PSI
Free improvisation and jazz label run by saxophonist Evan Parker.
Ep
This recording is my attempt to play Evan Parker. Seven tracks were recorded in STEIM's Studio 3, trying to reflect the liveness of Parker's solo recordings. All of these are single takes with minor edits at the beginnings or ends. Two interlude tracks are short experiments looking at timbral characteristics when the rotation of the turntable is extremely slowed down. The last three tracks are compositions made from both Parker's and other improvisors' records.
Vents
A keenly awaited recording from the long standing collaboration and friendship between Fernandez and Saura. They have worked together in many different groupings but this is the first time their specific duo music involving piano and live sampling has been documented.
Hyste
A sequence of six duo improvisations on tenor saxophone & church organ recorded at St Peter’s, Whitstable in 2009.
Psalms
A sequence of six duo improvisations on tenor saxophone & church organ recorded at St Peter’s, Whitstable in 2009.
Wazifa
PAT THOMAS (piano and synthesizer), CLAYTON THOMAS (double bass), RAYMOND STRID (percussion) recorded in concert at the 2009 Perspectives Festival, Västerås, Sweden.
Creak above 33
An interesting development in recent times has been the transAtlantic and trans-generational connections being made in the improvisation community. The Emanem recording by Steve Beresford with Okkyung Lee and Peter Evans, and George Lewis' collaboration with GIO are just two recent examples that come to mind. At the forefront of this trend is the duo of Nate Wooley (trumpet & amplifier) and Paul Lytton (percussion & live electronics) bringing two of the most questioning minds in improvised music…
A week went by
Aki Takase's visit to the North East of England resulted in two new fruitful encounters which Chris Trent was on hand to document. The duo with alto saxophonist John Tchicai and the trios with John Edwards (double bass) and Tony Levin (drums) are augmented by solo pieces all taken from the Music Outside Festival of 2008."Creating an arc from disparate, spontaneously generated materials; positing authenticity that recognises the dynamic between jazz and improvised music, A WEEK WENT BY confirms A…
Whitstable solo
Eight soprano saxophone solos. The 2008 solo concert in Whitstable began as an invitation from artist Polly Read and film-maker Neil Henderson to collaborate on a joint work that included a concert in St.Peter's. These recordings are taken mostly from the concert but, as with LINES BURNT IN LIGHT, one piece was recorded before the audience arrived. These are the first recordings in what has become a series of visits to the church, which has perfect acoustics and is just around the corner from wh…
Adrift
Three live performances of collaborative electroacoustic compositions from 2007-08, recorded in London, Brisbane and Antwerp, each exploring different points of contact between precomposed structures and spontaneous invention: a duo adrift (in memory of Paul Rutherford) with pianist Sarah Nicolls, a nonet codex IX (in memory of Mauricio Kagel) with the ELISION ensemble, and a 17-piece group with Ensemble Champ d'Action realising codex VII (to Vinko Globokar).
Set
This music was inspired by Lynn Margulis’ serial endosymbiosis theory (SET), and is dedicated to her and her amazing insights into the mechanisms of biological evolution.In inviting Paul Lytton, Barry Guy, Walter Prati, Marco Vecchi, Lawrence Casserley and FURT, I was trading on the pre-existing musical structures that these musicians brought with them: the solo works of Guy, Lytton , Casserley and myself; the duos with Lytton, Guy, Prati and Casserley, the trio with Guy and Lytton, the trio wit…
Sense
Too often, critics make an automatic separation between ‘emotion’ and ‘intellect’, a framework which will get one nowhere with FURT. Instead, their music shows graphically how fused, how inseparable are the two. As Richard Barrett puts it: "The music is motivated by emotional and sensual considerations as much as by anything else. Without wishing to sound too pretentious I think it’s concerned with finding and exploring (musical) states of consciousness to which the word ‘ecstasy’ might well be …
Essex Foam Party
'Stephen Grew (keyboard, processing), Richard Scott (buchla lightning, analogue synthesizer, sampler, processing), Nick Grew (transduction, processing) & David Ross (drosscillator) + special guests Orphy Robinson (vibraphone) & Paul Obermayer (sampler). GRUTRONIC are a collective of free improvisers - all have a past-present as acoustic ensemble players. In GRUTRONIC they are re-incarnated as electronic musicians, extending technique through the development of personalised systems of sound produ…
Nature-Culture
A 2008 sequel to his highly-acclaimed first solo CD 'More is More' on psi 06.08. Peter Evans writes: Over the past couple of years one of my main creative outlets has been solo trumpet performance. These discs are meant to show various aspects of my music's development and were recorded in two different settings (studio and concert) and under two different circumstances. Jazz musicians have often referred to the playing of a solo as 'telling a story', which is essentially how I look at this musi…
Saxophone Solos
Reissue of Chronoscope CPE 2002-2. Originally issued on LP 19 and a limited edition cassette. Evan Parker's first solo concert on soprano saxophone. Recorded by Martin Davidson in 1975 at the Unity Theatre in London, at that time the preferred concert venue of the Musicans' Co-operative. Further solo material for the original LP release was recorded by Jost Gebers in the FMP studio in Berlin later that year.
Beam Stone
Per Anders Nilsson (computer and synthesizer), Sten Sandell (piano, prepared piano, electronics and voice) & Raymond Strid (percussion). Beam Stone was founded a year before this October 2007 recording. The trio consists of three free improvisers, each with a distinctive personal sound. Their aim with Beam Stone is to explore sonic territories with the guidance of different pre-defined concepts. Listening and sonic exploration are considered the essential points of departure.
Un llamp que no s'acaba mai
Agustí Fernández (piano), John Edwards (double bass) and Mark Sanders (drums). Agustí Fernández's connection with the London scene grows stronger by the year. His trio with John Edwards (double bass) and Mark Sanders (drums) brings him to the heart of things. Their set played at the Jazz Sigüenza 2007 festival in Spain comprised this free improvisation, which was captured by the fabulous ears of ace engineer Checa R Puértolas & mixer Feran Conangla.
Integument
Lawrence Casserley (signal processing instrument and voice) & Adam Linson (double bass, live processing and sampling) met first when Adam joined the Evan Parker Electro-Acoustic Ensemble for the Free RadiCCAls festival at the CCA, Glasgow in November, 2004. They formed an almost instant rapport, which has continued ever since. During Lawrence's European tour in May, 2007 they met again and performed with the Ensemble in Cologne, after which Lawrence spent several days in Berlin. For two of those…
Friulian sketches
Alexander Von Schlippenbach (piano), Daniel D'Agaro (clarinet), Tristan Honsinger (cello). This spontaneous chamber music establishes further advances in the development of improvisation as compositional process. Recorded in the prestigious Arte Suono Studios, Udine in 2008. As you taste this dish, you'll be perhaps so engaged to query about the ingredients. At any given time you could lay this musical output equally at the feet of Jazz, Classical, or 20th Century composed music. But the ingredi…
Rue Victor Massé
Ray Warleigh (alto saxophone & flute) with Tony Marsh (percussion). 'What I play is absolutely unpremeditated. There are no soundscapes or pictures in my head. But I like melody very much, and I've thought about it a lot. After several attempts to make relatively lavish studio productions we agreed that the music here had the spirit that Ray wanted regardless, or perhaps because, of the absolutely basic way in which it was recorded in 2004. Unbelievably, this is only the second album made under …
Volume
The first solo cd by John Edwards, increasingly recognised as one of the most significant players of his generation. Recorded in splendid detail by John Wall in 2008, these nine tracks are a very fresh take on the possibilities of unamplified double bass playing, making it a major entry in the solo bass literature. This solo recording is an unusual and rare offering that comes from a musician who performs every day, every week, and appears on over 100 records. It's a selection of sounds, melodie…