Jazz /
Duo/Deep sea
Precious document of early Japanese improvised music scene. Tensional performance of heavy sounds from reeds and bass.
The hands of Caravaggio
A staggering achievement, one is tempted to call The Hands of Caravaggio the first great piano concerto of the 21st century. The work is the brainchild of Keith Rowe, eminence grise of MIMEO and co-founder of AMM who, inspired by the recently discovered painting The Taking of Christ by Caravaggio, imagined a piece combining the mighty forces of MIMEO's electronics with the pure, gorgeous sound of John Tilbury's piano. Technically, therefore, the work is not really freely improvised, as the music…
Flore de cataclysmo
This trio features very distinct musical personalities and caught us off guard simply by its appearance at all, but we sure did smile when we heard it as we knew it would pack the goods. Both Zach (percussion) and Doneda (reeds) lay sturdy frameworks with Ielasi (guitar) adding an almost alien warmth to the group sound. Intense sonic impact yet transparent and sparse enough to navigate with alert senses, the whole disc has an ambitious arc that one may miss when caught in the web. Doneda's comme…
From between
'It gives me great pleasure to announce the first release of the new label 'substance over surface editions' - SoSEDITIONS - an offering of recent live and studio recordings by the improvising trio of Michel Doneda, Jack Wright, and Tatsuya Nakatani. The recording is accompanied by a poem by renowned poet Jerome Rothenberg.
Number nine
Two Toronto musicians and a visitor from London formed this trio that has worked on both sides of the Atlantic. Group improvisations on acoustic guitar, alto saxophone and percussion that cover the whole gamut from dense high-energy to sparse interactions.
Stille post
Ulrich Böttcher: percussion, electronics. Uwe Buhrdorf: clarinet, electronics. Ulrich Phillipp: bass, electronics. Since 1994 Maxwells Dmon has been playing improvised music with electro-acoustic instruments. The trio works beneath the surface of cleanly structured contexts to explore the molecular structure of music. With the music on 'Stillte post', Maxwells Dmon expands their fragmentary approach extending it to the field of postproduction. The recorded music has been fragmented and re-compos…
Hidros One
2025 stock A composed improvisation, or possibly the other way around – this is one way of describing the music played by Mats Gustafsson and the Nu Ensemble, a multinational group of improvisational musicians.
The saxophonist Mats Gustafsson, born in 1964, became interested in improvisational music at an early age, inspired by among others the German Peter Brötzmann and the Britt Evan Parker.
The Nu Ensemble was a loosely structured, irregularly convened radio and concert project built around …
Windows: The Music Of Steve Lacy
What a pleasant surprise! The Swedish multi-reed maestro, he of the coruscatingly wild fluteophone attacks, turns to the relatively calm and linear world of Steve Lacy and finds a very happy medium in this solo release. While he treats Lacy's deadpan and deceptively simple melodies with clear respect, he uses them as jumping off points for his own idiosyncratic deconstructions. On "Deadline," he navigates into a territory of ultra-soft percussive clicks and taps, creating a fascinating spatial f…
Solo
Urabe is the ONLY Japanese player with the ability to soar beyond where Kaoru Abe left off, and for anyone with even the slightest interest in the possibilities of human breath and forged brass this is an essential and tremendously exciting document.
Agape
Martin Küchen: prepared and non prepared alto saxophone. David Stackens: guitar, low-budget electronics. Recorded at Fylkingen, Stockholm by Andreas Berthling, 16th of May 2004. Mastered by Andreas Berthling, David Stackens and Martin Küchen.
Leopardo
Leopardo is a solo recording by the Portuguese guitarist Manuel Mota, who might best be described as a somewhat more fluidly lyrical Derek Bailey. Lovingly recorded on solid body electric guitar, his improvisations have the spiky quality associated with the elder statesman of the freely improvised guitar, but Mota's lines sound as though coated in oil, possessing a slipperiness and liquidity that peeks back at Portuguese traditions. There are very few extended effects employed, the guitar string…
The hearing continues
The hearing continues. The playing continues. The listening continues. The music continues. The London Improvisers Orchestra (LIO) continues to play the first Sunday of every month (except December & January) at the Red Rose. Every concert is different - has its own flavour - largely due to who is performing that night, and whose pieces are performed. Some musicians have other commitments on the night. Some musicians drop out completely, others join afresh. Some are just in London for an extende…
More together than alone
Soprano saxophonist Lol Coxhill always sounds good regardless of what area he is playing in and who he is playing with. This present collection just features his free improvising, but with a variety of partners. The late Hugh Davies was a master instrument inventor. Guitarist John Russell is one of the major stalwarts of the London improvising scene (like Coxhill). Henry Lowther has been a much sought-after jazz trumpeter since the 1960s, but has always kept a toe in free waters. Pat Thomas is a…
Out to launch
Two complete solo soprano saxophone concerts, from Chicago and London, show that Coxhill is as inventive as ever some four decades after his first solo performances. In between there is a 10-minute improvisation by an impromptu 13-piece orchestra. 77 minutes -- previously unissued.
Digswell duets
The 39 minute duet with Simon Emmerson is an early example of interactive saxophone and electronics, wherein Emmerson modifies Coxhill's sound, and Coxhill reacts accordingly, etc. The 34 minute duet with pianist Veryan Weston is an early example of their very compatible duo, which is still going strong. Reissue of Random Radar RRR 005 with extra material from the same sessions. 73 minutes.
The Open Air Meeting
Muhal Richard Abrams: piano; Marty Ehrlich: alto saxophone, clarinet.
This disc is taken from a live recording of an open air concert
which took place August 11, 1996 at the Brooklyn Museum in New York.
This duet concert was, on one level, a meeting between two of the
seminal jazz innovators of their respective generations. The nuanced and
subtle interchange of ideas between these two great musicians-as they
challenge and provoke each other to explore new musical ground-is
enthralling thr…
In::tension:.
About I n : : t e n s i o n : 'Since a very young age, I have always been attracted to journeys and traveling to places not known to me. Last year, I watched a film from Mongolia about a dog. Once the dog dies, its soul is free to travel and wonder through landscapes and memories as a disembodied spirit. Each part of I n : : t e n s i o n : . is part of a longer journey, where you can hear, sense and discover different memories that a wandering soul revisits. Percussive, intimate, visceral, ritu…
s/t
ErstLive is a new series of releases from Erstwhile Records, documenting notable live sets associated with the label. The discs are designed to simulate a concert experience, each in the same template design using two colors chosen by the musicians involved, with a photo of the concert on the back cover. Each will be in an edition of 800 CDs and not reprinted. The initial releases will be chosen from the AMPLIFY 2004 festival which took place in Cologne and Berlin in May 2004. ErstLive …