Jazz /
Cagean Morphology
**300 copies, 2019 stock** "The Serries-Verhoeven acoustic, chamber duo – Serries on the acoustic guitar and Verhoeven on the piano – is actually the last one to be recorded in the Tonus series but the duo distills the very essence of the series serves as a fitting introduction to this series. Cagean Morphology was recorded, mixed and mastered at the Sunny Side Studio at Anderlecht, Belgium on March 10th 2018. The minimalist layout of the Tonus series, was designed by Rutger Zuydervelt, aka Mach…
Texture Point
**300 copies, 2019 stock** "Minimal art is often presented as an act of simplification, a field in which nothing much happens and lesser (or even lazy) artists can have a field day. However, it is both in the visual arts and in music, perhaps one of the most misunderstood movements. Minimal artists not only sought out a certain core essence, but leading artists and theorists, such as Donald Judd, also offered a reaction against the extravagant focus on the subjective by the abstract expressionis…
Intermediate Obscurities I+IV
**300 copies, 2019 stock** What self-taught musicians lack in education and (sometimes) technical prowess, many make up for with the need to carve out a space for themselves. Their trajectory is often like a perpetual motion of restless movements. Even among those musicians, Dirk Serries is a special case. Loyal to whoever he comes across, but a solitary seeker at the same time. An eternal outcast whose discography expands at a swift and steady pace, building an island entirely of his own, despi…
Innocent as Virgin Wood
**300 copies, 2019 stock** "In its essence, free improvisation is a leap into the unknown. A question mark. And while it is possible to reproduce previously used ideas, in its purest sense it takes balls to accept its challenges, for the simple fact that the performer is out there alone, even when playing with others. Free Improvisation is being naked on a stage. The unavailability of form and reassurance about what is happening next cannot be underestimated. In improvised music, the musician is…
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…
Caura
**100 copies** Caura is a long-distance collaboration by Masayuki Imanishi (Osaka, Japan) and Marco Serrato Gallardo (Sevilla, Spain), which takes the form of two long improvised tracks made with double bass, field recordings, contact microphones and manipulated speakers. Masayuki Imanishi: field recordings, speaker, contact microphoneMarco Serrato Gallardo: double bass Recorded in Sevilla and Osaka by Masayuki Imanishi and Nacho García, December 2018 / January 2019.Mixed by Masayuki Imanishi, …
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…
Throw Tomatoes
**300 copies, 2019 stock** Contrary to the fabled image, they didn’t really throw rotten tomatoes during Shakespeare’s time at The Globe Theatre. Vegetables, yes, but there are no tomatoes on record in Britain for another seven-score years after Shakespeare. No matter. The title of this album by the Rempis / Piet / Daisy trio is my own flippant gesture to the listener: "Say what you will about this music; this is what we three offer you, unapologetically. If you are revolted by the madness of ou…
Re-Collect
Jeb Bishop - trombone, Russ Johnson - trumpet, Jason Roebke - bass, Frank Rosaly - drums. Re-Collect has a bright and innovative sound, all compositions are played in especially expressive and dynamic mood. Suggestion, driving playing manner, passionate and unique style, creativity, luminous and dramatic culminations which calm down to silent and relaxing pieces – these are the main elements of this quartet’s music. Four great jazz improvisers are playing together and each musician has his own a…
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…