Over the course of nearly three decades of activity, the Italian imprint, Alga Marghen, has continuously cast light into the shadows of historical sound practice, offering particular focus to under appreciated artefacts at the juncture of visual art, sound-art, experimental music, and sound-poetry. With each subsequent release, the label has helped to reform our understanding of the 20th Century, and the voices that made it what it was, brining forth an unprecedented range of early and archival material by seminal composers like Charlemagne Palestine, Walter Marchetti, Philip Corner, Henri Chopin, Robert Ashley, David Behrman, Max Neuhaus, Eliane Radigue, Phill Niblick, and numerous others. Fascinatingly, despite the remarkable scope of material encountered across the label’s hundreds of releases to date, Alga Marghen has rarely, if ever, traced into the realms of free jazz, one of the most radical and forward-thinking territories of sonority to have sprung from the 20th Century. Remarkably, this all changed last year with the launch of Formalibera, their brand-new imprint dedicated to free improvisation, marked by the release of two astounding LPs, drawing upon a body of archival recording made in Copenhagen, during the 1960s and '70s, by John Tchicai and his collective Cadentia Nova Danica.

Returning with the series’ first releases of 2025, Formalibera takes a further deep dive into the Danish free jazz scene of the late 1960s and early 1970s with “Love”, a stunner by the seminal group Tordenskjolds Soldater, comprising previously unreleased recordings made in 1970, following on from their lone LP “Peace” - effectively becoming that album’s long awaited follow-up, more than a half a century down the road - and “Action A B C E”, an astounding, long lost body of recordings from 1967, made by the groundbreaking Contemporary Jazz Quintet, one of the crucial bridges between artists like Sunny Murray, Archie Shepp, and John Tchicai, and Copenhagen’s homegrown free jazz scene. Truly visionary on creative terms and beyond important as historical documents, both are issued in highly limited, beautifully produced vinyl editions - the Tordenskjolds Soldater with fantastic, exploratory liner notes by Ole Mathiessen and the Contemporary Jazz Quintet with equally stunning notes penned by Mats Gustaffson and Anna-Lise Malmros - and make significant contributions toward opening the window onto a crucial, but sinfully neglected, context within the European scene of free improvisation at that movement’s height. Everything else aside, on musical terms alone, they’re quite simply mind-blowingly good!


Tordenskjolds Soldater "Love" LP

* Edition of 300 copies. High thickness cardboard with opaque laminated cover. Comes with a printed insert. * Founded in 1969 by the pianist Ole Mathiessen, the bassist Henrik Hove, the saxophonist Jesper Nehammer, and drummer Jon Finsen, Tordenskjolds Soldater was one of the great - albeit short-lived - projects in Copenhagen’s thriving scene of free improvisation and jazz of the late 1960s and early 1970s. Across the proceeding decade or so, Denmark had provided shelter for some of the most radical voices in free jazz from across the globe, with the famous venue, Jazzhus Montmartre, providing a site for creative ferment for Albert Ayler, Cecil Taylor, Sunny Murray, Don Cherry, Archie Shepp, Paul Bley, and numerous others. But, as the 1960s wained and the '70s dawned, the international vanguard began to spend less time in the country, opening space and need for a young generation of Danish improvisers to cultivate their own scene. Answering the call, a new, grass roots arts venue, the Reprise Theatre, opened in the Copenhagen suburb of Holte in 1967, providing space for open, unrestricted creativity. It was from this context that each member of Tordenskjolds Soldater emerged, before coming together formally in 1969.

Ole Mathiessen, Henrik Hove, Jesper Nehammer, and Jon Finsen were all incredibly active in different projects, spanning a number of genres, in the Copenhagen scene prior to the founding of Tordenskjolds Soldater. The band’s name, in fact, is a colloquial allusion to something roughly akin to “usual suspects”. These guys were in deep understanding, making it little surprise that, following the closure of Reprisen in the spring of 1970, and a shift in programming at Jazzhus Montmartre during roughly the same moment, Tordenskjolds Soldater became one of the venerable jazz venue’s house bands, playing every Monday for most of the remainder of that year, where they were often joined onstage by luminaries, sitting in, like Roscoe Mitchell, Joseph Jarman, Chick Corea, Niels-Henning Ørsted Pedersen, Ed Thigpen, and Lee Schipper. It was during this period of heightened activity that the band recorded its lone commercial release, “Peace”, for the legendary imprint Spectator Records. Largely overlooked at the time, that album - one of the great European gestures of Spiritual jazz of the era - now commands prices in the general vicinity of 1,000 Euros on the secondary market.

Comprising a never before released body of recording made during roughly the same period - what might have been the follow up to “Peace” but never was - “Love”, Tordenskjolds Soldater’s first new LP in more than 50 years, picks up within the rich territory where its predecessor left off. Laden with deep grooves and driving rhythms, the album launches into action with the opener, “Native Land”, a joyous explosion built around the visionary piano playing of Ole Mathiessen, foot stomping, hypnotic cycles by Henrik Hove and Jon Finsen, and soulful lines by Jesper Nehammer on sax. From here the band moves into alternate version of “Memoires of Isadora Duncan”, a composition that featured on “Peace”, this time encountering Matthiessen winding through the intoxicating melodies of Nehammer on Fender Rhodes. From here on, every track has never been encountered before in recorded form as the first side hits souring heights as the band locks in with “Dah Dah”, a piece that makes subtle nods to joyous territory being explored roughly concurrently by artists like Don Cherry, Chris McGregor, and Dudu Pukwana during the early '70s, threading avant-garde jazz with a deep sense of soulfulness.

This momentum carries over onto the album’s second side with “Labor of Love”, subtly infusing the band’s driving rhythms with a Latin flavor as the band flies high on the wing of Matthiessen’s piano. From here they dial down into the sorrowful balladry of “Old Jewish Song”, a stunning modal piece working its way in a slow, rumbling, glacial pace toward the album’s final, joyous explosion of “The Z Song”, yet another body swaying spiritual jazz number by one of the tightest bands working in Denmark at the dawn of the 1970s.

Capturing an incredible moment in time, during which Danish musicians led their own charge and build an incredible, albeit sinfully overlooked scene, Tordenskjolds Soldater’s astounding, long-lost follow up to “Peace” is nothing short of a revelation and one of the most intoxicating listens that we’ve encountered in recent years. A truly striking statement that reminds you how much fun jazz can be, “Love” is issued by Alga Marghen’s new Formalibera imprint in a highly limited, beautifully produced vinyl edition, with fantastic, exploratory liner notes by Ole Mathiessen, it can’t be missed.


The Contemporary Jazz Quintet "Action A B C E" LP

* Edition of 300 copies. High thickness cardboard with opaque laminated cover. Comes with a printed insert. * Founded initially as the The Beckerlee Quartet sometime towards the late 1950s and early '60s, a time during which time they went through various lineup changes before morphing into The Contemporary Jazz Quartet, in 1962 they began playing the Vingaarden club in central Copenhagen as one of the earliest European adopters of the emerging movement of free jazz. It was there that they came into direct contact with seminal players like Cecil Taylor, Sunny Murray, Albert Ayler, and John Tchicai, all of whom recognized the groundbreaking effect of the group. The following year, the quartet began playing at Jazzhus Montmartre, leading to greater contact and exposure that set the ground for even further collaboration and influence. It was there that they came into contact with The New York Contemporary Five - Don Cherry, Archie Shepp, John Tchicai, Don Moore, and J.C. Moses - who immediately recognized kindred spirits, and collaborated with the group shortly thereafter for a broadcast on Danish Radio. Similarly, they were invited to back the American jazz duo of Ran Blake and Jeanne Lee for an early television broadcast, further cementing their conversations at the forefront of the global free jazz scene.

While still operating as a quartet, the group - Franz Beckerlee on sax, Steffen Andersen on bass, and Hugh Steinmetz on trumpet - invited Sunny Murray on board as their drummer for their debut release “Action”, issued by the legendary Debut Records in 1965. That record has come to be regarded by many as one of the most important early gestures in European free improvisation, as well as being a crucially tangible link between the European and American scenes, as well as interpolation across Europe, notable via Steinmetz and Beckerlee subsequent gigs in Peter Brötzmann’s band, alongside Peter Kowald, Willem Breuker, Han Bennink, Derek Bailey and Paul Rutherford, and further collaborations with John Tchicai and Don Cherry. Shortly thereafter, the group would shift again in membership and become The Contemporary Jazz Quintet, featuring Bo Thrige Andersen, Franz Beckerlee, Hugh Steinmetz, Niels Harrit, and Steffen Andersen, and enter the studio in 1967 to record what would have been the follow up to “Action”, intended to be also issued by Debut. As a fascinating illumination of the moment, particularly because it predates Miles Davis’ revolutionary innovation of electric jazz by roughly a year, new innovations in amplification during that moment that the band began to observe in rock music, provoked them to abandon that album and begin again, eventually producing the LP “T.C.J.Q.” in 1969, which featured two electrified saxophones, as well as amplified trumpet and double-bass, relinquishing their previous recordings, unreleased, to the vaults. It is those incredible, lost 1967 recordings made by The Contemporary Jazz Quintet, unearthed for the first time in nearly 60 years, that comprise “Action A B C E”, FormalIbera’s astounding new LP dedicated to the group.

From the first sounding of “Action A B C E”, it’s easy to quickly understand how radically ahead of their time this band was. As they take off in a fury that rises like a sonorous storm, the central arc is carved by strange, unfamiliar howls that reveals itself to be a musical saw played by Niels Harrit. While undeniable free jazz, the breadth of texture and tone, as well as the group’s sense of time and truly collectivist, non-hierarchical approach to organization pushes the orientation of sound toward a broader notion of experimentalism drawn from across the globe and multiple creative contexts. As the first side progresses, the group sprawls out with a remarkable sense of space, each player dialled into the next with carefully delivered responses and interventions - always virtuosic and considered, sculpting complex and tense tonal relationships, while often laying back completely to let the sounds of certain members and instruments soar and emote.

The second side of this astounding LP distills all of the singular virtues of this remarkable band. Pacing further appears as a central force in the group’s collective voice as glacial, tonally tense moments gather momentum and tempo and rise toward a seething storms that stand among the most furious expressions of free jazz of this moment and rivalling the energy of Peter Brötzmann recordings like “Machine Gun” and “Nipples” that would appear over the following years, while equally anticipating high energy free jazz exemplified by albums like Noah Howard's “The Black Ark” and Rashied Ali and Frank Lowe’s “Duo Exchange”, with monstrously explosive force.

While The Contemporary Jazz Quintet has remained in the consciousness of deep diggers of free jazz over the decades and celebrated by those in the know for their incredible contribution to the development of free improvisation within the European contexts over the years, the group has equally remained fairly marginalised within more general awarenesses of this music. Formalbera’s astounding new LP dedicated to the group, drawing upon their newly unearthed, previously unreleased 1967 recordings takes great lengths toward righting the scales and bringing them the attention they’ve always deserved. With the story further illuminated by fantastic, exploring liner notes by penned by Mats Gustaffson and Anna-Lise Malmros, in conjunction with these truly mind-blowing sounds, this beautifully produced, limited edition vinyl LP is quite simply one of the most earth-shaking archival releases we’re likely to encounter this year.