Jazz /
Bulut
Mindblowing!!!!!!"One day a super nice fellows from Turkey wrote me... Umut ! he enjoyed the one-sided i did by Phill Musra with Huseyin... that's why i always consider myself as a farmer, a plant seeds... well this RARE focus on the Turkey jazz scene are the fruits from that Musra trio one-sided LP... and to be sincere i'd have NEVER belived one day to be able to do such a focus (not even when i stopped qbico): difficult to know/find the right people/the right music from that elusive (but with …
Stones
LP + CD version. Here are two of the planet's most uncompromising and inventive young hornithologists and saxophonists, Colin Stetson and Mats Gustafsson. Mats Gustafsson is the uncompromising Swedish saxophonist famous for his no-holds barred style. Colin Stetson is a member of Arcade Fire's touring group, and his prodigious bass saxophone tones have been called on by a host of American alternative acts including Bon Iver, Tom Waits, Laurie Anderson, TV on the Radio, David Byrne, Feist, My Brig…
Mirror Mirror
A collector's dream come true, Sam Sander's Mirror Mirror is so rare that the recordings on this album have never before seen a proper release and even the cover art had to be created from scratch. An almost unbelievable fact given that it ranks as one of the strongest releases in the already air-tight era of Strata Inc's Detroit. Although he's been compared to John Coltrane, Ornette Coleman, and Joe Henderson, Sam Sanders stands out as one of the most unique phenomena to come from the Motor Cit…
Music Of The Modern White
2009 issue "The album begins with a percussion intro that sounds more like a gunfight than any sort of recognisable drumming routine, and continues to get weirder and weirder from there on. New York avant-garde-ists Zs might be seen as a kind of post-modern free-jazz ensemble, combining sax, guitars and live kit sounds with all the tumult of contemporary electronic drone music. This LP absorbs the impact of no-wave, industrial music, Merzbow and (on the ornate rhythmic figures of 'MMW I…
New Slave Part II: Essence Implosion!
Further to their acclaimed 'New Slaves' LP of spring 2010, Zs offer 'Essence Explosion' backed with new remixes on vinyl from Thee Majesty (Genesis Breyer P-Orridge and Bryin Dall), JG Thirlwell (Foetus) and Cex, plus a download code for mixes by Gabe Andruzzi (The Rapture), Zebrablood (Excepter), Weasel Walter (Flying Luttenbachers), and Ecstatic Sunshine redeemable directly from the label. It's hard not to be wowed by the velocity of their explicit noise skronk on the original version, …
Grain
CD edition "The new Zs lineup (Sam Hillmer, Greg Fox and Patrick Higgins) sounds very much like a new band, at least as evidenced by the Grain EP. The two side-length tracks (coming in at a total of 42-minutes) bear the marks of Zs' sound - repeated phrases, looped or played in situ; buried drones and harsh electronic tones - but it does sound very much like a new band.
There's an extended ambience to the album that trick perceptions of time. Glitches and waves that last only a minute or th…
Gored Gored
Terrie of The Ex collaborated with numerous people over the years to get inspiration from and absorbing all elements of all music, but continuing to being raw and unpolished. In meetings with the Norwegian hard-hitting avant-garde drummer, Paal Nilssen-Love, two souls of similar attitude meet, although from very different background. Being a jazz drummer, Nilssen-Love holds his sticks well in the improvised area of music, much more than the average jazz musicians do today.
This CD is hard …
The Spanish Suite
2012 Re-release "The Spanish Suite was written to magnify the contribution that Moorish Spain made on the European Renaissance. The relationship of music to cosmic rhythms and harmony was altered from the original state of Spanish music and eventually distorted down to the 12 tone equi-temperment system of tuning. The Artistic Heritage Ensemble was taught to play outside of the 12-tone system and to recognize natural tone relationships. The musicians had to be dedicated to music for life …
Maru Sankaku Shikaku - Circle Triangle Square
Reissue of this Japanese early '70s performance group. The group's name is literally the icons for a "circle," "triangle" and "square," with "Maru Sankaku Shikaku" substituting as a translation for those images. Circle Triangle Square were a painted bunch of commune rockers and percussion tribe second to none, whose random bells, flute and remedial tea-tray flailings were still more like the Godz or Nihilist Spasm Band than the deep theta-space obliterations of Taj Mahal Travellers. Led by futur…
A Birthday Tribute - 75 Years
Five recordings, 2 from 1977 at Tempo Natural and 3 from 1993, where Tony Oxley leads various permutations of improvisers Derek Bailey, Paul Rutherford, Pat Thomas, Matt Wand, Phillip Wachsmann, Ian Brighton. The first track from 1993 brings all musicians together for a 29 minute work of great dynamic and dialog. The following track present a quartet with Oxley, Bailey, Thomas and Wand from the same session, and the final 1993 track is the duo of Oxley and Rutherford. The first '77 tra…
Mirrors & tides
Eyes closed, ears wide open, we are given freedom to dream the void. Sweeping, intricate, sometimes ominous yet always exuding a warmth and depth of emotion, The Stargazer's Assistant produces pure cinema of sound. For the new EP, David J. Smith (Guapo) is joined by Circle vocalist Mika Rttö', who sings on the heart-breaking 'Coral Butterfly'. David also had the honour of playing the late Finnish jazz drummer Edward Vesala's Sound & Fury collection of unique metal percussion. Ancient fore…
Lammergyer
The Lammergyer. A spaceship created by a race thousands of generations dead. With a stardrive so shitfire lethal that just to enter an inhabited system was to trigger a fatal ecological cataclysm. Lammergyer. To say it was to hear the slamming of sarcophagus lids in hell. The anti-genesis. The world killer. –Kicking the Monolithic Habit, Heavy Metal, Vol. 19-1Burning Tree consists of Dag Erik Knedal Andersen on drums and Dag Stiberg on sax. The duo have created a harsh free jazz record inspired…
Con-gas
Of course we know Bocian since their earliest releases, which was all on 7". Now, an impressive catalogue further, they suddenly return to this format, and make two of them. On one hand Bocian is a label for strictly improvised music and on the other hand for radical experiments in electronic music. This 7" is clearly a product of the first interest. These four pieces were recorded earlier this year in Vienna and has Nilssen-Love on congas and Gustafsson on slide and brass saxophones. This is th…
Exta
Finally restocked! "Butcher’s sax ranges from soft, whispery purrs to teeth-chatteringly spiteful blasts. Lehn’s analogue synth leaps in a moment from burbling tones to fiercely sizzling abstraction, and Tilbury slips from his familiar melodic interludes and fragmented arpeggios to crashing, seismic attacks on the inside of the piano. What sets this album head and shoulders above similar offerings is the understanding between the trio. It’s not just the way all three move together as one from su…
Barcelona Express
Stunning work of radical free music by saxophonist Masayoshi Urabe and guitarist Rinji Fukuoka (Overhang Party / Majutsu no Niwa). Recorded in 2004 in various locations (France, Spain, Switzerland and Japan), this album brings together elements of free jazz, rock, noise and even folk music, in a way that is magically spontaneous, iconoclastic and full of grace in every single sound produced. Pretty much uncomparable to any of the music 'out there' nowadays, these are wild cuts by two wild …
Kampen
"Sometimes there are weird coincidences. When we got new albums on our review list recently, many of them included reminiscences of the golden jazz eras in the 1950s, 60s and 70s. Rob Mazurek's Pulsar Quartet sometimes sounds like the seminal Miles Davis Quintet, Sam Rivers' trio with Dave Holland and Barry Altschul brings back memories of his RivBea studio days, Michael Blake taps the great jazz-rock bands of the 70s, Joe McPhee's plays "Naima" and "Round Midnight" on two new reissues, and even…
Live at Hasselt
Excellent free improvisation from the quartet of Els Vandeweyer (vibraphone), Fred Van Hove (piano / accordion), Paul Lovens (percussion), Martin Blume (percussion) recording at Kunstencentrum BELGIE & Cultuurplatform Motives for Jazz.
Lava
"Lava is a wonderfully apt title for this duet between Liudas Mockunas on soprano, tenor and bass saxophones and Barry Guy on bass. The music was recorded live at Kaunas Artists House Concert Hall in Lithuania on the 2nd of April, 2011, and released in a limited edition run of 300 vinyl LP's. Lava is the appropriate name for this music as it flows slowly and inexorably forward. Guy is a rock solid bassist who is a stalwart on the avant jazz and classical scene in Europe, and his skills ar…
Live
A previously unreleased concert recording from 1986 of a group of leading out jazz artists (Billy Bang, Fred Hopkins, Andrew Cyrille, &c.). Part of the magic of jazz in New York City is groups of musicians coming together for brief engagements and then moving off into other groups and configurations, leaving fond memories but little recorded evidence of their existence. The Group was a very talented amalgam of musicians, veterans of the free jazz and loft scenes: Ahmed Abdullah on trumpet …
Canons - 2nd Hoisting
Four extended compositions from the Tubass Quintet led by Szilard Mezei (performing on double bass instead of his usual viola) performing with a heavy group of 4 double bassists and tuba. An unusual configuration playing unusually named tracks (HEP 15, HEP 16, HEP 17 B, HEP 58/2), but clearly playing a unique rendering of jazz, swinging music from the lower end of the spectrum, with an open and accessible nature.