Jazz /
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…
Crowded With Loneliness
Comet Records present the first release out of the Comet new reissue series with this cult French Free Jazz LP from 1974, Crowded with Loneliness by Full Moon Ensemble was produced by Claude Delcloo, check the classic ‘Samba `Miaou’, like a lost Pharoah Sanders tune mixed with politically-engaged French poetry! The whole LP is varied, avant-garde and spiritual and now available as Vinyl LP with Gatefold cover, set to become collectible as the original is impossible to find.
To Live And Breathe...
*In process of stocking* An international trio (USA/FR/IT) recorded live in Italy during their 2017 European tour.
Volumes II - Fiction Musicale Et Chorégraphique - Création Pour Grand Orchestre Et Corps Actants
*In process of stocking* 'Volumes II—Fiction Musicale et Chorégraphique is an ambitious, large-scale composition by the French double bassist/composer Benjamin Duboc for orchestra, voice, and physical movement. The composition unfolds in a long sequence of highly disparate parts, beginning with ambient noises and a spoken prelude before moving into more overtly musical passages. The orchestra commences with a sustained, droning chord marked by a slowly developing, internally unstable drift of pi…
Ode To O
Ode To O is the second release by the OGJB Quartet that features four leaders in their own right, saxophonist Oliver Lake, cornetist Graham Haynes, bassist Joe Fonda and drummer Barry Altschul. As with their first release, Bamako, each member has contributed compositions to the new recording which also features two collective improvisations.
The album combines tracks based on gutbucket rhythms with others full of exploratory abstractions. The album title, Ode To O, refers to Ornette Coleman and …
Rosa Parks: Pure Love.
Acclaimed trumpeter, multi-instrumentalist, composer, and educator Wadada Leo Smith has released an oratorio of seven songs inspired by the iconic civil rights leader Rosa Parks. In his own words, Rosa Parks: Pure Love. An Oratorio of Seven Songs is "concerned with ideas of freedom, liberty and justice, a meditation centered around the civil rights movement." Looking at Smith's more than 50 years of creative and artistic vision, this release is yet another inspired organic musical direction that…
A Love Sonnet For Billie Holiday
A Love Sonnet For Billie Holiday brings Wadada Leo Smith, Jack DeJohnette and Vijay Iyer together for the first time in this meeting of creative giants. Smith first met and played with DeJohnette in the late 1960s and the two have collaborated with increasing frequency since DeJohnette participated in the first recording of Smith´s Golden Quartet more than two decades ago. Smith´s and Iyer´s first collaboration also goes back almost two decades. This recording marks the first time these three un…
Solo: Reflections And Meditations On Monk
Wadada Leo Smith comes to the music of Thelonious Monk from a childhood admiration of the artist. As a pre-teen he was already playing trumpet and composing and instinctively knew that Monk's understanding of music and sound would influence his own creativity. Smith believes that the quintessence of Monk can best be found in his solo work. The same can be said for Smith who has produced two previous solo collections including Creative Music—1 (1972) and Solo Music: Ahkreanvention (1979), both on…
Bamako
OGJB — Oliver Lake, Graham Haynes, Joe Fonda, and Barry Altschul — characterize themselves as a “leaderless” quartet. In that spirit, the compositions featured here serve as sketches to be built and elaborated on (and often entirely reconfigured), not as templates or structural frameworks. Unison passages are tightly executed, yet with just enough raggedness to their edge that the individualism of each man’s expression remains paramount, reflecting the overarching theme of this project: the kind…
Celestial Weather
With Celestial Weather, Wadada Leo Smith and John Lindberg employ a spare, conversational approach. Smith whispers on the mute and issues plaintive cries with the open horn. Lindberg bows and goes pizzicato. Smith searches for and finds very un-trumpet-like sounds-squawks and squeaks and whistles. Unlike Smith's large scale offerings, that often feature massive cacophonies, space is a major facet of the sound. It is music that is reflective and serene. The disc's centerpiece, the five part "Cele…
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…
Occupy The World
Occupy the World features the legendary composer and trumpeter Wadada Leo Smith together with Tumo, a new improvising orchestra that is assembled specifically for each project, in its first appearance. The 22-piece orchestra performs five extended compositions by Smith, including "Occupy The World For Life, Liberty and Justice," his most extensive recorded composition to date, that was originally inspired by the Occupy movement. The four other compositions included on this double-CD were also re…
Da Bang!
Da Bang! was recorded in February 2011, just two months before the master violinist Billy Bang (1947-2011) succumbed to cancer. In this final session, the Billy Bang Group featured one extended composition by Bang, "Daydreams," as well as compositions by some of Bang´s favorite musicians, including Barry Altschul, Don Cherry, Ornette Coleman, Miles Davis and Sonny Rollins. For Da Bang!, the Billy Bang Group featured legendary trombonist Dick Griffin as well as Bang´s regular accompanists in his …
Ancestors
Despite the fact that they've shared several stages over the past 40 years, Ancestors marks the first occasion that trumpeter Wadada Leo Smith and drummer Louis Moholo-Moholo have ever recorded together. Smith, one of the true progenitors of creative improvised music, has made numerous duo recordings with drummers, among them Ed Blackwell, Jack DeJohnette, and percussionist Adam Rudolph. Moholo-Moholo, a founding member of South Africa's Blue Notes, has also made duo recordings, usually with pia…
Eclexistence
Delirium is a quartet made up of Finnish saxophonist Mikko Innanen and his three Danish compatriots, including Kasper Tranberg on cornet, Jonas Westergaard on bass and Stefan Pasborg on drums. Eclexistence, the second album of Delirium, is characterized by a sense of musical adventure. Combining the tradition of modern jazz with their own fresh attitude, there is a definite joy of freedom and will to experiment that guide the quartet´s approach. New elements, such as increased ethnic influences,…
Mother Tongue
Mother Tongue is the first recording of the Juhani Aaltonen Trio, founded in 2001. In addition to tenor saxophonist and flautist Juhani Aaltonen, the trio includes Ulf Krokfors on bass and Tom Nekljudow on drums. For this album, the Juhani Aaltonen Trio was recorded at Helsinki´s Kanneltalo during a concert held in fall 2002 towards the end of a nine-concert tour in Finland. The recording includes free-flowing improvised music principally based on compositions by Juhani Aaltonen. In addition to …
The Chicago Symphonies
*Includes a 80 pages booklet.* The trumpeter Wadada Leo Smith from Leland, Mississippi, started his career in the late sixties as a member of the legendary jazz trio Creative Construction Company, which also included Leroy Jenkins and Anthony Braxton, and has since advanced to become one of the most renowned representatives of contemporary (avant-garde) jazz - with more than thirty album releases to date. On the occasion of the 80th birthday of the internationally renowned composer and trumpeter…
Down the Hill
*2022 stock.* Since their meeting in the Hague in the Netherlands in 2002, Alexandra Grimal and Giovanni di Domenico have been playing together regularly. Since 2011 they have been offering several subtle and inspired tête-à-têtes: Ghibli, Chergui and Down the Hill, which was released on January 19th, 2020. Ghibli, around a repertoire composed by the Italian pianist, released on the Sans Bruit label in 2011, the music navigates on the mineral lines of Alexandra Grimal's saxophones that come to r…
Chergui
*2022 stock.* Alexandra Grimal goes in her own way, elegant but robust, through the territories of jazz and improvised music over recent years. It was only natural she would meet and regularly play in duet settings with Giovanni di Domenico, as versatile an adventurer as Alexandra is, both in his musical choices and collaborations. Three years after their first recording together (2011's Ghibli on the Sans Bruit label), Chergui was recorded over two nights at the Théâtre du Châtelet (Paris, Fran…
1977 Live Vols 1 & 2
"Aside from working with the influential avant-garde ensemble AMM, percussionist Eddie Prévost led some highly challenging British free jazz groups in the '70s. These sessions from 1977 showcase a project featuring Geoff Hawkins on saxophone, Gerry Gold on trumpet, and the phenomenal talents of Marcio Mattos on bass.With Prevost's always inventive and high-energy drumming holding it all together, the quartet explores the tradition of free jazz with the astute wit of classical musicians. The exce…