Jazz /
Elegua
Latin music, with all its spirit, all its intensity, and all its magic, expresses itself in the decade of the seventies as a cultural revelation. Europe recognizes, listens, and dances to our music, the United States jumps to the sound of it. Latin America is letting its roots be felt. Elegua is a part of this happening. It originated in Boston as a result of the collective efforts of musicians concerned about the direction to be taken by the Latin American musical forms. Elegua essentially deal…
Dizzy Gillespie & Charlie Parker At Town Hall 1945, Carnegie Hall 1947 & Birdland 1951 "Revisited"
When Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie went into the recording studio together on 28 February 1945, they had already served a shared apprenticeship in the big bands of Earl Hines and Billy Eckstine, had jammed informally exploring their common interest in adventurous extensions of swing harmonies and reconfigured rhythms, and were, individually and collaboratively, prepared to redirect the course of modern jazz. That session shouldn’t in any way be considered the public “birth” of bebop; those …
Charlie Parker At Birdland 1950 "Revisited“
"This one was working. This one always had been working. This one was always having something that was coming out of this one that was a solid thing, a charming thing, a lovely thing, a perplexing thing, a disconcerting thing, a simple thing, a clear thing, a complicated thing, an interesting thing, a disturbing thing, a repellant thing, a very pretty thing. This one was one whom some were follow-ing. This one was the one who was working.” Gertrude Stein’s 1910–11 description of the creative eff…
Ecce Homo
Edition of 400, on black vinyl. This is pure gold for the electro-Miles Davis’s lovers. The great saxophonist Gugliemo Pagnozzi directs his band in compositions built on improvisation flows that unfold starting from a minimally organized accompanying rhythmic cell in continuous transformation and in the making, which in turn is developed and modified during the executive-improvisation flow chasing instant dialling. Pressed at Optimal Media.
With A Little Help From My Friends
Super Tip! 400 copies, black vinyl. 1968 was a crucial year for Volker Kriegel's career, as he released "With A Little Help From My Friends," his first solo album, and signed with American vibraphonist Dave Pike, joining what would quickly emerge as one of the most popular and influential jazz fusion combos. This precious document reissued for the first time by Cinedelic Jazz with bonus tracks highlights all his qualities that enabled him to become one of the most acclaimed and innovative guitar…
Strumento di Etimo Incerto
The singular Norwegian percussionist Ingar Zach, a long-time member of paradigm-shifting experimental ensembles like Huntsville and Dans les arbes, delivers his eighth solo recording, and his first on the superb Belgian imprint Aspen Edities. The percussionist digs even deeper into his sonic research, transforming a massive bass drum used in orchestral music, as a resonant surface for otherworldly, texture-rich excursions that mix-and-match rhythm and color in ever-shifting combinations.
Variations (LP)
* 250 copies, hand numbered * On Nils Vermeulen’s first solo album, the sound of the double bass is the main variable. Recorded at the empty Ghent Opera, where every note, attack and vibration comes through, including the creaking of the wooden floor. There is no hiding in reverb, nor in easy playing. The strings Vermeulen uses on this recording (‘Tempera’ strings by Gerold Genssler), are inspired by traditional gut strings, and have lower tension to let the instrument resonate freely. The pie…
Music For Zoe
*150 copies limited edition* Music For Zoe is the result of the encounter between two masters of free improvisation, Edoardo Ricci (soprano saxophone and bass clarinet) and Lucio Bonaldo (drums) with Gianluca Favaron (computer), a prime mover of electronic sounds often pushed beyond the limits. What emerges from this encounter is a kind of European-style free music, with open structures, sometimes close to radical contemporary improvisation. The acoustic sounds of percussion and wind instruments…
Formless
"Gorgeous quintet improv space explored at Chicago's ProMusica studios. Long-time partners Przemyslaw Drazek (trumpet, strings, percussion) and Brent Fuscaldo (voice, guitar, percussion, harmonica) join up again with Hamid's percussion, Tatsu's bass & shamisen, and Thymme's piano & various, just as they did on last year's amazing Ourania (FTR513). The sounds now are spacious, comfortable explorations of unknown sonic turf. There may be a bit less of the aggressive edge that marked their earlier …
1969
Ebalunga!!! is coming back with a new long-awaited reissue of LP by the famous Hungarian guitarist, originally released in 1969. Gabor Szabo exploded onto the American jazz scene in the early sixties. His unusual approach and unique sound brought something startling and new to jazz. With Chico Hamilton, Charles Lloyd and Gary McFarland, Szabo offered something few in jazz had ever heard before: guitarist as enchanter and conjurer and musician as storyteller and mesmerist. Once Szabo declared hi…
Bosporus Bridges - A Wide Selection Of Turkish Jazz And Funk 196
Pioneering, magisterial compilation, which turned many of us here onto Mustafa Ozkent, Fikret Kizilok, Erkin Koray, Temiz and co, a decade ago. Still dazzling, fresh, essential.
The Solar-Myth Approach
The second instalment of a landmark session by one of the most unique figures in black music is a shower of sounds that have come straight from another world. Sun Ra and the various groups he led were as prolific as they were innovative. By conservative estimates they produced around 200 recordings over a fifty-year period, and the early 70s was as fertile a time as any. In a typical burst of creative energy Ra and an ensemble he dubbed The Solar Myth Arkestra produced enough material to be spr…
Meditation / Resurrection
*2023 repress* "Meditation / Resurrection is a double-album presenting a bounty of beautiful new William Parker compositions performed by two of his flagship ensembles, the Quartet -&- In Order To Survive. It was recorded & mixed live during a one-day studio session in late 2016. With the tone of the pieces & performances reflecting our current moment, this is Parker & the groups' follow-up to 2013's epic Wood Flute Songs box (2013). At the core of both groups is Parker's foundational bass toget…
No Refunds
Recording in Brooklyn's Seaside Lounge in 2014, these five previously unreleased collective improvisations bring together West Coast reedist Vinny Golia, performing on clarinet, saxello, sopranino, baritone saxophones with double bassist Max Johnson and drummer Weasel Walter, an absolutely impressive example of free playing intent and well-balanced conversation.
Root Perspectives
"Every gesture and nuance of [Dickey’s] percussive pronunciation is telling.” –Thomas Conrad, JazzTimes
The Blue Yusef Lateef
** High Quality reissue. Remastered using pure analogue components only, from the master tapes through to the cutting head ** On The Blue Yusef Lateef (1968), listeners get an amazing chapter from the late '60s, an amazing period when everything in the world of Jazz was changing. Yuseef Lateef was big on concept recordings. This album examines all the different ranges of emotion contained within the blues genre. With a band that included Detroit Jazz gods Roy Brooks on drums and Kenny Burrell on…
Eternity
* This quality LP reissue was remastered using pure analogue components only, from the master tapes through to the cutting head. * Released in 1976, Eternity was Alice Coltrane's first album for Warner Bros. after eight wondrous records on Impulse! Combining the drones and textures of India, the gospel and R&B of her Detroit youth and the dissonance of modern classical composition, Coltrane's music in the '70s would become increasingly difficult to categorize. Having moved a few years earlier to…
In The Dark
Allen Lowe writes: In the Dark is a commemoration (sic) of the worst time of my life – a period of time during which, having been operated on to remove a cancerous tumor in my sinus, I slept for only brief periods of time. Sometimes I made it as long as two hours continuously, but most often I dozed off for 20 minutes, 30 minutes, maybe an hour – encamped as I was on my couch, trying not to wake my wife as I wandered in the dark contemplating the long night ahead. Sometimes I turned the televisi…
America: The Rough Cut
Allen Lowe writes: "America: The Rough Cut is my statement not only on American music and American song, but also my commentary on the way American musicians of all styles handle that old-time music and those old song forms . . . The old things -- not just the blues, but gospel music and pre-blues shouts and language, plus hillbilly/minstrel song and medicine show irony -- reflect a disinterest in the polite trappings of (primarily but not only white) society, an implicit rejection of basic tona…
No Joke!
ESP is proud to present a new William Parker album in collaboration with his wife Patricia Nicholson. No Joke! is unapologetically political, facing down injustice and inequality and other “in”s with artistic integrity and “outside” music.