Masses
"Masses is an utterly unexpected, and utterly gripping, collaboration between the East London duo, Spring Heel Jack and a group of top-flight improvisers, drawn largely from New York’s ascendant free jazz network but also including Evan Parker and microtonal violinist Matt Maneri. If there are precedents for this particular mix, in which studio-processed audio environments are played back in real time as the triggers for, and fixed components in, a series of group improvisations, they feel few a…
Crusts
"Piano and reeds duet. More precisely, Didier Fréboeuf, the pianist, is also credited for clavietta and objects and the prompter Jean-Luc Petit, tenor and sopranino sax as well as contrabass clarinet. Three Crusts. Not badly chosen title compared to the improvised music that they play towards each other: these two do not stay on the surface of things. They work in depth on their exchanges by developing a nice variety of playing modes both on the keyboard and in the strings and on the reeds.
I ap…
Les Beaux Jours
"Intense and stormy "vintage" electronic music - ethereal loops or organ or keyboard effects - synalgias of the unresolved - (AKS by Jean-Marc Foussat) goaded and torn by the extreme bites of the soprano saxophonist (Guy Frank Pellerin). The feeling of duration of their improvisations (22, 19 and 25 minutes) diminishes as the spells fall in this weather of the emerging moment. A nice variety of games in the game phases means that we no longer follow the order of the music, nor its logic. We find…
Madly You
"Most Americans discover European improvised music using a map dominated by Amsterdam, Berlin, and London, which dwarfs and shoves the rest of the continent to the margins. At some point, however, even they realize the land lies differently. Yet, extensive exploration is required to correct the proportions, label the tributaries, and overlay the trade routes. In this endeavor, recordings become the coordinates that begin to flesh out the map's heretofore blank spaces.
Madly You is valuable in th…
Duo in Concert
Frozen Reeds is proud to present the only recorded duo playing of two legendary musical figures.
“This is one of those moments that we’re always hoping for, and it's so rare. And it's so hard to talk about, because it's so beautiful. It's like you're seeing some new species of plant that you never knew existed or something.” – Bill Frisell
Relativity/Only
*2023 stock* In conjunction with long-standing Australian outsider music label and mail order Shame File, Nice Music presents a new full length recording from Clinton Green. 'Relativity/Only' is Green's clearest refinement of the dutiful and curious work he has cultivated over several years in recording his gently automated percussion experiments. Green conjures a celestial zoom view of a very private cosmos, using turntables as a source of movement and various static or suspended instruments an…
Apotropaic
Recorded and mixed by Chloë Sobek and Vijay Thillaimuthu.
Mastered by Joe Talia.
Manifestation of Perceptual Variables Latent in the Environment
*2023 stock. 250 copies limited edition* On March 17, 2021, Tetuzi Akiyama, Ayako Kataoka and Kiyomitsu Odai gave a concert at Ftarri in Suidobashi, Tokyo. This CD is a complete recording of the two sets they performed that day (25 and 34 minutes respectively). Akiyama played electric guitar; Kataoka used turntable, electronics and voice; and Odai performed on computer. Internationally renowned improviser/guitarist Tetuzi Akiyama lives in Tokyo and performs frequently both in Japan and overseas.…
Cremated Thoughts
2023 stock. Very much in the tradition of Anthony Braxton's seminal For Alto, or Evan Parker's Monocerous, this wonderful new album by clarinettist Alex Ward is improvised free jazz at its most unencumbered and radical, charting a solitary musician's excursion into pure expression. Divided into four segments, this set was committed to tape at Abbey Road Studios at the beginning of the year, taking in all manner of logic defying techniques and virtuosic sequences, as well as stretching the parame…
But Everything Now Left Before It Arrived
*2023 stock. 300 copies limited edition* Guitarist John Russell, a leading figure on Britain's improvised music scene, passed away on January 19, 2021. Born in December 1954, Russell started performing improvised music in London in his late teens, and for many years he toured and gave concerts not only in the UK and Europe but throughout the world. Known as a Japanophile, Russell traveled to Japan for the first time in 2001, and subsequently visited the country many times, including as recently …
September 23, 2021
*2023 stock* Wakana Ikeda is a flute player whose activities range widely, from performances of composed works to improvised and popular music. She also leads the experimental music group Suidobashi Chamber Ensemble. In 2021, Ikeda and Swiss cellist Stefan Thut released the duo album "afar" on the Ftarri label. Guitarist Takashi Masubuchi started playing improvised music in the latter half of the 2000s, and since 2018 has focused on acoustic guitar performance. While Ikeda and Masubuchi are musi…
Immediate Music III
Olavi Louhivuori Presents "Immediate Music III" - A Boundary-Pushing Musical Triumph with drummers Glenn Kotche and Tony Buck
Prove, Esorcismi
*2023 stock* Sampler of some iconic Italian experimental, electronic and jazz musicians active in the 90s (some of them up till now).
Be Quiet!!!
Sax player Junji Hirose and guitarist Kazuo Imai, both Tokyo residents born in 1955, are renowned Japanese improvisers who have long propelled the country’s improvised music scene. Australian drummer Darren Moore, who is currently based in Singapore, carries on his performance activity while also teaching at Lasalle College of the Arts.
Darren Moore lived in Tokyo for several years in the mid-2010s. Since then he has often visited the country and performed with Japanese musicians. In 2022 he cam…
A Right to Silence
On the impulse of Jacques Demierre, DDK trio was created in 2014 at the Festival Météo Mulhouse, France. Made up of three major figures on the international music scene, this trio plays music that is totally oriented towards the present moment. It continues the tradition of "instant composition" - going back to Lennie Tristano and passing through the legendary Jimmy Giuffre trio - and deploys an expressive palette ranging from silence to massive acoustic eruptions, while paying particular attent…
Luminescence
Albedo Gravitas are derived from the improvised duo group called Albedo Fantastica of Keiko Higuchi and Sachiko established in 2015 joined by Shizuo Uchida to be a trio. The kaleidoscopic voices of Higuchi and Sachiko intermingling with the piano, bass, electronics and melodica, seem to stagnate and cut up the space which to result to create their only unique improvisation. They have been constantly performing in Tokyo and released their first album Eihwaz from the French label An’archives in 20…
To Listen To As Far As Possible
*2023 stock. 250 copies limited edition* Seijiro Murayama is a drummer/percussionist and improviser/composer who lives in Paris. His first CDs on Ftarri's three labels (Hitorri, Ftarri and Meenna) came out in 2009, and he has since released a total of 12 solo, duo, trio and quartet albums on Ftarri labels. Of the solo albums, the first was "Downdate" (2017), followed by "The Empire of Slip of the Tongue" (2018) and "mi-tai" (2020). While "Downdate" and "The Empire of Slip of the Tongue" are elec…
CTX1
*2023 stock. 200 copies limited edition* Masahiko Okura is a Tokyo-based reed player (clarinet, alto sax, etc.), improviser and composer. Apart from his performances on reed instruments, he is energetically engaged in performance activities with his solo project Active Recovering Music. Okura is also a member of the experimental music group Suidobashi Chamber Ensemble.
In 2004, Okura released the solo album "Time Service" on the Improvised Music from Japan label. The highly original performance …
Settembre
*100 copies limited edition.* Tsss Tapes presents Settembre by Chiara Bacci and Nicola Lancerotti. Improvised electronics and voice. Recorded in Bruxelles in 2022.
Yagateyamu
*2023 stock. 200 copies limited edition* Misaki Motofuji plays baritone sax in all types of free jazz settings. She also carries out performances focusing on acoustic phenomena, based on sound-art-like concepts and incorporating field recordings. But she says her background is in neither jazz nor art—that she actually studied classical music as a music university student. In the bands she leads, Motofuji creates a wide variety of original compositions, from chamber-music-style pop, jazz and mini…