Jazz /
Live at the Storyville, NYC - 24 October 1977
Quite simply one of Sun Ra's best live albums. This rare recording (originally on Horo records) finds Ra, along with a 19-piece Arkestra, playing a mix of his own compositions ('Images' and 'Lights') along with several jazz standards (including Jelly Roll Morton's 'King Porter Stomp' and Duke Ellington's 'Lightnin''). While Ra's own compositions were usually more avant-garde affairs, he always revelled in playing the classics as well in an effort to give his audience a lesson in jazz histo…
Semelles de fondation
Ressuage: Michel Pilz (bass clarinet), Itaru Oki (trumpet, flugelhorn, reeds), Benjamin Duboc (doublebass, voice), Jean-Noël Cognard (drums, objects), Patrick Müller (electrosonic) and Sébastian Rivas (laptop). Recorded in 2010 by Patrick Müller. Mixed by Patrick Müller. A coproduction by Bloc Thyristors-Bimbo Tower Records.
Michiyuki
'Thoughtful improvisation from percussionist Tatsuya Nakatani in a duo with Kaoru Watanabe on shinobue, noh kan & ryuteki, stunningly beautiful passages to active and unusual musical forms. The blending of traditional and radical new styles makes this a fascinating disc, with great communication and excellent pacing between the two players. Recommended for aural world travelers.'
White Stone Black Lamp
'From Between Trio partners percussionist Tatsuya Nakatani and saxophonist Michel Doneda in a duo release of unusual improvisation, the first release on Tatsuya's new Kobo label. Doneda performs on soprano and sopranino, chirping and smearing upper register sounds and laying out long tones that play beautifully to Nakatani's gongs, bows, drums, and inexplicable sound sources. Their long association yields an impressive compatibility and almost telepathic power in discourse. Impressive, un…
Swing Low Sweet Spiritual
Following a few years spent living and playing in Scandinavia, an unknown saxophone player by the name of Albert Ayler returned home to the USA to begin imposing his revolutionary style of jazz on the world. Having recorded his debut album, My Name Is Albert Ayler for the Danish label, Debut Records, this session (which took place in New York City on 24 February 1964) was his first American effort, resulting in the eventual release of two albums: Spirits (released in 1964 on Debut) and Swi…
Spirits
After a few years spent living in Sweden and touring with Cecil Taylor's Jazz Unit, Ayler moved to NYC to begin imposing his revolutionary style of jazz on the world through a number of groundbreaking records. Spirits, recorded at Atlantic Studios in New York City on 24 February 1964, was his first effort. Recorded a few months prior to his landmark album for ESP-Disk, Spiritual Unity (but only released in Europe on Denmark's Debut Records), for the occasion Ayler recruited Norman Howard …
Splintered Visions
BR worked with Adam Kriney of La Otracina and Owl Xounds on the Owl Xounds/Family Battle Snake split cassette back in May 2007, and its great to have this raging free jazz improv psyche out bunch back on Blackest Rainbow again for this awesome LP. 'Splintered Visions' was recorded back in February 2007, and has been torn from the archives of some of the wildest jams put to tape. This time round the group is in a quartet zone with Kriney on drums, Gene Janas on upright bass, Mario Rechtern on sax…
Horsky Park
Two instruments with totally different histories come together and look for a connection across two great sets from 2006 & 2010. "What counts is who you are performing with....in the end that is more important than the actual instrument"-Thomas Lehn
Heart's Reflection
An incredible double CD from trumpeter Leo Smith's Organic with Michael Gregory, Pheeroan AkLaff, Angelica Sanchez, Skuli Sverrisson, Brandon Ross, &c &c... incredible electric and acoustic jazz from the legendary improviser and innovator!"Lauded as "one of the most vital musicians on the planet" by Coda, Wadada Leo Smith is one of the most visionary, boldly original and artistically important figures in contemporary American jazz and free music, and one of the most distinctive trumpet pla…
Black Love
Saxophonist Carlos Garnett recorded with Pharoah Sanders, Miles Davis and Art Blakey. His 1974 spiritual jazz album features an amazing line-up of Reggie Lucas (Miles Davis, Sonny Rollins), Buster Williams, Dee Dee Bridgewater, Alex Blake (Sun Ra), Charles Sullivan, Mauricio Smith (Tito Puente), Norman Connors, and Billy Hart. Exact repro reissue.
Invisible
A new series designed by Clare Cooper. Xavier Charles is an active clarinetist in the world of improvised music, known from a variety of constellations and ensembles like Dans les arbres and Contest of Pleasures. This is his first solo release for Sofa. Listening and perception are important elements in Invisible, which consists of both solo clarinet and field recordings. A total openness to moment and utterance characterizes his sound explorations, where we in a poetic fashion, are led to a pla…
Different Tessellations
Two very different versions of Weston's compositional framework based on a cycle of pentatonic scales. Tessellations I explores the possibilities of improvising with a pre-established form as a soloist and was conceived for acoustic piano. (The composer recorded a version in 2003 on a Luthéal piano in Brussels released as Emanem 4095). Only the first half of the 2010 version by the young concert and improvising pianist LEO SVIRSKY is included here because of CD durational limitations. His interp…
Figures And Grounds
'My role in bringing together this group was to provide a new context for the diverse talents of these musicians. From the outset, the aim of the group was to explore the range of possibilities at the intersection of jazz and computer music.' Adam Linson. This is a terrific CD with this stellar line-up: Axel Dorner (trumpet, electronics), Rudi Mahall (bass clarinet), Adam Linson (double bass, electronics) and Paul Lytton (drums, percussion). Recorded on 14 January 2008 in AL's studio, Josetti Hö…
Lio Leo Leon
The whole of the performance at the 2010 Freedom of the City festival by the 38-strong LIO. Conductions by Alison Blunt, Steve Beresford (featuring guest Leon Michener), Philipp Wachsmann, Caroline Kraabel, and Dave Tucker (featuring guest Ishmael Wadada Leo Smith), were interspersed with free improvisations.
Trance Map
Evan Parker (soprano saxophone, sample collection, co-composition), Matthew Wright (live sampling, turntables, co-composition and sound design). In which the studio becomes the arena for an expanded method of improvisation where successive layers of sound making are built up, revised, scrapped, edited, revisited... (As the notes say 'the tweaks went down to the wire.') In short, the way many musicians have been working for decades, but a new experience for a hard-core, real-time free improviser …
Unknown skies
...Every trio without a piano, or without a drums, or as in this case without a double bass, gains in incline what it loses in “balance”. It only takes a little sometimes. Everyone plays at ease across. Everyone can split themselves. There are no more solos as solos but phases, circles of influence and predominance which do not last. The duos bind and unbind more clearly, the contrasts stand out better. The theme is no longer material to develop but, as in Unknown Skies, a lyrical and volatile s…
Conversations
William Parker has long taken an active role in the presentation of his own art (self-produced records/CDs, concerts, festivals, publications) and that of others. That initiative continues with this major work, an anthology of musician-to-musician interviews in the lineage of Arthur Taylor’s seminal “Notes and Tones”. Approximately 12 years in the making, “Conversations” has hallmarks of being a very personal project, spotlighting many musicians who are largely unknown to even avid fans of the…
Whobub
The great surprise with the French quintet Hubbub comes with seeing them in performance before you’ve heard one of their recordings. Five men walk on stage, two carry saxophones, one a guitar, the pianist and drummer sit down at their instruments. It looks like a conventional notion of a band, the sole concession to the world of electronics the Gibson Les Paul, itself a guitar design that has changed little in the past sixty years. Every instrument carries with it the expectation of a characteri…
Old Sights, New Sounds
Recorded at Incus HQ, London, in October 2010, this duo is a delight that should refresh even the most jaded ears. Lol Coxhill and Alex Ward are both veteran improvisers and regular participants on the London scene, so it was inevitable that they would eventually play together as a duo. As evidenced below by YouTube, that happened in August 2010 at John Russell's annual Fete Qua Qua; the pairing was repeated the following month at Sybil Madrigal's monthly Boat Ting gig on the Thames (on the…
Under a double moon
With a career now spanning over 40 years and more than 100 recordings, Joe McPhee has shown that emotional content and theoretical underpinnings are thoroughly compatible — and in fact, a critically important pairing — in the world of creative improvised music. Since recording The Hated Music with Paul Flaherty in 2000, Chris Corsano has been hyper-active in far-reaching corners of the free improvised world. Under A Double Moon, recorded live in Paris during a spring 2010 tour of Europe, i…