Jazz /
Stars Have Shapes
Limited LP edition...MINDBLOWING! a unique and incredible orchestra of acoustic & electronic improvisation. "Jazz cornetist Rob Mazurek has created a sound world that is uniquely his own, sculpting a TOTAL sound environment, by fully utilizing the beautiful instrumentation of the Exploding Star Orchestra and sounds from a variety of sources, including: rain from the Brazilian Amazon, insects at the turn of an eclipse, the hammering overdrive of bicycles in Copenhagen, stacked muted cornets run t…
Waspnest
Aspec(t) are SEC_ and Mario Gabola from Naples, Italy. SEC_ plays electronics through laptop, processed tapes, and analog synthesizer. Mario plays saxophone and feedbacks through a system of resonant drums and small speakers. Their music shares the timbrical research and the execution control typical of some radical impro music (Pateras/Baxter/Brown, John Butcher, Jim Denley, Bruce Russell,..), but meets the visceral intensity and the obscure poetic of the new aktionsm and of noise music (Rudolf…
Fuck De Boere (1968/70)
"Two concert recordings -- never before released, mastered from original radio master tapes-by larger groups led by the German saxophone legend Peter Brötzmann. Both recorded by the esteemed Hessischer Rundfunk organization at the Frankfurt Jazz Festival, in 1968 and 1970. Two of the most explosive, rivetting pieces of music ever to come out of the European vaults. First: an unheard alternate version of Brötzmann's groundbreaking Machine Gun, this time with a nine piece group (same as the LP, ad…
Primitive London
LP version. This is the first-ever release of not ONE but TWO classic Basil Kirchin soundtracks, one from 1965, the other 1971. It's music for strippers, wife-swapping, death, birth, crime and chicken factories. Basil Kirchin is a legendary jazz drummer and grandfather of ambient music. He started his jazz career drumming in his father's jazz band. In the war years, he took over the band and post-war travelled to the East, hung out with the Maharishi, found himself, moved to Australia and finall…
Of Mythic Worlds
Exact repro of this 1980 album, the second Sun Ra album to be released on Philly Jazz following Lanquidity. Undated live recording, not previously reissued on either LP or CD! "Sun Ra's music is equational. It is based on a system and philosophy as old as the most ancient of civilizations, and it points the way of the future as well. Music is not seen as merely entertainment. Ra has oftentimes mentioned the potentials of music to change the social order. In fact, the highlight of many of his per…
A Black Mass
Repress, originally released in 2000. Surprise reissue of the most infamous and difficult to procure Sun Ra artifact; originally issued on Amiri Baraka (then LeRoi Jones)'s Jihad label (home of the original Sunny's Time Now by Sunny Murray as well). This is the first release on the DC-based Sonboy label officially sanctioned by Baraka (and mastered from the original tapes that have been sitting in his basement all along). Other unreleased sessions from the Jihad library of tapes are still rumore…
Black & Beautiful, Soul & Madness
The original 1968 studio recording of Black & Beautiful, Soul & Madness by Amiri Baraka & The Spirit House Movers is finally available. "After 40 years of constant chatter and occasionally a snippet heard by some radio DJ who had a copy, this record has for most people been something that they heard about but never heard. 'Beautiful Black Women' was both a love song and an anthem coming to us in the midst of the fire that was the '60s. 'Madness' was always my favorite because it spoke about the …
Dying sun
The third album by the established and highly respected Greek/Swedish/Norwegian trio Looper: Nikos Veliotis (cello), Martin Küchen (saxophone) and Ingar Zach (percussion). Recorded at GMEA auditorium in Albi, France, by Benjamin Maumus, January 2010. Music by Looper. Edited, mixed by Nikos Veliotis. Mastered by Coti K. Co-release Cathnor recordings.
Beneath tones floor
300 copies. Combining the beauty of art, poetry and music this beautiful package (available as compact disc or LP) makes for a fitting send off for the great bassist Sirone who passed away not long after this recording was completed. Along with Sirone’s deep and resonant bass, the musicians in this collective performance include Oluyemi Thomas on bass clarinet, flute, soprano, musette and percussion (he also composed the music) and Michael Wimberly on drums and percussion. Like the meditative po…
Other Planes of There
Other Planes of There (1964) presents Sun Ra (piano) and his Solar Arkestra once again pushing the boundaries on five Ra originals. The exceedingly experimental works are marked by the performers as much as they are by the compositions. The opening title track is an expansive suite of sounds adhering only to the boundless limits of the combo's sonic canvas. Each soloist is given ample room to propel the piece between the inspired Arkestra interjections, which in turn clears the way for the next …
We travel the space
We Travel the Spaceways was recorded at a handful of sessions in Chicago from 1956-1959, possibly 1960. Although several of the tunes also appear on other '50s era recordings, as usual, personnel and arrangements differ from album to album. Many of the tunes are quite bluesy, with tympani, bells, and percussion adding an exotic flair, but the big event here is the appearance of the "space chant," which would become an Arkestra calling card for decades to come. The band was starting to she…
Super-Sonic Jazz
The first album on Saturn! Despite the futurism that the title of the set might imply, the material on this LP is actually some of Sun Ra's earliest, and dates back to the years when the Arkestra was first beginning to make itself heard in Chicago. That doesn't stop the material from being amazing, though, as these prime early tracks really show how strong Ra's vision was, even when it was being applied to material that might look more simple on the surface.
The Solar-Myth Approach (Vol. 1)
40th volume in the BYG Actuel series; gatefold sleeve, 180 gram vinyl. "'A wild and passionate interstellar mix of free jazz, solo synthesizer and hard rocking cosmic philosophy specifically commissioned by the BYG/Actuel label (and apparently recorded in New York between 1970 and 1971)... this material 'would prove to be one of the cornerstones of the entire Sun Ra/Arkestra career'... with Kwame Hadi, Akh Tal Ebah, Ali Hassan, Charles Stephens, Marshall Allen, Danny Davis, John Gilmore, Danny R…
Maulawi
Soul Jazz Records are re-issuing this lost classic deep jazz album. This is the only recording of Maulawi Nururdin and his group. Originally recorded in Chicago in Sep 1973, and released by a small independent label in Detroit the following year. The music fell between the gap of the avant-garde and straight-ahead jazz, and had elements of Funk and Latin that were rare at the time that meant that commercially it sank without a trace -- but, thirty years on, we can see that these are exactl…
At The Helm
East New York Ensemble de Music came out of the diverse community of Bed-Stuy, Brooklyn, where African, West Indian & black American cultures converged. First and foremost a deep Spiritual Jazz record, At The Helm also incorporates elements of the West Indies, and both the Near and Far East. Originally issued in a very small pressing by Folkway Records in 1974, at a time when the label was doing some great underground recordings! The sound is loose and free – spiritually building in a man…
Angels Have Passed
Trio improv; Yoshizawa playing 5 string bass, Kosugi on violin, and Miyake on piano. A post-Cecil thirdstream air about it that's real avant-classical. Fluxus member Kosugi was also a member of '70s legends Taj Mahal Travellers.
Cairo Free Jazz Band
Restocked, few copies left: the privately pressed Cairo Free Jazz Ensemble 1st album had always been considered as a kind of legendary album, difficult to find (Hartmut confirmed to me that it was pressed in Egypt in only 200 copies)... here are available for the 1st time ever the sole other recordings left of this mythical Ensemble ! it all started with Salah Ragab & the Cairo Jazz Band playing jazz standards and new compositions in the end of the 60's... then, with the arrival of Hartmut, they…
Rag
Rag captures the best from a series of freely improvised meetings between saxophonist George Cartwright and percussionist Davu Seru, recorded at various Minneapolis venues over the course of 2009. Cartwright – longtime leader of Curlew, and owner of a musical c.v. which includes Ornette Coleman, Half Japanese, Alex Chilton and Loren Mazzacane – can be restlessly melodic or jaggedly guttural on the reeds, although his bedrock lyricism is never far from the surface. Seru’s playing is a tr…
Tsktsking
In improvised music, double bass and drums have a very different role to that in rock or jazz. Freed of the duties of “the rhythm section,” they are featured as much as any other instrument, without having to wait in line for their turn to solo. They are equal partners in the collective enterprise of music making. Bassists or drummers who have arrived at improv via rock or jazz often seem to relish the freedom they are afforded and become more extroverted. One need look no further than Ha…