Jazz /
Live In Munich
This concert recording from Munich’s Schwere Reiter performance space features improvisation with an expanded palette of possibilities. “To work with these colours is a great challenge and joy!” says bassist Barry Guy of the glowing and ever-changing tints, timbres and tones radiating from Jordina Millà’s freely associative piano. Like Guy, Millà is both a player of prodigious technical capacity and a fearless improvisational explorer, and her highly creative use of the piano interior opens up …
Bakteria
The Błoto quartet had made a comeback six months ago with their first singles in over two years dropping “Szlam” and “Ścieki”. These tracks were pressed on a 7-inch vinyl by Astigmatic Records, but this only whetted the appetites of the band’s mud-loving fans, as the singles sold out instantly. And so, the band's musical onslaught continues. Ahead of their upcoming LP “Grzybnia” set to release in autumn 2024, Błoto is putting out another bacteria-laden 7-inch to conclude this brief series of sin…
The Invisible
"Masters of musical tension. Maintaining tension, resolving tension. It's an integral part of improvised music, but of this international trio in particular. Rodrigo Amado and Dirk Serries first bonded over a couple of duo concerts in the summer of 2018. With his roots in (free) jazz, lauded Portuguese saxophonist Amado became an intriguing sparring partner for the Belgian guitarist, who's been involved in a more abstract style for some time now. With English Andrew Lisle, a drummer with an extr…
Towards The Flame, Vol. 2
"Three of Europe's most acclimated and proven improvisers—pianist Robert Mitchell (Steve Coleman, Greg Osby), bassist Neil Charles, and drummer/percussionist Mark Sanders (Jah Wobble, Rachel Musson)—band together as The Flame for the first time and emerge from pandemic isolation, and the forever wars and broken civics that accompanied it, with a hypnotic performance captured absolutely live on Towards the Flame.
Recorded at London's Cafe Otto in February of 2022, The Flame comes to life like mos…
Lullabies And Other Stories
CD edition. Solo album by Walter Prati, here back on his cello driving us through an illuminating and sublimative journey. Walter Prati’s composition for cello seems to interpret this range of facets, these transparent and elusive angles. Contemplative music, to a certain extent, but also ready to express fragments lyrically, and their rushing to compose a mosaic. For reasons I cannot explain, I catch a glimpse of several iridescent colours, between turquoise and hard blue with odd crimson strip…
Abundant Shores
Mark Holub’s (Led Bib, Blueblut) new band Anthropods returns with their second album. This follow-up to the warmly received self-titled debut album, described by Jazzwise as a, “richly eclectic set of enjoyable and unclassifiable music celebrating the joy of collectivity”, brings the band into new directions, exploring the spaces between composition and improvisation. The composition of the suite began at the culmination of two years of working together, Holub elaborates: Anthropods for me was a…
The Pelican
Initially founded in 2015, after a period of shuffling members and names, Halcyon Daze settled on its final lineup by early 2016 of then-high schoolers Ivan Cunningham (saxophones), George Adzick (woodwinds), Nicholas Christenson (guitars), and Samuel Stroup (drums). At this point, the band entered its peak of activity within the Twin Cities jazz scene of the time, performing at many of its most prominent venues and DIY spaces while building up an extensive songbook of original compositions and …
Jewels of Thought
180 gram Vinyl Edition. Gatefold Cover. The fourth album as a leader by spiritual jazz saxophone titan Pharoah Sanders, Jewels of Thought was released in 1969. It Consist of two extended tracks, one of which had to be divided into two parts in order to fit onto the LP. Sanders was incrediblt active in 1969, recording lo less than four albums and releasing three. The band on Jewels of Thought includes several major stars, among them Idris Muhammad, Roy Haynes, Richards Davis, Cecil McBee, Leon Th…
Telepatia Liquida
2024 stock. This project is the exciting, unusual and at times unexpected result of five musicians from different backgrounds getting together and making music. This unlikely group that features a scientist on piano and an array of musicians from different places around the world is able to communicate on a level that is not only beyond planning and speech but also rational thought. The resulting music goes from moments that are exquisitely soft to deep juicy grooves. When studied attentively, i…
Electric Telepathy Vol. 1
“A blissfully ecstatic sprawl of spiritual-jazz explorations of the most transcendent order” – Brooklyn Rail
New York United Vol. 2
2024 stock. New York United is an experimental group at the musical intersection of a classic New York avant-garde scene and forward-looking electronic production. Comprised of multi-instrumentalist and 577-cofounder Daniel Carter (Saxophone, Flute, Trumpet, Clarinet), electronic producer Tobias Wilner from Blue Foundation (Synthesizers, Percussion, Vocals, Piano, Guitar), Wu-Tang Clan bass player Djibril Toure and 577’s Federico Ughi (Drums), their sound reflects their decades of collaboration.…
Small Medium Large
SML is the quintet of bassist Anna Butterss, synthesist Jeremiah Chiu, saxophonist Josh Johnson, percussionist Booker Stardrum, and guitarist Gregory Uhlmann. Their debut album 'Small Medium Large' began as a collection of long form improvisations recorded during two separate two-night stands at beloved Highland Park, Los Angeles venue ETA. Unfortunately, this major development site for the burgeoning new West Coast jazz & improvised music sound closed its doors permanently at the end of 2023. T…
Practical Dreamers
This fifth AXIS recording once again brings in a different approach to the music. With the exception of the group’s first album, Les Oiseaux De Matisse, which was largely recorded live in the studio, subsequent albums (Dream Feathers, Port Of Saints, Blutopia) have been built from Ron upwards – Ron recording with a small core of players and then arranged for larger groups via subsequent overdubs. This time round, Ron requested that he respond to completed tracks as the last player to record – to…
Escape
Versatile guitarist Andy Moor known from Dog Faced Hermans and The Ex and Amsterdam based pianist Marta Warelis meet to explore the sound-world of acoustic piano and electric guitar. Their debut album 'Escape' is a collection of improvisations recorded at the historical zaal100 in Amsterdam.Andy Moor: guitarMarta Warelis: pianoRecorded at ZAAL100, Amsterdam, June 28, 2022.Recorded and mixed by Andy Moor & Marta Warelis.Mastered by Enrico Mangione and Luca MarteganiLaboratorio di Sperimentazione …
Biyartabiyu
"Because I make records in a number of different styles, I often filter and change my saxophone playing to match the style of the record I’m making. But when I make a work like this, you hear my playing in my natural, unfiltered style, and that style is determined by the many AACM records which were most influential in forming my own playing. That’s especially true in this duo setting with Walt Shaw, where the music is stripped down to its essence of blues + abstraction. It’s really simple - I’m…
In Europe
2024 reissue This is Texas-born tenor sax giant Billy Harper captured on tour in Europe in 1979. Mr Harper's gorgeous tone drives a highly energetic quintet featuring a young Fred Hersch on piano, Everett Hollins on trumpet, Louie "Mbiki" Spears on bass and Horace Arnold on drums. Billy Harper's seminal masterpiece, which gained more widespread recognition in the 70s, is a scorching and powerful record that exudes righteousness from start to finish. At this stage of his career, Billy has develop…
Flores para Verene / Cantos para Caramina
"27-year-old Tomin Perea-Chamblee is a brass- and reed-centered multi-instrumentalist, the composer and arranger of pieces with excellently thorny harmonies, an at-times reluctant musicker and enthusiastic Brooklynite (born and raised, so his admiration primarily concerns the borough’s pre-gentralification qualities), who, by day works as a bioinformatician. If you're in New York, there’s an ok chance that you’ve heard him play before, with young (jazz-adjacent) bands and musicians of some renow…
Metasediment Rock
The Norwegian jazz scene is like the hat of a magician: when you think nothing more can get out from its mysterious hole, there’s something else emerging to amaze us. Snik is such a case. The compositions are from two of the members of this quartet, trombonist Kristoffer Kompen and double bassist Ole Morten Vagan. Vagan is one of the most respected names of the Scandinavian jazz, with his membership of Joshua Redman Trio and his quintet Motif, writing scores for the Trondheim Jazz Orchestra or p…
Survival Situation
2024 stock. Iconic downtown sax player Sabir Mateen, together with up-and-coming Texan clarinetist Patrick Holmes and drum wiz Federico Ughi, celebrate the cosmic dimensions of creative music via their new album Survival Situation.The three musicians have collaborated in the past, in New York, in different projects but never as a trio. This time they met in a recording studio in Tuscany, Italy, not far from where Sabir Mateen has been living for the last few years. They freely improvised, then t…
Shifa - Live At Cafe Oto
2024 stock. Shifa, from the Arabic word for healing, is a new trio born out of old musical partnerships from the ever-shifting sands of the UK improvised music scene. Pat Thomas, pianist extraordinaire whose eclectic motherboard pushes the music in unexpected twists and turns, suggested the name. The healing, in this case, is a raw, unfettered musical space where he, saxophonist Rachel Musson and drummer Mark Sanders meet and make music in the moment, of the moment. Each player values the others…