Jazz /
Energies Douces (LP)
Privately released 1982 album of lovely free-flowing piano music by the French musician who had previously released the fantastic electronic Images LP on Pôle and on the NWW list.
Yamame
Jazz saxophonist Akira Miyazawa was known for his unparalleled love of fishing, and here he gives a masterful performance that conjures the image of silvery fish scales reflecting light through the cold and clear water of a small mountain stream. “Yamame” (the Japanese name for a kind of freshwater salmon) was recorded in 1962 and was Miyazawa’s first album, but the sharpness and avant-garde modernity of the music creates a completely timeless quality. Miyazawa is one of a group of musicians who…
Tippin' On Through
Tippin' On Through, by tenor saxophonist Curtis Amy, stands as a defining statement from one of West Coast jazz’s most eloquent voices. Recorded and released in 1965, the album pairs Amy’s warm, hard‑bop tenor with soulful grooves, crisp arrangements, and sympathetic ensemble interplay, creating a record that is both accessible and richly musical.
Tippin' On Through showcases Amy’s robust tone, lyrical phrasing, and rhythmic agility. Across the program he moves effortlessly between blues‑inflect…
Components
Components documents vibraphonist Bobby Hutcherson’s early emergence as a vital voice in modern jazz. Recorded and issued in 1965, the album presents Hutcherson’s distinctive mallet work and original compositions that bridge post‑bop lyricism and mid‑60s harmonic exploration.
Components balances melodic clarity with adventurous harmony, moving between contemplative ballads, driving post‑bop pieces, and modal excursions that highlight the vibraphone’s textural range within a small‑combo setting.
…
Be-Bop '82
*2026 stock* The title says it: a deliberate, joyful return to bebop fundamentals from the Kenji Mori quintet, recorded at a moment when the language could already feel like a stylistic choice rather than a default. By 1982 the Japanese jazz scene had moved through its modal, free and fusion phases, and Be-Bop '82 is in part a record about choosing to stand somewhere: a claim that the bebop vocabulary still had real things to say. Mori plays with the kind of warmth and confidence that comes from…
Now's The Time
*2026 stock* A live document from the legendary “5 Days In Jazz” festival in Tokyo in March 1974, and one of the most ambitious multi-band albums in the Three Blind Mice catalogue. The record gathers some of the most important working units of the moment: bassist Isao Suzuki and guitarist Sunao Wada sharing the front of the stage, the Tsuyoshi Yamamoto Trio holding things together from the rhythm section, and the George Otsuka Quintet stepping in with the alto-led horn front-line that defined th…
Active Volcano
*2026 stock* Nobuo Hara led Sharps & Flats for an astonishing run, well over half a century, and the band became one of the institutions of Japanese jazz, in roughly the same way the Clarke-Boland Big Band held its place in Europe. Active Volcano catches the ensemble in particularly muscular form: arrangements that draw on the funkier, groove-conscious end of seventies big-band writing, brass passages that hit hard without losing definition, and a sense of swing that belongs less to the swing er…
Live In Montreux
*2026 stock* The Tsuyoshi Yamamoto Trio in concert at Montreux, and one of the relatively few records that documents the working group on an international stage. By the time of this recording the trio had already been together for years, and the band's mutual understanding shows in the way pieces unfold: long heads, patient solos, and a rhythm section that responds to the leader's harmonic choices before he has finished making them.
Yamamoto plays with the bluesy, slightly behind-the-beat phrasi…
The In Crowd
*2026 stock* A mid-seventies entry from the Tsuyoshi Yamamoto Trio, and one of the records where the leader's bluesy, groove-conscious side comes most clearly to the front. The title track is the Ramsey Lewis standard, and the choice tells you most of what you need to know about the date: Yamamoto's trio was a working unit happy to engage with the soul-jazz and groove-jazz vocabularies that had been moving the music since the late sixties.
The rest of the programme balances that with the lyrical…
Go On
*2026 stock* Drummer George Otsuka was a fixture of the Tokyo jazz club scene from the sixties onwards, leading a series of working bands that earned a reputation for tight ensemble playing and consistently high temperature. 'Go On', one of the early releases on Three Blind Mice, captures the quintet at the moment when its hard bop foundation was beginning to stretch into something more searching: there's still plenty of swing, but the modal frames and freer improvising of the surrounding scene …
Encounter
*2026 stock* One of the more obscure entries in the early Three Blind Mice catalogue, and a record that points to the label's willingness, from very near its beginning, to host visiting players alongside the domestic scene. The American saxophonist Allan Praskin worked at the international margins of the jazz circuit, and Encounter finds him in a quartet setting that draws on the rhythmic discipline of the Japanese players around him.
The writing sits firmly in the post-bop tradition: modal fram…
Conversation
*2026 stock* One of the more intimate entries in the Three Blind Mice catalogue: a duo session, with all the exposure and concentrated focus the format implies. Conversation lives up to its title. Two players in close, careful dialogue, with neither voice dominating and neither retreating into accompaniment. The duo format strips a lot of the usual jazz furniture away: there's no rhythm section to lean on, no horn section to fill out the harmony, no place for either player to hide.
What's left i…
Live at the It Club
On Live at the It Club, Thelonious Monk and his classic quartet - Charlie Rouse, Larry Gales and Ben Riley - burn through two nights of Los Angeles brilliance in 1964, turning familiar originals and standards into angular, swinging explorations now fully restored in a complete edition.
All Blues
"Bassist Ron Carter had long been Creed Taylor’s first-choice bassist on record dates stretching as far back to the classic Gil Evans recording Out of the Cool in 1960. Carter was the first bass choice for many Creed Taylor productions throughout the 1960s for the Impulse, Verve, MGM and A&M/CTI labels, even while the bassist was recording and touring as part of the Miles Davis Quintet. And it was Ron Carter’s dulcet tones and swinging accompaniment on the double bass that drove nearly every CTI…
Montreux Cyclone
*2026 stock* A double-set capturing Bingo Miki's Inner Galaxy Orchestra in live performance at Montreux, and one of the more ambitious large-ensemble documents in the entire Three Blind Mice catalogue. Miki spent his career writing for big bands at the edge of mainstream Japanese jazz, blending orchestral architecture with modal, spiritual and free-leaning impulses, and the Inner Galaxy Orchestra was his most expansive vehicle. The Montreux performance shows the ensemble at full stretch: long-fo…
Yellow Carcass In The Blue
*2026 stock* 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 elevat…
Q
*2026 stock* Bassist Hideto Kanai was one of the most ambitious composer-bandleaders to emerge from the Japanese jazz scene of the early seventies, a writer of long-form pieces that integrated free playing with chamber-jazz architecture, and a player with the patience to leave space where lesser arrangers would clutter. Q, only the sixth release on Three Blind Mice, is one of his most uncompromising early statements: extended group playing built around Kanai's slow, structural bass lines, with t…
Maya
*2026 stock* Trumpeter Shunzo Ohno spent much of his career moving between the Japanese scene and the New York post-bop circuit, a player whose résumé runs through American bandleaders alongside his domestic work, and whose tone bears the marks of both worlds. His quintet date for Three Blind Mice is one of the records where he sounds most explicitly engaged with the modal and spiritual currents of seventies American jazz: Coltrane shadows everywhere, but absorbed into a particular Japanese pois…
Mine
The very first record released on Three Blind Mice, a debut for both label and bandleader. Recorded in Tokyo in August 1970, Mine announces the saxophonist Kosuke Mine and sets out, in advance, the editorial stance the label would hold for the next two decades: serious post-bop with European clarity, Coltrane-era heat, and a particularly Japanese sense of restraint that lets the most intense solos hold their shape. Mine's quintet pairs his alto and soprano with trombone, the great Hideo Ichikawa…
Fragments: The Complete 1969 Salle Pleyel Concerts
On Fragments: The Complete 1969 Salle Pleyel Concerts, The Cecil Taylor Unit detonates across two uncut Paris sets: a newly unearthed, vividly mastered document of Taylor, Sam Rivers, Jimmy Lyons and Andrew Cyrille stretching free jazz into an overwhelming, architectural storm of sound.