Jazz /
No Joke!
ESP is proud to present a new William Parker album in collaboration with his wife Patricia Nicholson. No Joke! is unapologetically political, facing down injustice and inequality and other “in”s with artistic integrity and “outside” music.
World Construct
Throughout his long and prolific career, Matthew Shipp has presented several different and impressive trio formations. Among the featured members have been bassists William Parker, and Joe Morris, and drummers Guillermo E. Brown, Whit Dickey, and Susie Ibarra. In 2015, two other premier players, bassist Michael Bisio, and drummer Newman Taylor Baker stepped in as the rhythm section on The Conduct of Jazz (Thirsty Ear). Their fourth album as a unit, World Construct makes the group the most enduri…
Clifford Thornton Ketchaoua To Scorpio By Arthur Jones "Revisited"
Temporary Super Offer! Clifford Thornton and Arthur Jones have remained largely unknown ever since, except to collectors who treasure those early Parisian records and the world they evoke. We know little of what they did in later years, but if Hemingway was right, “If you are lucky enough to live in Paris [read “jazz”] as a young man, then wherever you go for the rest of your life it stays with you”. Thornton died in Switzerland in 1989, largely forgotten in his “home” country. Jones died in Ne…
The Return
*First pressing of 200 copies* Drew Gardner - Drums, John Tchicai - tenor & soprano sax (1, 4), Marco Eneidi - alto sax (3), Roberto De Haven - alto sax, Vytas Nagisetty - bass. Recorded by Myles Boisen at Guerilla Euphonics Studio, Oakland, CA 1995. All compositions by Drew Gardner (Elklag Music) ASCAP
A Sublime Madness
Psychic Ills keyboardist, Brent Cordero and Sunwatchers bassist, Peter Kerlin’s, first full length collab A Sublime Madness is the culmination of decades of circling each other's creative orbits. After years of casual jamming, numerous fledgling one offs, and touring sideman gigs (ibrighden addition to Sunwatchers, Kerlin was also Chris Forsyth’s long time bass player and in the John Dwyer helmed improv project, Bent Arcana. Cordero worked for years with Psychic Ills and Mike Wexler among others…
Lockdown
Leaney's lyrical and multi-textured tenor and alto saxophone playing is featured throughout, as is his playing on the Zimbabwean mbira and west African flulani flute. The record comprises equally of planned and deeply rehearsed compositions by both Leaney and Thouin, each with their own flavour brewed together to form a uniquely organic music. This is the first documented studio recording of 83 year old Thouin's lifelong exploration in sound and rhythm featuring his folkloric, DIY hybrid setup b…
Marc'h Gouez
LP version. Includes eight-page booklet; 425 gsm brownboard outer sleeve; 180 gram vinyl. "Why would I sing in French? I have Breton culture, I speak Breton, I live in Brittany, and the Breton language is the language of this country..." So explained Kristen Noguès, of whom this is the first of the (rare) albums that she recorded Marc'h Gouez, is a fabulous voyage in space on each listening. Noguès learned the Breton language as a child, at the same time as the Celtic harp, -- taking lessons wit…
New York Art Quartet "Revisited"
Temporary Super Offer! "If we just could have hung on for another year,” Rudd said of both NYAQ and the Jazz Composers Guild, “things could have turned out much differently. Things were about to flip, in a good way. A lot of government programs were starting up that we could have gotten
grants from. There was a change in perception about the music that was happening. People were starting to consider it as art. The music was moving out of the bars and coffee houses and into museums and concert …
Quartet to At Judson Hall "Revisited"
By 1966, the first wave of free jazz had established the foundation upon which this radically generated music could be understood and personalized, shared as a communal activity and still invested with significant singular characteristics. Noah Howard and his bandmates represented a second generation, as creative attitudes were expanding.
Indefinitive Atmosphere
Giovanni Tommaso is the greatest Italian Jazz bassist and founder and member of the most important ever Italian Jazz Rock ensembles, the Perigeo band. Sonor entirely restored the full session from the original tapes found, and digitally remastered the sound for a greater sound experience, chasing the original analog source
Androids
Reissue for the first time worldwide. Obscure and Rare album of Spacey Fusion grooves, played by a group that includes Robert Rockwell on reeds, plus Bobby Lyle on piano and electric piano. Lyle's presence gives the album a nice groove.Bob Rockwell, born in Miami, Oklahoma, is an American jazz saxophonist who emigrated to Denmark in 1983 and has lived ever since.
Likht
Incinerating sound together since 2014, Nava Dunkelman and gabby fluke-mogul combine their expansive palettes with finesse, creating a fierce dialect of their own. Violin and percussion combust viscerally through spirit and song. Forged in flame, Dunkelman and fluke-mogul honor ritual and celebrate their rich sonic hues in their duo release, Likht.
Matanzas
Brandon Lopez (contrabass), Steve Baczkowski (saxophones), and Gerald Cleaver (percussion) freely play propulsive grooves drawing as much from heavy metal aggression as free jazz freakouts. Baczkowski’s reeds with their acoustic distortions impart a crunch to the music and their snaking lines dance over the sinister and doomed romp of the rhythm section. Lopez and Cleaver are most often locked into a martial groove, assembled and disassembled, sometimes faltering and reeling from their own displ…
Crying In Space
"The question to be answered during this live performance was, "Will there be enough space for all the musicians' voices to be heard?" Recorded at Firehouse 12, in June 2019, this new ensemble is an adaptation of various duos and familiar trios. Saxophonist Paul Flaherty and drummer Chris Corsano have performed and recorded numerous discs together since the late '90s, releasing high-octane free jazz. The same can be said of the drummer's duo work with Danish saxophonist Mette Rasmussen; their tw…
From Union Pool
This adventurous set catches lightning in a bottle. They hit the ground running and never let up. Susan Alcorn's pedal steel soloing is phenomenal while Ryan Sawyer drives the trio forward as Patrick Holmes' clarinet keeps pace with both of them. A breathless set of high energy free improvisation at its best.
Goodbye Ground
Sakina Abdou has expressed herself in many contexts, in musical fields both broad and eclectic. With this solo album, she invites herself within, focus and anchors herself for the first time in her own language, where she summons the many influences which have nurtured her. Through «homemade» recording, naked, raw, without effects or tricks, we meet her on her own, at home. Grab a chair or settle on the floor next to her, on the edge of the bell, almost touching, and find yourself captured in a …
Mutable
The music on Mutable is a totally acoustic sonic exploration. It is an investigation that has led to the development of certain extended techniques in order to discover the ultimate limits of the sound of the saxophone and to try to create new sounds on the instrument.
Evil Season
The bass, that metronome that marks the time for musicians of every style, of every era, that secluded, silent, but essential character for a band. Without the bass, the music would be deflated, the heart notes would leave a wasteland of rowdy high frequencies without any rules. But bass players who have character can elevate those low frequencies and even make them loud at times. Who knows if free jazz, if we want to call it that, is exalted by the Arabic background, those semitones between the…
Pairs Of Three
Paal Nilssen-Love Circus emerged as a direct result of the travel restrictions caused by the corona pandemic. The Oslo World Music Festival asked Nilssen-Love to put together a new band of musicians based in Norway. He came up with players from different camps, experienced in various styles: ethnic, classical, contemporary, jazz, free jazz, noise, pop etc.
The seven unique voices were gathered around common musical ideas and ways of thinking and a shared understanding of musical freedom. Each mu…
New Map
New Map is based on open-form “cells” of concrete ideas, notes and directions that the musicians had to respond to. The 22-minute title piece swings - sometimes, literally - back and forth between subtle percussive games, mysterious and sensual orchestral-chamber dynamics, anchored by harpist Krüger, accordionist Kalle Moberg and trumpeter Köster, and raw, noisy and abstract improvisations led by sax players Lea, Klaus Ellerhusen Holm, Kristoffer Berre Alberts and Finnish electronics player Tomm…