Jazz /
Live In Sevilla 2000
*In process of stocking. 2022 stock.* Live in Sevilla, recorded and released in the year 2000, is arguably the finest document in this extremely prolific jazz quartet's catalog. If there's anyone who still believes that John Zorn is nothing more than an avant-garde screamer, look no further. The interplay between Zorn's alto and the trumpet of Dave Douglas is nothing short of amazing, and each one's soloing is focused and intense. Joey Baron and Greg Cohen are a fantastic rhythm section; Cohen a…
50th Birthday Celebration Volume 1
*In process of stocking. 2022 stock.* September 2003 marked the 50th birthday of John Zorn, and to celebrate, Tonic hosted a month-long celebration of Zorn's various musical groups and projects. The shows were recorded, and the best of them are being released as a new series on Zorn's "Tzadik" label.
The first offering is the entire early set by the Masada String Trio, recorded on September 4, 2003, with Zorn conducting Mark Feldman on violin, Erik Friedlander on cello, and Greg Cohen, on ba…
Archipelago X
*In process of stocking. 2022 stock.* Laptop wizard Ikue Mori, master keyboardist Brian Marsella and classical percussion virtuoso Sae Hashimoto are Archipelago X, a dynamic new trio born during the 2020 pandemic. Recording at their home studios and exchanging tracks back and forth for months, the music is detailed, evocative and dramatically mysterious, blending electronica, classical, ambient, film soundtrack, pop and jazz into a remarkably original aggregate. Inspiring and engaging music by t…
Obelisk
*In process of stocking. 2022 stock.* Universally acclaimed as a pioneer in live laptop electronics, Ikue’s signature style is still uniquely her own and has influenced two generations of laptop performers. Her new band project Obelisk is a super-band featuring three of the most acclaimed and original players in the Downtown scene—Okkyung Lee, Jim Black and Sylvie Courvoisier. Ikue’s startling compositions blend gorgeous melodies with hypnotic rhythms and evocative soundscapes. Strange and beaut…
When The Circle Was Closed
*100 copies limited edition. In process of stocking* Dinzu Artefacts presents When The Circle Was Closed by Slow Bell Trio. Midwest trio that taps into the slower, more meditative side of improvisational music allowing for some deep listening.
Reflections 1952
In 1952, Thelonious Monk, joined by Bassist Gary Mapp, Drummer Art Blakey and Drummer Max Roach, drove to an early iteration of pioneering Sound Engineer Rudy Van Gelder's studio in New Jersey, and entered a small and tightly-managed room that Van Gelder had strict technical rules for. In those recording sessions, and again in 1954, despite Van Gelder's tight management and an out-of-tune piano with tinny fidelity, Monk produced some of the most glorious music of his entire recording career and …
Vol. 1 Erie Live!
Daniel Carter, William Parker, and Federico Ughi have been playing together since 2005, the year in which they recorded their first album The Dream. The band has performed regularly in the US and Europe ever since, gaining considerable success, with a 2010 European tour throughout Portugal, Spain, and Italy that resulted in the live album Navajo Sunrise (2012). In 2015 the trio started to rehearse with multi-instrumentalist Watson Jennison (Toronto, CA). As a quartet, the band toured the US and …
Blurt + Singles
Led by poet/saxophonist/blurter Ted Milton, they were one of the oddest and most galvanizing bands from Great Britain’s post-punk movement. Surfacing a year after 1981’s live full-length In Berlin, their self-titled debut studio LP consists of seven tracks that strip funk and jazz-inflected no wave down to insanely logical essentials. These lean vehicles operated by Milton, his brother Jake (drums), and Pete Creese (guitar) get your hips twitching and your brain itching. The songs are both tight…
Causa y Efecto Vol. 1
The world is more elusive than simple cause and effect imply, more typically, life circumvents causation in favor of an unknowable correlation. It seems like the more we know, the less we know. On this first volume from Zoh Amba and Francisco Mela, the duo brings their regional traditions, from Tennessee and Cuba respectively, and musical inclinations to the cause and effect behind their own life stories. Causa y Efecto, Vol. 1 is an ode to the unknown, transporting audiences between the New Yor…
Invisibility is an Unnatural Disaster
SSWAN presents their first outing "Invisibility is an unnatural disaster" a raucous jaunt of free jazz on the premiere fire music label 577 Records. The music is rooted in the Black American art form of jazz, stemming into the branches of free improvisation, noise and experimentalism while pushing to the edges of each idiom. The idiosyncratic playing of guitarist Jessica Ackerley starts off the album's title track and jumps headfirst into a Hendrix-tinged duo with drummer Jason Nazary. Patrick S…
The Great Lakes Suites
Wadada Leo Smith, a trumpet player born in Mississippi in 1941, was an early member of the Chicago-based AACM (Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians) but has remained somewhat lesser known than such collaborators as Abrams, Mitchell, and Braxton. He reached new audiences in the late 1990s and early 2000s when he joined guitarist Henry Kaiser in the Yo Miles! projects, reinterpreting music from the Miles Davis electric period. Smith’s 21st-century recordings with his Golden Quarte…
The Kimba Unit
*Limited edition of 300 copies.* Now Again Records and Sonor Music Editions announce the debut release by The Kimba Unit on 45. Grown up in Los Angeles, Julian Rapaport made his musical studies in New York, developing his personal musical taste listening to the Jazz mentors of American Spiritual/Avant-garde movement (Sun Ra especially). Legendary Madlib's jazz projects influenced him a lot too. Since his very young age, he had a deep connection with Italy and the world of Italian Library music: …
Geduldig
Tip! This record shows two special musicians - drummer Steffen Roth and guitarist Konni Behrendt - in battle as well as in close embrace with their instruments. Exploring, struggling, enjoying, finding their way off the beaten path. Steffen Roth and Konni Behrendt, both living in Germany, studied music together and have maintained their friendship ever since. This joint solo project follows their bands PALAWA and Groundfields. The A-side belongs to Steffen Roth. His style of playing music is cha…
Nana
Drummer Edward Vesala was an early Finnish pioneer of avant garde jazz, and he managed to release this lovely LP that has to be considered the first proper Finnish free jazz album in 1970. The Vesala trio was supposed to be a quartet, but trumpetist Mike Koskinen fell ill, and the remaining exploratory trio (Vesala, saxophonist Juhani Aaltonen and bassist Arild Andersen) recorded the album in a short, fiery session. The album Nana is an absolute rarity as well as an absolute beauty. As with many…
Alors Nosferatu Combina un Plan Ingénieux
Temporary Super Offer! "After Le Nouveau Jazz was released in early 1967, I worked for two years with Bernard Vitet, Beb Guérin and a few other friends on a happening loosely based on Lewis Carroll’s The Hunting of the Snark. There was a strong element of theater to it and we presented it in playhouses, museums, public places, institutions… It never made it to wax and I gave up on the idea soon after when Sunny Murray and Alan Silva showed up in Paris in late 1968. I had meant to upend the conve…
Thirsty Ears
Jaap Blonk (born 1953, Woerden) is a Dutch avant-garde composer and soundpoet. He is primarily self-taught, both as a sound artist and as a visual/stage performer. One of his early influences was Kurt Schwitters, whose Ursonate he first heard in 1979; he memorized the entire work, and it became one of the cornerstones of his repertory; he has recited portions of the piece hundreds of times in various public places. His performances of sound poetry are unique and world renowned, making use…
Duos With Guitars
Giovanni Di Domenico (piano, Rhodes), With Norberto Lobo (acoustic guitar), Tetuzi Akiyama (acoustic guitar) and Jim O'Rourke (electric guitar). Recorded during the course of 3 years (from 2011 to 2013) in various locations in Brussels and Tokyo, this double LP puts together 3 of the most uncompromising and original guitar players of the globe (there should have been a fourth great guitar player, the late Hans Reichel, but unfortunately he passed away days before asking him to join the project),…
Jukebox-Series 003
Trost continues its Trost Jukebox Series of 7"s. Raymond Boni is a French jazz guitarist and composer. Joe McPhee (born November 3, 1939) is an American jazz multi-instrumentalist born in Miami, Florida, a player of tenor, alto, and soprano saxophone, the trumpet, flugelhorn and valve trombone. McPhee grew up in Poughkeepsie, New York, and is most notable for his free jazz work done from the late 1960s to the present day. Raymond Boni - guitar and electronics / Joe McPhee - soprano saxophone, vo…
The Fictive Five
*In process of stocking. 2022 stock.* Larry Ochs may be best known as one-quarter of the Rova Saxophone Quartet, the Bay-area group, which, in its near-40 year history, has created large-scale works with composers as diverse as Terry Riley and Barry Guy. Ochs’ projects outside of Rova have often been just as noteworthy. He first assembled The Fictive Five for a performance at his 2013 residency at The Stone and this recent recording testifies to the way the band’s strengths realize Ochs’ composi…
Alastor: The Book of Angels vol. 21
*In process of stocking. 2022 stock.* The latest in John Zorn‘s second Masada songbook, the highly melodic and dynamic Book of Angels, the 10 songs on Alastor come courtesy of master composer and violist / multi-instrumentalist Eyvind Kang. Though Kang generally skews towards classical, chamber, and ambient, his take on Zorn’s hand-picked selections is a surprising and gorgeous collision of styles.
“Hakem” opens with synthesized accents and a strong Indian and Persian inflection—elements that re…