Jazz /
Solo Orchestra In Real Time
A beautiful, dreamlike expression of spiritual jazz recorded in 1981 at City Recorders - a time when this kind of music was considered completely out of vogue. Yet here is Gary Bias, unspooling a suite of deeply soulful and profoundly far-reaching original compositions that vividly evoke the blue skies of the record's Los Angeles origins. Bias plays alto and soprano saxophone and flute with a tone and sensibility that sits somewhere between the lyricism of early Pharoah Sanders and the bold atta…
Sharps and Flats
The only album ever released under the name of saxophonist, bandleader and composer Jesse Sharps - a major, largely unsung figure in the history of jazz music in Los Angeles. Recorded in 1985 for Tom Albach's legendary Nimbus West imprint, Sharps And Flats lay unreleased until 2004 on CD and never saw a vinyl pressing until 2018. Sharps studied under Cecil Taylor at college, then returned to L.A. and took over band-leading duties from the great altoist Arthur Blythe in Horace Tapscott's Pan-Afri…
Live at IUCC
The only live recording the Pan-Afrikan Peoples Arkestra ever released - and arguably the most complete document of this extraordinary musical community in full flight. Recorded between February and June 1979 at the Immanuel United Church of Christ on 85th & Holmes in Los Angeles, where P.A.P.A. played every second Sunday, developing their sound and building an audience rooted in the community. As a culturally radical, communal big band with a visionary approach to American Black music, the Arke…
Solo Orchestra In Real Time
A singular, radical entry in the Nimbus West catalogue from one of the true pioneers of the free jazz piano. Burton Greene was there at the very beginning - co-founding the Free Form Improvisation Ensemble with bassist Alan Silva in early-60s New York, recording for ESP-Disk and Columbia, playing the legendary loft sessions at Slugs'. After relocating to Amsterdam in 1969, Greene spent decades exploring the intersections of free jazz, Indian music, klezmer and electronic composition. Solo Orches…
East 101
A beautiful, dreamlike expression of spiritual jazz recorded in 1981 at City Recorders - a time when this kind of music was considered completely out of vogue. Yet here is Gary Bias, unspooling a suite of deeply soulful and profoundly far-reaching original compositions that vividly evoke the blue skies of the record's Los Angeles origins. Bias plays alto and soprano saxophone and flute with a tone and sensibility that sits somewhere between the lyricism of early Pharoah Sanders and the bold atta…
Morgenmusiken
On Morgenmusiken, Green Cosmos expand their small‑town German jazz into a quietly epic, Coltrane‑lit cosmos, braiding modal vamps, Indian classical colour and spacious free improvisation into seven meditative journeys where silence and a single note carry as much weight as any crescendo.
Kids Mysteries
Recorded live at the Bimhuis, Amsterdam. The debut album of M.O.B. - "My Own Band" - the project that would become the main vehicle for this South African giant in exile. Eight tracks, almost an hour of music, with titles that tell you everything you need to know: "Purtles," "Ice Cream Man," "Tea and Scones," "Monkey Woman," "Beach Balls," "Kids-Trainride."
Sean Bergin (1948-2012) left Durban for Amsterdam in 1976, escaping apartheid, carrying South African jazz in his blood. Half Irish, half So…
TA
Live at the Music Academy of the West, Santa Barbara, April 12, 1987. Cello and percussion. Two Europeans conquering California with nothing but strings, drums, bones, bodhran and squeaky toys. This is the duo that gave us Cellotape & Scotchtape in 1982 - now captured live on American soil, over an hour of pure duo improvisation.
Reijseger needs no introduction: Dutch cellist extraordinaire, ICP Orchestra veteran, Clusone Trio with Han Bennink and Michael Moore, later Werner Herzog's go-to compo…
L.A.'s Unsung
Nine rare tracks from the Nimbus West archive, a map of Los Angeles underground jazz the world never heard enough of. Horace Tapscott, Nate Morgan, Jesse Sharps, Dadisi Komolafe, Roberto Miranda - the names that built UGMAA and the Pan Afrikan Peoples Arkestra, the movement that kept spiritual jazz alive in South Central for decades while the music industry looked elsewhere.
"Desert Fairy Princess," "U.G.M.A.A Ger," "Prayer Of Happiness," "Mrafu," "Calvary" - titles evoking the Pan-African consc…
Wild West
The Amsterdam String Trio emerges from Europe's most vibrant improvised music scene: Maurice Horsthuis on viola, Ernst Reijseger on cello, Ernst Glerum on double bass. No violin. An unusual configuration that delivers, as Glerum puts it, "a dark sound, a kind of obscurity, and we like that very much." Three instruments exploring music's lower registers, without the violin's brightness to lead. Recorded live at the Academy of Music of the West in Santa Barbara on December 2, 1988, Wild West captu…
Lingua Franca
Lingua Franca: the language that allows different peoples to understand one another. And what better instrument than the clarinet - voice of klezmer, Alpine folk, New Orleans jazz - to speak across borders? Daniele D'Agaro was born in 1958 in Spilimbergo, Friuli, at the foot of the eastern Alps, where Italy, Austria, and Slovenia merge at a cultural crossroads. In 1979 he debuted with Andrea Centazzo's Mittel Europa Orchestra, then Berlin, then Amsterdam from 1983 - where the Dutch improvised sc…
Dreams Deferred
The title comes from Langston Hughes: "What happens to a dream deferred? Does it dry up like a raisin in the sun?" For a pianist who traversed Chicago, Los Angeles, New York and Amsterdam chasing a musical vision few could grasp, the question is anything but rhetorical. Curtis Clark was born in Chicago in 1950, studied at the California Institute of Arts in Valencia, then moved to New York where he crossed paths with David Murray. But it was Europe where he found home - Amsterdam, where American…
Reach, Believe It & Play
Solo piano. The format that separates the genuine article from the pretenders. No rhythm section to hide behind, no horns to share the weight. Just eighty-eight keys and whatever's in your soul. Curtis Clark came to this music through Horace Tapscott - not just as influence but as mentor. Born in Chicago in 1950, raised musically in Los Angeles, Clark became a Tapscott protégé, absorbing that open-ended spiritual approach to the keyboard before striking out for New York and eventually Amsterdam.…
Hassan's Walk
One album. One statement. One of the great mysteries of the Nimbus West catalog. Born Arthur Wells, the alto saxophonist and flautist who became Dadisi Komolafe studied under Horace Tapscott at the Cross Roads Art Academy, the educational arm of UGMAA. He appeared on numerous Nimbus sessions throughout the late seventies and early eighties, a reliable presence in the extended family. But Hassan's Walk, recorded in Los Angeles in October 1983, remains his sole document as leader - and what a docu…
Live in Santa Barbara
"Yeah, I'm Nate Morgan. I'm going to play with you all." That's how a teenage Nate Morgan introduced himself to Horace Tapscott after hearing The Giant Is Awakened on the radio and tracking down the Pan Afrikan Peoples Arkestra. Not "I want to" - "I'm going to." He'd already been studying with Joe Sample and Hampton Hawes, but Arthur Blythe's wailing saxophone on that Flying Dutchman LP had gone straight to his heart. A spiritual experience, he called it. Over the next decades, Morgan became a c…
Journey Into Nigritia
Journey Into Nigritia, released in 1983 on Tom Albach's Nimbus West, was a declaration of arrival. Morgan assembled a quartet built for spiritual exploration: firebreathing reedsman Dadisi Komolafe on alto saxophone, Jeff Littleton on bass, Fritz Wise on drums. The rhythm section would become Morgan's anchor - Littleton and Wise appear on all three of his Nimbus recordings.
Six compositions. The album opens with "Mrafu," John Coltrane's influence immediately apparent - Komolafe gets right to wor…
Retribution, Reparation
One year after his debut Journey Into Nigritia, Nate Morgan returned to Tom Albach's Nimbus West studio with a statement so direct it left no room for ambiguity. The album's title alone - Retribution, Reparation - announced its politics. Where the first record had been a declaration of arrival, channeling Cecil Taylor's angularity and John Coltrane's spiritual seeking, this 1984 session was something else: a confident distillation of the Pan Afrikan Peoples Arkestra's communal fire into a surgin…
Who Cares
The Takashi Mizuhashi Quartet proudly announces the reissue of their legendary 1974 album Who Cares, a cornerstone of Japanese post-bop jazz now available in a stunning remastered vinyl edition via Three Blind Mice Records. Originally recorded on August 28, 1974, at Aoi Studio in Tokyo, this vibrant LP captures the quartet's unparalleled synergy during jazz's golden era in Japan.
Led by bassist and composer Takashi Mizuhashi, the quartet features saxophonist Yoshio Otomo on alto and soprano sax,…
Yellow Carcass In The Blue
Legendary Japanese jazz vocalist Kimiko Kasai, one of the most innovative singers of the 1970s, joins forces with the fiery Kosuke Mine Quartet on the newly reissued Yellow Carcass in the Blue, originally released in 1971 on the esteemed Three Blind Mice (TBM) label. This rare leader album captures Kasai at her peak, blending her husky, soulful voice with avant-garde improvisation and fusion grooves, featuring standout tracks like the title song—Masabumi Kikuchi's composition elevated by Kasai's…
Black Orpheus
The legendary Isao Suzuki Trio's iconic 1976 album Black Orpheus, a cornerstone of Japanese jazz, receives a stunning 180g vinyl reissue, bringing its soulful modal and soul-jazz grooves back to life for a new generation of listeners.
Originally released on Three Blind Mice (TBM-63) and recorded on February 20, 1976, at Aoi Studio in Tokyo, Black Orpheus showcases bassist and cellist Isao Suzuki leading a powerhouse trio with pianist Tsuyoshi Yamamoto on piano and electric piano, and drummer Don…