album -- apply titled III -- and their second for Trost Records, was recorded in one intense live session at the White Noise studio in The Netherlands during a day-off on a European tour. The shared experiences of the road, studio, and travel evinces a group sound which is constantly shifting, solidifying, and disappearing completely -- true to the essence of free improvisation. On this album the trio shows the core strength as a unit gained from their live experiences…
Epiphanies VII-XIII
More buried treasure from Company Week 1982: seven previously unissued Epiphanies by lineups involving Derek Bailey, Ursula Oppens, Julie Tippetts, Keith Tippett, Philipp Wachsmann, Fred Frith, George Lewis, Anne LeBaron, Motoharu Yoshizawa and Akio Suzuki. Fred Frith is a stellar improviser — 1974’s Guitar Solos is still a seminal album of free improv — and he has three opportunities here to showcase his considerable talents. Eleventh is a tour de force of extended technique, with George Lewis…
Epiphanies I-VI
Derek Bailey’s guests for Company Week at London’s ICA in July 1982 were contemporary classical pianist Ursula Oppens, folk/jazz singer-turned-improviser Julie Tippetts and her partner pianist Keith Tippett, violinist/electronics wizard Philipp Wachsmann, guitarist Fred Frith, trombonist George Lewis, harpist Anne LeBaron, and from Japan free jazz bassist Motoharu Yoshizawa and sound artist Akio Suzuki. Altogether they performed the stunning extended improvisation Epiphany. In different, more i…
Epiphany
Honest Jon's Records present a reissue of Company's Epiphany, originally released in 1982. Epiphany \ i-ˈpi-fə-nē \ (1) a manifestation of the essential nature of something (usually sudden) (2) an intuitive grasp of reality through something (usually simple and striking) (3) an illuminating discovery or disclosure. All three definitions apply perfectly to this span of music recorded at London's ICA in July 1982. It's a miracle of group interaction, wonderfully paced, moving steadily between mome…
1969, 1970
**Available next week** "The original concepts of vocal and instrumental music are utterly different. The instrumental impulse is not melody in a 'melodious' sense but an agile movement of the hands which seem to be under the control of a brain centre totally different from that which inspires vocal melody. Altogether, instrumental music, with the exception of rudimentary rhythmic percussion, is as a rule a florid, fast and brilliant display of virtuosity... Quick motion is not merely a means t…
Live At Nancy Jazz Pulsations
It was in 1973, on the 14th of October, late in the afternoon; on a pretty Sunday under the Big Top in the heart of the “Parc de la Pépinière”, in Nancy; it was the “premiere”, the world first hearing, and it has so far remained the only one commissioned by composer and trumpet player lvan Jullien, for the first international Nancy Jazz Pulsations festival.In order to complete this work of composition and orchestration, Ivan asked the great Eddie Louiss on organ, and chose to do without a double…
I Am Waiting (Big Tent Digs Ferlinghetti)
Jerome Kitzke - Piano, Readings and Vocal, Steve Rust - Electric and Acoustic Basses, Harvey Sorgen - Drums and Percussion - They are not a political party, but given all the different musical points of view brought to bear by these three veteran improvisers, a delicious Big Tent in sound is created when drummer / percussionist Harvey Sorgen, bassist Steve Rust and pianist / vocalist Jerome Kitzke come together. The resulting music is possessed of raw energy or delicate filigree and everything i…
The Mystery Brothers
Jay Rosen - drums, Brian Willson - drums. Recorded by Alfredo MArtin at Whitman Hall, Brooklyn College, December 10, 2008. From The Mystery Brothers, here is a wonderful performance of drum concertos, written and performed by Brian Willson, the great drummer / percussionist / conductor, and fellow master drummer Jay Rosen. The production / recording is nothing short of amazing and pristine. Here's a prime example of how the drums are indeed a melodic instrument. Willson and Rosen explore the ins…
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…
Lubok
Blend 3 is an organism made up of three different but similar personalities. The group explores the diverse sonorities of a trio that, without a predetermined set, utilizes composition and improvisation as its only resources. By means of this combination of composition and improvisation, what is already written is proposed in an original and revisited way time after time. Concurrently, improvisation as an actual practice rather than as a genre is developed with a deep compositional function. Ble…
Odyssey
**A labor of love, this marvelous self-produced six-disc set collects trumpeter Bill Dixon's previously unreleased solo recordings since the 1970s.** 2001 release. Odyssey is the definitive compendium of solo trumpet music by Bill Dixon, as compiled by the artist. Dixon (1925-2010) was known primarily for his small and large ensemble masterpieces of the decades between Intents and Purposes (1967) and Tapestries (2009). While he appeared infrequently in solo performances, he was continually evolv…
More Intra Musique
When glancing over the history of indigenous French free improvised music, there tends to be two observable categories of musicians - those who worked and collaborated with their counterparts from abroad, and those who worked independently. The former is generally more celebrated, and among those the drummer Jacques Thollot, who worked with Don Cherry, Steve Lacy, Sonny Sharrock, Sam Rivers, Joachim Kühn, and numerous others, as well as with French pioneers like Barney Wilen and Jef Gilson, rank…
Libido
Libido is a noteworthy moment in contemporary Free Improvisation you should not miss. It’s so fragile, yet uncompromising, so sensitive and confrontative at the same time… It’s simply beautifull" Edition of 200 copies on black vinyl. Comes in a cardboard sleeve with inner envelopes and includes a paper inlay. Blemishes are Thomas Lumley (tenor saxophone) Nicola Hein (guitar), Constantin Herzog (bass) and Niklas Wandt (percussions)
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.
Live at the Magic Triangle
One of the most original cornet players to emerge from the avant-garde, the great 81-year-old Bobby Bradford hasn't dimmed at all over the years – and he sounds wonderful here on cornet in the company of Ken Filiano – bass, effects, Royal Hartigan – drums and Hafez Modirzadeh – tenor saxophone. Bobby made his mark in Los Angeles, playing with Ornette Coleman, Eric Dolphy and John Carter. Over two decades, saxophonist Hafez Modirzadeh has developed his pioneering chromodal concept, a cross-cul…