Jazz /
Light Upon Light
*2022 stock.* Trumpeter, multi-instrumentalist, improviser and theoretician, Wadada Leo Smith is one of the most important composers of our time. An original member of Chicago's AACM, his exciting pieces blending composition and mprovisation have been performed by many of the world's most important ensembles and soloists. Featuring an exotic composition for chamber ensemble and gamelan quartet, a beautiful solo piece for viola, a bass concerto written for virtuoso Bert Turetzky and two electroni…
Human Music
"This 1969 avant-garde collaboration between trumpeter Don Cherry and electronics pioneer Jon Appleton was originally released on legendary jazz producer Bob Thiele's Flying Dutchman label. Consisting of four compositions with the titles 'Boa,' 'Oba,' 'Abo,' and 'Bao,' Human Music finds Cherry stretching out on various flutes and African percussion instruments in addition to pocket trumpet. Original artwork. Detailed liner notes." Includes two bonus tracks, "Don" and "Jon".At the dawn of the 197…
Mottomo Otomo – Unlimited XIII
The legendary Unlimited Festival in Wels, Austria in 1999 was curated by Otomo Yoshihide (Ground Zero). We are happy to release this sampler that captures the great musicians, bands and projects: Otomo Yoshihide solo, Radian, Incapacitants, Kaffe Matthews / Neumann / Krebs, Tetreault / Labrosse, Nagata Kazunao, Novo Tono, Keith Rowe / Taku / Otomo, Poire_Z, O.Y. New Jazz Quintet (their first performance ever!!), Hoahio, O.Y. solo (finale).
Mercury Concert
Digital concert recording Colchester (Mercury Theatre) - 1998 June 24 All of the music of the concert is included unedited, in the order of performance. All instruments were used without amplification or other electronics.
The Issue at Hand
The musicians who perform together on this CD are as unlikely a group of individuals that you are ever likely to find. Yoshikazu Iwamoto brings a cultural past that has deep aesthetic roots in Japanese Buddhism, while John Tilbury's classical European training brings a sensibility that has matured through contract with cultivated traditions of learning and discipline. Eddie Prévost by his presence draws everything together into an indivisible whole, through responses that have been honed from ye…
Crevulations
A sequence of piano and tenor saxophone free improvisations recorded in concert at the Appleby Jazz Festival in 2004. "Looking for an unlikely pair? Here you have it: Stan Tracey, a pianist on his way to be an octogenarian, with a track record that makes the British mainstream jazz community proud, teaming up with Evan Parker, one of the best and most extreme free improvisers of his generation (which is a generation younger than Tracey), adored in avant-garde circles but still largely ignored by…
Suspensions and anticipations
A sequence of free improvisations -- eight duos, two piano solos & one tenor saxophone solo -- recorded at Gateway Studios. Recorded 9/28/03. 62 minutes.
Filth Pharmacy
2004 release ** All music recorded at "Garaget", Solna, Sweden. Andreas Axelsson - percussion, drum machines, CD player; Herman Muntzing - flexichord, sampler; Martin Kuchen - soprano and baritone saxophone, found objects.
From The Diary of Dog Drexel
"The Diary of Dog Drexel" is a suite of five movements, each of which programmatically portrays an emotional state from the diary. One of the ideas behind "Dog" was to thoroughly blend improvised and composed elements. In the first four movements "Conflicted, Pissed, Bummed, and Agitated" there are at almost all times at least one thread of composition and another of improvisation. The balance between the elements shifts steadily. Muddying the waters further is that many of the extended techniqu…
Most Materiall
"Double album, double solos of two distinctive musicians, becoming duets in a relatively rare space between solo playing and ensemble. Reed and percussion start at different places, the working through breath, the other pulse of materials being struck, one typically characterised by line, the other by attack, producing in the first pitch configurations, in the second beat patterns (Eddie Prévost doesn't use the specifically pitched mallet instruments). Each player comes with a distinctive sonic …
Dentro
Somewhere between Musique Concrete and a kind of abstract improvisational work, using extended techniques and electrification that disconnects sound from any recognisable source. A fascinating first record that sits between studio improvisation and extensive post production processing composition.
Music + one
2006 release ** Music + One, created in collaboration with Myles Boisen, is a collection of solo improvisations that is meant to be played along with by improvisers. The instructions given to the participants before recording were simple: improvise for 3 to 4 minutes, as if you were playing music with your shadow. This was to allow room for others to improvise with the recording. To test this, we invited the musicians to play along with one of the tracks at the 21Grand Performance Space & Art Ga…
Duo/Deep sea
Precious document of early Japanese improvised music scene. Tensional performance of heavy sounds from reeds and bass.
Hidros One
2025 stock A composed improvisation, or possibly the other way around – this is one way of describing the music played by Mats Gustafsson and the Nu Ensemble, a multinational group of improvisational musicians.
The saxophonist Mats Gustafsson, born in 1964, became interested in improvisational music at an early age, inspired by among others the German Peter Brötzmann and the Britt Evan Parker.
The Nu Ensemble was a loosely structured, irregularly convened radio and concert project built around …
Windows: The Music Of Steve Lacy
What a pleasant surprise! The Swedish multi-reed maestro, he of the coruscatingly wild fluteophone attacks, turns to the relatively calm and linear world of Steve Lacy and finds a very happy medium in this solo release. While he treats Lacy's deadpan and deceptively simple melodies with clear respect, he uses them as jumping off points for his own idiosyncratic deconstructions. On "Deadline," he navigates into a territory of ultra-soft percussive clicks and taps, creating a fascinating spatial f…
Leopardo
Leopardo is a solo recording by the Portuguese guitarist Manuel Mota, who might best be described as a somewhat more fluidly lyrical Derek Bailey. Lovingly recorded on solid body electric guitar, his improvisations have the spiky quality associated with the elder statesman of the freely improvised guitar, but Mota's lines sound as though coated in oil, possessing a slipperiness and liquidity that peeks back at Portuguese traditions. There are very few extended effects employed, the guitar string…
The contest of pleasures - Tempestuous
Having used extensive editing and some remixing for the second of their two excellent Potlatch CDs, Albi Days, Contest of Pleasures – the trio of John Butcher (tenor and soprano saxophones), Xavier Charles (clarinet) and Axel Dorner (trumpet) – returns to its initial acoustic position with Tempestuous, which launches the new British label, Another Timbre. Recorded late on a stormy November night in an old church during the 2006 Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival,Tempestuous moves between t…