Search Result for Genre JAZZ
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WWSLP 100LP
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$29.50
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RELEASE DATE: 2/28/2025
Wewantsounds reissues Roy Haynes' 1971 LP Hip Ensemble, recorded in New York for Bob Shad's Mainstream Records and featuring Hannibal Marvin Peterson, George Adams, Teruo Nakamura, and Lawrence Killian. Together the musicians create a superb mix of jazz funk and spiritual jazz showcasing Haynes powerful drumming and creativity. Hip Ensemble is presented in its original gatefold artwork with first generation photos and includes the bonus track "Roy's Tune." It comes with newly remastered audio and a two-page insert featuring new liner notes by Kevin Le Gendre. Roy Haynes, who passed at age 99, is one of the undisputed giants of jazz. Born in Roxbury, Massachusetts in 1925, Haynes started drumming during his teenage years before moving to New York in 1945 where his career took off. He went on to play with the likes of Charlie Parker, Miles Davis, and Lester Young, becoming an institution over the decades. In the late '60s, after a stint with the John Coltrane's quartet, he put together the Hip Ensemble, a small group featuring the young turks George Adams on sax, Hannibal Marvin Peterson on trumpet, Japanese bass player Teruo Nakamura, Lawrence Killian on percussion together with German pianist Carl Schroeder on Fender Rhodes. Bob Shad, who had worked with Haynes in the '50s when he was running EmArcy, saw the group live in New York one night and decided to sign them on his label Mainstream Records as he was starting to produce jazz again after a few years releasing psychedelic rock. His idea was to plug into the new modal and jazz-funk scenes that was flourishing at the time and Haynes was also experimenting with. The album Hip Ensemble reflects this new direction with a superb mix of spiritual jazz. Complementing the group for this session were Mervin Bronson, adding a touch of Fender bass and a second percussionist, Elwood Johnson. "Roy's Tune" has been added as a bonus track, which was recorded at the same session but not included on the original album -- it briefly came out on a low-key Mainstream compilation two years after. The track is another fascinating breakbeat that has strangely never been sampled. Hip Ensemble has been remastered for vinyl by Colorsound Studio in Paris and is a timely reminder that Haynes is one of the greatest jazz drummers of all times.
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JB 001LP
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$33.00
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RELEASE DATE: 2/28/2025
First reissue in 25 years of the Brazilian jazz holy grail, licensed from Universal Music Brazil. A mix between traditional music of northeast Brazil, bebop, jazz, and folk to create an organic sound. Featuring Hermeto Pascoal, Airto Moreira, Theo De Barros, and Heraldo Do Monte. Quarteto Novo only released one album, yet they number amongst one of the more influential acts in Brazilian music. Originally set up as a "Trio Novo" by a pharmaceutical company who wanted a live band at an event, they were then picked up by Geraldo Vandré (who was, at that time in 1966, the winner of a Brazilian music popularity competition) for a tour of the Brazilian northeast. After the tour, the trio -- comprised of a very young Airto Moreira (percussions), composer, solo artist and soundtrack composer, producer and arranger Theo de Barros (bass and subsequent guitarist) and Heraldo do Monte (guitar) who also went on to have a fairly successful career -- was joined by multi-instrumentalist Hermeto Pascoal. Recorded in 1967, this was the first album for Airto, and it was a hugely influential release -- mixing the traditional music of northeast Brazil with bebop jazz and folk. Quarteto Novo emphasized northeastern Brazilian music and acoustic instruments for an "organic" sound. This first reissue in 25 years of this holy grail is a must for any lover of Brazilian jazz, samba and folk music. Jazzybelle is a new label launched by Olivier Rosset (founder of Chronowax) and Elvin Pagiras, from Modulor (key French distributor who are also behind renowned reissue labels We Want Sounds and Le Très Jazz Club). Jazzybelle will be focused on Brazilian musical gems, but not exclusively.
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ESPDISK 5102CD
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$12.00
PREORDER
RELEASE DATE: 2/14/2025
Memphis, Tennessee quintet Deepstaria Enigmatica doesn't sound like your father's free jazz. It's spacier; it's moodier; sometimes it sounds like ambient drank a lot of expressos and got down; sometimes it sounds like one of Miles Davis' mid-'70s electric bands ate shrooms and got freaky while Miles wasn't around; sometimes it sounds like a funky lounge band from the Antares system. Deepstaria Enigmatica is a quintet of improvisers from Memphis, Tennessee dedicated to creating otherworldly soundscapes. Named for a rarely seen, bell-shaped jellyfish discovered by Jacques Cousteau, the group's every note is inspired by that famous ocean explorer's sense of discovery. But don't assume the five veteran musicians create only chaos: they are as attuned to melodies and harmonies as they are to fine gradations of noise. What emerges with each extemporaneous performance can range from dark swirls of frenetic fury to interplanetary hard bop, to sunlit ambient dreamscapes punctuated with snatches of folk song. The diverse experience of the players sets the tone for their deep dives: David Collins is the composer and guitarist behind Frog Squad, a Memphis group who have blended jazz improvisation with visionary music as disparate as that of Horace Silver and Erik Satie; he's equally at home playing simple, unfettered guitar lines or rocking, effects-drenched rave ups. Chad Fowler played alto saxophone with both Frank Lowe and George Cartwright in the 1990s, and now teams up with the likes of William Parker, Kidd Jordan, Ivo Perelman, Zoh Amba, Matthew Shipp, or Brian Blade for music released on the Mahakala Music label. Keyboardist Alex Greene first studied musique concrète and computer synthesis with composer Judy Klein in the 1980s, before playing in a variety of Memphis groups ranging from Alex Chilton to Big Ass Truck to Reigning Sound, not to mention over twenty years of work with New York composer Dave Soldier. Now he improvises with multiple keyboards simultaneously, including a vintage Roland Juno-106. Since completing his jazz studies at the University of Memphis in 2016, drummer Jon Harrison has cast a wide stylistic net with the groups he's joined, which include the Southern Comfort Jazz Orchestra, Frog Squad, Hope Calyburn's Soul Scrimmage, Joe Austin, Roderick Duran, PXLS, and the Church Brothers. Bassist Khari Wynn, best known as the guitarist for hip-hop sensations Public Enemy, regularly tests more unorthodox waters with groups such as Energy Disciples, often under the name Mysterioso Africano. Together, these five musos cohere with a surprising unity of purpose, as their listening and playing gel into what often sound like prepared compositions. Sharing an uncanny telepathy, they transport listeners to new worlds of musical possibility.
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TROST 243CD
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$16.50
PREORDER
RELEASE DATE: 2/14/2025
The six compositions Stumps by Sven-Ake Johansson are based on a variation potential of falling and rising short signals (notes) as a theme. A fourfold repetition of the theme at the beginning establishes the piece and provides a fixed starting material for the following improvisations. The simple repetition of the theme at the end concludes the composition as a kind of return. The basic tempi of the themes are calm; there is no fixed tempo, more a free placement. The rhythm section works in the improvisations according to the principle of free tempo/ dynamic vibration, the result is momentum (swing). Recorded at Haus der Berliner Festspiele, 6th of November 2022. Mastered by Werner Dafeldecker/Martin Siewert. Featuring Pierre Borel (Alto Saxophone), Axel Dörner (Trumpet), Simon Sieger (Piano), Joel Grip (Double Bass), and Sven-Ake Johansson (Drums).
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TROST 257CD
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$16.50
PREORDER
RELEASE DATE: 2/14/2025
Rotations+ is a trio project with German turntablist Ignaz Schick, Swedish artist Sven-Ake Johansson, and Austrian trumpeter Franz Hautzinger, recorded live at the Berlin experimental venue KM28 in September of 2023. The collective improvisations are instilled with a deep interest in color and timbre, and each track offers a fresh perspective. While Johansson toggles to accordion on the album's final track, squeezing tender lines alongside Hautzinger's moody brass and Schick's scratch-pocked layer of wobbly ambience that climaxes with a warped romanticism, the other pieces navigate the divide between sound and rhythm more viscerally. Scuffed electronic tones, noisy beeps and blorps, and parched and puckered trumpet smears and cries, are accompanied by Johansson's elegant sense of time. In certain places he brings an elegant pulse to the proceedings, providing a structure for his partner's most abstract utterances, while elsewhere he turns his drumming inside out, as if translating the machinations of a tap dancer in slow motion. More often than not the music proceeds with a delicate touch and razor-sharp interplay even within the most fragile moments, delivering a heightened form of spontaneous sound sculpting -- something Johansson has been doing since the early 1970s. Mixed and mastered by Werner Dafeldecker/Martin Siewert. Artwork by Sven-Ake Johansson.
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7"
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TPCDRFT 4503EP
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$13.50
PREORDER
RELEASE DATE: 2/7/2025
This new TopicDrift45 release comes straight outta Aachen. Originally released in 1982 on Rainer Wiedensohlers' Nabel Musik Imprint with a whole LP called Floating and for the first time on a DJ friendly 45 cut. Side A "Running" was and still is a well-known mover in the UK Northen and Asian Scene. A true example for all those DJs out there collecting and spinning organic music in all its forms.
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KRXN 036LP
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$27.00
PREORDER
RELEASE DATE: 2/7/2025
Rob Mazurek graces the Keroxen Records waves with a genre defying album of field recordings, modular electronics, trumpet harmonies and spirit call chants. An unstoppable force since his first recordings in the early '90s, Rob Mazurek has been at the forefront of experimentation and adventurous improvised music for most of the last four decades. The American composer, cornetist, and visual artist has been developing his own style of improvisational music with a myriad of collaborators, too many to list but amongst them true giants of the 20th and 21st century music cannon like Bill Dixon, Pharoah Sanders, Jeff Parker, Roscoe Mitchell, Yusef Lateef, and Naná Vasconcelos amongst many many others. Nestor's Nest is yet another addition to Mazurek's mammoth catalogue of cosmic unity, coming like a spur of the moment whilst staying at Nestor and Pura's house in Tenerife during the Keroxen Festival edition of 2023. Dead time doesn't exist for the American cornetist and whilst hanging at the organizers house Mazurek decided to record and interact with his colorful tropical surroundings. Mangos, Papayas and Star Fruits all make an appearance here as does the quietness of an idyllic garden juxtaposed with Mazurek's stormy interferences, unleashing his modular synths and other acoustic paraphernalia into an ecstatic mix of pure celestial energy. As he beautifully states on the albums back cover: "Fruit from the trees of life, Stop All War. Stop the Killing, Open the senses, Breath. Listen. Feel!" Made from field recordings in and around the Keroxen Tanque and the House of Nestor and Pura in Tenerife, Canary Islands. Final mix at Marfa Experimental Studio, Marfa Texas. Mastered by Daniel Baez.
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KR 116LP
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$24.00
PREORDER
RELEASE DATE: 2/7/2025
The Burning Bright Light is a mind-meld between improvisation trio DROMEDARIES (saxophonist Keir Neuringer of Irreversible Entanglements, Shayna Dulberger on double bass and percussionist Julius Masri) and sci-fi writer/vocalist ALEXOTERIC (Alex Smith), evoking epic sci-fi cinemascapes, vocabulary, and reference-rich underground writing, the liberatory jazz tradition, and playful avant-garde experimentation. Recorded in a single high voltage burst of cosmic collaboration on an October afternoon at Philadelphia's Rittenhouse Soundworks, The Burning Bright Light is a sonic document like no other. The album emerges organically on a foundation of speculative fiction, free jazz interaction, avant-garde textures, and freestyle refrains. With no rules set in advance, each participant brought their entire creativity to bear on a session that birthed a constellation of shimmering stories narrated through equally deep music and words. While it retains all the power and excitement of a spontaneous meeting, the album also reveals deep and atypical shared affinities that are simultaneously sonic, musical, social, political, and cosmic. A key figure in multiple Philadelphia arts subcultures, Smith's literary voice is unlike any other, and on this recording he stretches his vocal acrobatics to their greatest extent yet. Listeners hear references to grounded, earthly concerns and figures shot through the farthest reaches of spacetime, always with Smith's incisive queer Afrofuturist lens. Smith describes the album as "a future color spray, a hidden missive laser etched into the seams of your galactic multi-death cult corporation flight jacket, the snow fallen ash and embers of a world you can only view through a prism-powered holo-sim. Wild jazz, bad, fresh with no jive -- the perfect script for the download digital age, transcending experimental musics through the solar battery at the bio-borg filling station. The anti-Boeing, proto-mothership, swinging the body eclectic, crash landing on a brass planet. Dromedaries are plugged in and transforming, delivering ancient spells like slam poetry on Cybertron." All of the music you hear was recorded in real time; for their part instrumentalists Shayna Dulberger, Julius Masri, and Keir Neuringer expanded their energetic, telepathic, playful mode of collective improvisation developed over the past decade together to both embrace Smith as a fourth and equal voice and elevate him as a sacred cosmic orator.
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LP
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MTE 082LP
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$35.50
PREORDER
RELEASE DATE: 2/7/2025
Onilu is an all-percussionist trio utilizing the extensive family of drummed and tuned percussion instruments to deliver beautifully composed, arranged and executed small ensemble music. Nothing about this all-percussion band feels rarified, or missing anything musical. To the contrary, Onilu create a soundworld where nothing is missing, and everything is musical -- defying the stereotype of modern percussion ensembles as esoteric or academic pursuits, reaffirming the powerful social and sacred musics made in African diasporic communities and across cultures by drum and percussion groups since the beginning of human time. The members of Onilu are: Kevin Diehl, leader of the enduring Philadelphia-based Afro-Cuban Yoruba free-jazz ensemble Sonic Liberation Front; Chad Taylor, Artistic Director of Jazz Studies at the University of Pittsburgh and esteemed drummer of long standing in many scenes. Highlights of Taylor's recent history include his work with James Brandon Lewis, Jaimie Branch, Marc Ribot, Rob Mazurek, and with Joshua Abrams in the duo Mind Maintenance-. Taylor was part of the community of young Chicago-based musicians organized around Fred Anderson's Velvet Lounge in the 1990s that included Abrams, Nicole Mitchell, Jeff Parker, and Matana Roberts, among others; living legend Joe Chambers, who began his illustrious career as the drummer on now-canonical early Blue Note recordings by Andrew Hill, Bobby Hutcherson, Sam Rivers, Wayne Shorter, and Mccoy Tyner. A 1970 founding member of Max Roach's pathbreaking percussion ensemble M'Boom, Chambers continues to record percussion-centered music as a leader for Blue Note records. After nearly three decades working with such historic drummers as Denis Charles, Walter Perkins, Sunny Murray, Hamid Drake, Milford Graves, Susie Ibarra, Charles Bobo Shaw, and Han Bennink, it is Eremite Records' joy and honor to give the drummers not some, but ALL the spotlight. From Dana Hall's liner notes: "These three artists are master musicians and the music they present here is masterfully conceived. The drum, and its entire global family of membranophones, shakers, and idiophones, are conduits for their collective creative voice. In addition to drummers, they are also composers, and their works here represent a synthesis of ideas, concepts, and their individual dialectics on the language and syntax found in much of African and African Diasporic musics. A music that uses call and response. One that honors the past while looking forward to the future. A music that is principally concerned with feeling, mood, and storytelling. One that eschews frivolity and the baroque. A music that swings and grooves. I found myself dancing to this recording. Trust me, you, too, will find yourself rightfully and unapologetically dancing to this recording." First Eremite edition of 999 copies pressed on premium audiophile-quality 140-gram vinyl at Fidelity Record Pressing, from Kevin Gray/Cohearent audio lacquers. Recorded by Michael Richelle, Philadelphia. Mastered by Joe Lizzi, Queens, NY. Hand screen-printed insert by Alan Sherry, Siwa Studios, Northern New Mexico.
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CD
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WJCD 069CD
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$18.00
PREORDER
RELEASE DATE: 1/31/2025
Joona Toivanen Trio returns to We Jazz Records with their new album Gravity. A landmark work for the long-standing group, the album showcases the forward-looking sound of the band, moving way beyond the basic scope of the "piano trio." There's a startling sense of telepathy and intimacy at work in the music of the Joona Toivanen Trio, something you can glean from the opening moments of Gravity. It's that rare synergy that can only come with years of time spent together onstage, in the rehearsal space, on tour throughout Europe, en route to the next show. To look at the discography of the Finish piano trio is to see a relationship that stretches back to the year 2000, when they self-released their first album, Numurkah. Only, the connection between pianist Joona Toivanen, drummer Olavi Louhivuori, and bassist Tapani Toivanen goes back even further. "Tapani is my younger brother and we moved to a neighborhood in Jyväskylä in central Finland when I was seven," Joona Toivanen says. "And on my first day at school I met Olavi, who was in the same class as me!" Nowadays, the trio is geographically split between Gothenburg, Sweden (Joona), Copenhagen, Denmark (Tapani), and Helsinki, Finland (Olavi), but the unit sounds together as ever thanks to their extensive track record in developing their band sound.
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2CD
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ZORN 112CD
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$23.50
PREORDER
RELEASE DATE: 1/31/2025
The debut recording by The Ancients, the intergenerational coalition of Isaiah Collier, William Hooker, and William Parker formed by Parker to play concerts in conjunction with the Milford Graves Mind Body Deal exhibition at the Institute Of Contemporary Art Los Angeles and now a working group. Across two discs of long-form improvised sets recorded at 2220 Arts and Archives in LA and The Chapel in San Francisco, The Ancients bring the free jazz trio languages first explored by the Cecil Taylor Unit and Ornette Coleman's Golden Circle Band (expanded upon in later eras by Sam Rivers' trio and Parker's collective trios with Charles Gayle/Graves and Peter Brötzmann/Hamid Drake) into their own unique and scintillating realms of expression. As we tumble further into the throes of history's tides, people of hope and creativity rely on the works of our great artists to lift our spirits and focus our resolve. Ascension was recorded less than a year after the passage of the Civil Rights Act and four months after the assassination of Malcolm X. Journey in Satchidananda was recorded the month Reagan was re-elected governor of California. M'Boom made its debut recording weeks after the Watergate scandal broke and a couple months after the Wounded Knee occupation ended. The music of The Ancients builds on these great musical legacies. It resounds with the pride of survival and the joys of making and sharing music. It delivers to us hope and balm. Something real in you, real in history, and real in the music is shared, right on time. When Eremite records commenced operations during the 1990s free jazz resurgence, heavyweight freedom-seeking tenor saxophonists such as Fred Anderson, Peter Brötzmann, Charles Gayle, Kidd Jordan, and David S. Ware were at the height of their powers. Isaiah Collier's tenor playing in The Ancients is bracing testimony that the wellspring lives on. To hear the young Chicago firebrand blowing freely with veteran improvisers in an entirely open-form group music is a revelatory study of his vast talent, personal voice, and the intensity of his expression -- as well as a bold complement to his composition-based albums as a bandleader (including The Almighty, a New York Times' best albums of 2024 selection). I've admired drummer William Hooker since first encountering his music in a Hartford, CT, city park, early '90s (on a double bill with Jerry González and Fort Apache Band). From the man himself right off the bandstand I bought his even-then rare first recording, the 1976 self-released 2LP opus Is Eternal Life (reissued 2019 by Superior Viaduct). An imposing force on his instrument and an intrepid DIY cat, Hooker's been exuberantly swinging in-and-out of free time for 50+ years. Informed by the innovations of Sunny Murray and Tony Williams yet entirely himself, there is no other term for it than "pure Hooker." At age 78, with the Ancients and everywhere else, THE HOOK is in peak form. With a discography approaching 600 entries and 50+ years working across the musical maps, including in the history-defining bands of Don Cherry, Cecil Taylor, Bill Dixon, Peter Brötzmann, in his own wondrous ensembles from small group to orchestra to opera, a bastion of compassionate leadership and a poetic champion of his musical community, in tireless service to what he rather egolessly refers to as "the tone world," multi-instrumentalist, improviser and composer William Parker is a living hero of the grassroots and the Black Mystery Musics, not to mention one of the great bassists in the history of jazz. To quote George Clinton, conquering the stumbling blocks comes easier when the conqueror is in tune with the infinite. Free jazz is an enduring high art. Its greatest expressions belong to their particular moment in history, and live on to transcend and refract in amaranthine ways. Inside our present historical moment, we are fortunate to have the master musicians in the ancients bringing us their high-level creation. Live to 2-track concert recordings by Bryce Gonzales, Highland Dynamics. Mastered by Joe Lizzi, Queens, NY. Album and concerts co-produced with The Black Editions Group.
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LP
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WJLP 069LP
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$28.00
PREORDER
RELEASE DATE: 1/31/2025
LP version. Joona Toivanen Trio returns to We Jazz Records with their new album Gravity. A landmark work for the long-standing group, the album showcases the forward-looking sound of the band, moving way beyond the basic scope of the "piano trio." There's a startling sense of telepathy and intimacy at work in the music of the Joona Toivanen Trio, something you can glean from the opening moments of Gravity. It's that rare synergy that can only come with years of time spent together onstage, in the rehearsal space, on tour throughout Europe, en route to the next show. To look at the discography of the Finish piano trio is to see a relationship that stretches back to the year 2000, when they self-released their first album, Numurkah. Only, the connection between pianist Joona Toivanen, drummer Olavi Louhivuori, and bassist Tapani Toivanen goes back even further. "Tapani is my younger brother and we moved to a neighborhood in Jyväskylä in central Finland when I was seven," Joona Toivanen says. "And on my first day at school I met Olavi, who was in the same class as me!" Nowadays, the trio is geographically split between Gothenburg, Sweden (Joona), Copenhagen, Denmark (Tapani), and Helsinki, Finland (Olavi), but the unit sounds together as ever thanks to their extensive track record in developing their band sound.
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SDBANU 040CD
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$15.50
PREORDER
RELEASE DATE: 1/31/2025
With their new album, Black Flower delves into the transformative power of rhythm and motion. Each groove, rhythm and pulse channels raw energy, acting as a disruptor that drives transformation. When the mind feels stuck -- cemented in patterns, rigid in its views, overwhelmed by obstacles -- Kinetic serves as a reminder that the body's motion can be the force to shatter those confines. To move is to adapt, evolve, and transform. The album embodies a philosophy of flowing with change rather than resisting it, offering a bold, dynamic statement on breaking free from life's limitations. Kinetic is a call to dance through life's chaos and to harness the power of movement as a tool for liberation. The album showcases Black Flower's signature blend of Ethio-jazz, oriental influences, dub, and afrobeat. The jazz combo, hailed by tastemakers such as Gilles Peterson, The Gaslamp Killer, and Lefto Early Bird, has performed live sessions on BBC Radio 3 and Worldwide FM. Their previous albums earned widespread acclaim, with glowing reviews from prestigious publications such as MOJO, Stereogum, Q Magazine, and Uncut Magazine. The band has toured extensively across Europe, building a strong fanbase. Featuring Meskerem Mees.
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LP
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SDBANU 040LP
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$28.00
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RELEASE DATE: 1/31/2025
LP version. With their new album, Black Flower delves into the transformative power of rhythm and motion. Each groove, rhythm and pulse channels raw energy, acting as a disruptor that drives transformation. When the mind feels stuck -- cemented in patterns, rigid in its views, overwhelmed by obstacles -- Kinetic serves as a reminder that the body's motion can be the force to shatter those confines. To move is to adapt, evolve, and transform. The album embodies a philosophy of flowing with change rather than resisting it, offering a bold, dynamic statement on breaking free from life's limitations. Kinetic is a call to dance through life's chaos and to harness the power of movement as a tool for liberation. The album showcases Black Flower's signature blend of Ethio-jazz, oriental influences, dub, and afrobeat. The jazz combo, hailed by tastemakers such as Gilles Peterson, The Gaslamp Killer, and Lefto Early Bird, has performed live sessions on BBC Radio 3 and Worldwide FM. Their previous albums earned widespread acclaim, with glowing reviews from prestigious publications such as MOJO, Stereogum, Q Magazine, and Uncut Magazine. The band has toured extensively across Europe, building a strong fanbase. Featuring Meskerem Mees.
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2LP
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MTE 080-81LP
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$44.00
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RELEASE DATE: 1/31/2025
Arriving in North America on Eremite, the debut recording by The Ancients, the intergenerational coalition of Isaiah Collier, William Hooker, and William Parker formed by Parker to play concerts in conjunction with the Milford Graves Mind Body Deal exhibition at the Institute Of Contemporary Art Los Angeles and now a working group. Across 2 LPs of side-length long-form improvised sets recorded at 2220 Arts and Archives in LA and The Chapel in San Francisco, The Ancients bring the free jazz trio languages first explored by the Cecil Taylor Unit and Ornette Coleman's Golden Circle Band (expanded upon in later eras by Sam Rivers' trio and Parker's collective trios with Charles Gayle/Graves and Peter Brötzmann/Hamid Drake) into their own unique and scintillating realms of expression. As we tumble further into the throes of history's tides, people of hope and creativity rely on the works of our great artists to lift our spirits and focus our resolve. Ascension was recorded less than a year after the passage of the Civil Rights Act and four months after the assassination of Malcolm X. Journey in Satchidananda was recorded the month Reagan was re-elected governor of California. M'Boom made its debut recording weeks after the Watergate scandal broke and a couple months after the Wounded Knee occupation ended. The music of The Ancients builds on these great musical legacies. It resounds with the pride of survival and the joys of making and sharing music. It delivers to us hope and balm. Something real in you, real in history, and real in the music is shared, right on time. When Eremite records commenced operations during the 1990s free jazz resurgence, heavyweight freedom-seeking tenor saxophonists such as Fred Anderson, Peter Brötzmann, Charles Gayle, Kidd Jordan, and David S. Ware were at the height of their powers. Isaiah Collier's tenor playing in The Ancients is bracing testimony that the wellspring lives on. To hear the young Chicago firebrand blowing freely with veteran improvisers in an entirely open-form group music is a revelatory study of his vast talent, personal voice, and the intensity of his expression -- as well as a bold complement to his composition-based albums as a bandleader (including The Almighty, a New York Times' best albums of 2024 selection). I've admired drummer William Hooker since first encountering his music in a Hartford, CT, city park, early '90s (on a double bill with Jerry González and Fort Apache Band). From the man himself right off the bandstand I bought his even-then rare first recording, the 1976 self-released 2LP opus Is Eternal Life (reissued 2019 by Superior Viaduct). An imposing force on his instrument and an intrepid DIY cat, Hooker's been exuberantly swinging in-and-out of free time for 50+ years. Informed by the innovations of Sunny Murray and Tony Williams yet entirely himself, there is no other term for it than "pure Hooker." At age 78, with the Ancients and everywhere else, THE HOOK is in peak form. With a discography approaching 600 entries and 50+ years working across the musical maps, including in the history-defining bands of Don Cherry, Cecil Taylor, Bill Dixon, Peter Brötzmann, in his own wondrous ensembles from small group to orchestra to opera, a bastion of compassionate leadership and a poetic champion of his musical community, in tireless service to what he rather egolessly refers to as "the tone world," multi-instrumentalist, improviser and composer William Parker is a living hero of the grassroots and the Black Mystery Musics, not to mention one of the great bassists in the history of jazz. To quote George Clinton, conquering the stumbling blocks comes easier when the conqueror is in tune with the infinite. Free jazz is an enduring high art. Its greatest expressions belong to their particular moment in history, and live on to transcend and refract in amaranthine ways. Inside our present historical moment, we are fortunate to have the master musicians in the ancients bringing us their high-level creation. First Eremite edition of 1,299 copies pressed on premium audiophile-quality 140gram vinyl at Fidelity Record pressing, from Kevin Gray/Cohearent audio lacquers. Live to 2-track concert recordings by Bryce Gonzales, Highland Dynamics. Mastered by Joe Lizzi, Queens, NY. Album and concerts co-produced with The Black Editions Group.
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LP
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WJLP 079LP
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$28.00
PREORDER
RELEASE DATE: 1/24/2025
LP version. Unionen is a new quartet of four star-level Norwegian and Swedish jazz musicians. The group takes its name from the United Kingdoms of Sweden and Norway under a common monarch 1814-1905 and brings together Ståle Størlokken (Supersilent), Per "Texas" Johansson, Petter Eldh (Koma Saxo), and Gard Nilssen (Supersonic Orchestra). It's not hip to say "supergroup" but this sure is one super of a group, with each member contributing to the band sound that is unique in all the best possible ways. From misty introspection to proper rock-out-hardjazz, Unionen is set out to blaze their own trail. Tracks such as opener "Ståhlbad" draw you in with their subtle intensity, while the "rock cut" on the album, "6983" brings forth energy that sounds very much "live". Whatever Unionen do, you can feel they've been around the block a time or too, and are not just opting for easy licks to wow the listener. This is deep music that is set to stand the test of time in its originality. Early live shows of Unionen have been triumphant, with UK's Jazzwise calling them a "highlight scoop" at the Cologne Jazzweek. The album consists of eight originals, each of which defies clear classification. The compositions, including writing credits by all four members in a true fashion of the "unionen", display a genuine musical storytelling desire, matched by the ability to build a narrative that holds the listener close. On the instrumentation side of things, you hear classics like grand piano, fender Rhodes, double bass and drums, but also jazz rarities like Cor Anglais, contrabass clarinet and MPC. It's all part of a coherent sound image so you'll likely not think of how stuff was made but how it makes you feel. Unionen's music is highly emotive, more autumn than summer, more misty than sunny, more evening than midday, and first and foremost more unified than separated. No need for a monarch here, this is true democracy in the form of a jazz quartet. RIYL: Supersilent, Fire!, Scandinavian jazz, the darker side of vintage ECM.
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1FFJT176
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Alga Marghen/Formalibera present the first of a series of released documenting the work of Danish composer and multi-instrumentalist John Tchicai. This new LP features two previously unpublished recordings, "Beautiful United Harmony Happening" with Don Cherry and "Education Of An Amphibian" with Sahib Shihab. Tchicai returned to his native Denmark in July 1966 after spending a remarkable four years in New York City. In that short span, he helped redefine and expand the relationship between soloing, collective improvisation, and composition in small free jazz ensembles such as the New York Art Quartet, the New York Contemporary Five, and on albums such as New York Eye and Ear Control with Albert Ayler and John Coltrane's Ascension. It certainly counts as one of the most fertile periods in any artist's career. Yet when he returned to Europe, Tchicai turned his attention primarily (although not exclusively) to large ensemble music. The breakthroughs made in New York were not lost, but transferred to a large group context, opening up further avenues of exploration. "The Education of an Amphibian" by the John Tchicai Octet represents a first try at "Komponist Udøver Ensemble," or "Composing Improvisers Orchestra," an approach that further blurred boundaries between improvisation and composition. Recorded in October 1966, the piece presents Tchicai as composer and guiding presence; an organizer of sounds; and an explorer of a widening musical vocabulary drawn from contemporary classical and African influences. "Beautiful United Harmony Happening" is something different -- an opportunity to embrace new modes of interdisciplinary performance. From the beginning of his return to Denmark, Tchicai sought out not only musicians, but artists in all artforms and began to organize happenings. Although rarely noted, ideas linked to Fluxus, performance art, and happenings were a large influence of Tchicai's thinking at this time. All these related movements sought to blur or erase boundaries between media and set up juxtapositions between styles and artforms that disrupted received ideas of "high" and "low" art. Participation by non-artists introduced elements that challenged ideas about virtuosity and legitimate expression. Random elements were embraced, and non-Western music and concepts were welcome. This performance, heard here in an excerpt from the full two-hour performance, is very much in this vein. It is one of the last performances involving members of Cadentia Nova Danica, but they are only one component (and hardly the focus) of an ensemble that included a five-member chorus of disciples of the Swami Narayanananda (Tchicai lived at the yogi's ashram and had organized the choir himself), the Diane Black Dance Theatre, and trumpeter Don Cherry. Includes insert.
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2LP
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JMAN 146LP
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$32.00
PREORDER
RELEASE DATE: 1/24/2025
Double LP version. "High quality music to be enjoyed by many people all around the world, no matter where they are." --Andreas Brunner-Schwer, MPS Records. The German SABA and MPS family of labels extended this sentiment to include music from musicians all around the world, no matter where they were from -- and here on Spiritual Jazz 17: SABA/MPS, Jazzman explores that very theme. Throughout the '60s and '70s both labels released a wealth of music from a wealth of international jazz musicians coming from both North and South America, Europe, the Caribbean and the Far East. The aim was to release jazz that was exciting, innovative and interesting, regardless of style: there was swing, blues, bop, avant-garde, fusion -- and spiritual jazz. Plurality became a defining feature and the immense breadth of their output made both SABA and MPS worthy European counterparts to American imprints such as Blue Note and Impulse. On Spiritual Jazz 17: SABA/MPS Jazzman features, among others, international contributions from Americans Elvin Jones, Nathan Davis, and Dave Pike, Europeans Pedro Iturralde, Jef Gilson, and George Gruntz, and the Japanese Hideo Shiraki. The extensive liner notes outline the history of the SABA and MPS labels, and go some way to explain the spirit and philosophy behind the long-standing record company and the musicians who bore their souls to the recording process. Friedheim Schulz, who oversaw many of the sessions, has fond memories: "These guys had ideas, they had their special thing, it was the time when there were lots of ideas and new sounds and what have you, and [SABA proprietor] Hans Georg was always of the mind that people should do their own kind of music. So he gave them the chance to record and then he would just put out the albums and that was it! The musicians would really play what they wanted to play." Their great legacy is a lineage of music that has transcended the fatigues of time, and Jazzman has picked prime examples from the SABA and MPS catalogues to uphold its own legacy in the long-running series of Spiritual Jazz. Also featuring Tony Scott and the Indonesian Allstars, Albert Mangelsdorff Quartet, Orchester Roland Kovac, Fritz Pauer, and Joachim Kühn Group.
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CD
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JMAN 146CD
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$14.50
PREORDER
RELEASE DATE: 1/24/2025
"High quality music to be enjoyed by many people all around the world, no matter where they are." --Andreas Brunner-Schwer, MPS Records. The German SABA and MPS family of labels extended this sentiment to include music from musicians all around the world, no matter where they were from -- and here on Spiritual Jazz 17: SABA/MPS, Jazzman explores that very theme. Throughout the '60s and '70s both labels released a wealth of music from a wealth of international jazz musicians coming from both North and South America, Europe, the Caribbean and the Far East. The aim was to release jazz that was exciting, innovative and interesting, regardless of style: there was swing, blues, bop, avant-garde, fusion -- and spiritual jazz. Plurality became a defining feature and the immense breadth of their output made both SABA and MPS worthy European counterparts to American imprints such as Blue Note and Impulse. On Spiritual Jazz 17: SABA/MPS Jazzman features, among others, international contributions from Americans Elvin Jones, Nathan Davis, and Dave Pike, Europeans Pedro Iturralde, Jef Gilson, and George Gruntz, and the Japanese Hideo Shiraki. The extensive liner notes outline the history of the SABA and MPS labels, and go some way to explain the spirit and philosophy behind the long-standing record company and the musicians who bore their souls to the recording process. Friedheim Schulz, who oversaw many of the sessions, has fond memories: "These guys had ideas, they had their special thing, it was the time when there were lots of ideas and new sounds and what have you, and [SABA proprietor] Hans Georg was always of the mind that people should do their own kind of music. So he gave them the chance to record and then he would just put out the albums and that was it! The musicians would really play what they wanted to play." Their great legacy is a lineage of music that has transcended the fatigues of time, and Jazzman has picked prime examples from the SABA and MPS catalogues to uphold its own legacy in the long-running series of Spiritual Jazz. Also featuring Tony Scott and the Indonesian Allstars, Albert Mangelsdorff Quartet, Orchester Roland Kovac, Fritz Pauer, and Joachim Kühn Group.
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CD
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WJCD 079CD
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Unionen is a new quartet of four star-level Norwegian and Swedish jazz musicians. The group takes its name from the United Kingdoms of Sweden and Norway under a common monarch 1814-1905 and brings together Ståle Størlokken (Supersilent), Per "Texas" Johansson, Petter Eldh (Koma Saxo), and Gard Nilssen (Supersonic Orchestra). It's not hip to say "supergroup" but this sure is one super of a group, with each member contributing to the band sound that is unique in all the best possible ways. From misty introspection to proper rock-out-hardjazz, Unionen is set out to blaze their own trail. Tracks such as opener "Ståhlbad" draw you in with their subtle intensity, while the "rock cut" on the album, "6983" brings forth energy that sounds very much "live". Whatever Unionen do, you can feel they've been around the block a time or too, and are not just opting for easy licks to wow the listener. This is deep music that is set to stand the test of time in its originality. Early live shows of Unionen have been triumphant, with UK's Jazzwise calling them a "highlight scoop" at the Cologne Jazzweek. The album consists of eight originals, each of which defies clear classification. The compositions, including writing credits by all four members in a true fashion of the "unionen", display a genuine musical storytelling desire, matched by the ability to build a narrative that holds the listener close. On the instrumentation side of things, you hear classics like grand piano, fender Rhodes, double bass and drums, but also jazz rarities like Cor Anglais, contrabass clarinet and MPC. It's all part of a coherent sound image so you'll likely not think of how stuff was made but how it makes you feel. Unionen's music is highly emotive, more autumn than summer, more misty than sunny, more evening than midday, and first and foremost more unified than separated. No need for a monarch here, this is true democracy in the form of a jazz quartet. RIYL: Supersilent, Fire!, Scandinavian jazz, the darker side of vintage ECM.
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2FFCND177
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This revelatory album positions John Tchicai's large ensemble, Cadentia Nova Danica (CND), in the broad context of international new music activity. All previous releases by the group presented them as a free jazz unit. There were only three -- their self-titled release on Polydor (1968); Afrodisiaca (MPS, 1969); and Live at Jazzhus Montmartre (Storyville), recorded in 1967 but not released until 2016. They are all on jazz labels, so the bias is perhaps understandable. CND was a great free jazz group, to be sure. But the band and its leader were willing to experiment with a wide range of musical developments outside of jazz and incorporate them into their music. This LP encompasses a collaboration with classical composer Svend Erik Werner, an experiment with taped sound collage, and a remarkable sui generis composition by Tchicai. With the addition of this album to CND's discography, a broader and deeper portrait of the band's courageous spirit begins to emerge. Tchicai formed the group just after returning to his native Denmark in 1966 after four highly productive years in New York. Upon his return to Copenhagen, he immediately sought out musicians with whom he could form a band. He was soon working with an ensemble that included trumpeter Hugh Steinmetz and altoist Karsten Vogel. By late 1966, they became Cadentia Nova Danica (New Danish Cadence). They made their Danish debut at Café Montmartre and quickly developed a reputation as one of the most creative bands in Europe. They remained together until 1971, when Tchicai entered the ashram of Swami Narayanananda for an extended period of meditation during which he didn't publicly perform. The cryptically, if absurdly, titled "Mc Gub Gub, (I-VIII)" is a stunning example of the creative ways Tchicai used ostinatos to structure his compositions and provide a supporting trellis for improvisation. Recorded during a Danish Avantgarde Jazz concert that also included the Contemporary Jazz Quintet, the piece opens with the band loosely repeating a phrase. There's a constant interchange between composition and improvisation. The written passages also function as transitions between improvised sections, in one case setting up a piano solo whose fluidity contrasts starkly with the angular writing. "Ode to Skt. John" is contemporary in form and outlook but based on methods taken from Gregorian music. It also makes room for improvisation from members of Cadentia Nova Danica. Although vividly contrasting, the two modes of musicmaking speak to one another. The alto saxophone and trumpet duet has a songlike, vocal quality in keeping with the spirit, if not the form, of Gregorian music. "Pladepip," Tchicai's foray into musique concréte, another modern classical genre, is unlike anything else in Tchicai's recorded canon. Two full-band improvisations bookend a remarkable audio tape created by Tchicai. Includes insert.
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CF 034LP
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Trost Records presents the latest release in its ongoing cooperation with Berlin's legendary FMP label, with the long overdue reissue of two classic live albums by the singular alto saxophonist Noah Howard, a key figure in New York's free jazz revolution during the 1960s. Schizophrenic Blues was a quartet date taped live in Berlin in May of 1977 with a quartet comprising Oliver Johnson, bassist Jean-Jacque Avenel, and trumpeter Itaru Oki. It was released on the SAJ sub label in 1978. It deftly captures the full diapason of Howard's fiery art. The piano-less quartet Schizophrenic Blues casts the music in a different light, with the great Japanese trumpeter Itaru Oki serving as a worthy frontline partner for Howard's livewire alto sax. Johnson is back in the rhythm section along with another Lacy disciple in the French bassist Jean-Jacques Avenel, who had already formed a strong musical bond, a mind meld readily apparent in grooves both ferociously energetic and contextually nimble. The leader reveals his curiosity by extending his repertoire to include an unexpected reading of "Bird of Beauty," a Stevie Wonder tune that released a few years earlier on Fulfillingness' First Finale, while the album concludes with a rousing, soulful rendition of the "Lift Every Voice and Sing," known fondly as the Black National Anthem. It reinforces the scalding passion of Howard's playing, while simultaneously highlighting a stylistic depth and lyrical grace that's often overlooked in his music. Howard, who suffered a fatal cerebral hemorrhage in 2010, at age 67, has been duly celebrated for his work in the 1960s, but the return of this gems makes it plain he had plenty more to say. Recorded live by Jost Gebers on May 21st and 22nd,1977 at the Quartier Latin in Berlin. Cover design by Dieter Hahne. Photographs by Dagmar Gebers. Produced by Jost Gebers. Originally released and published on FMP in 1978.
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LP
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LTJC 018LP
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$33.00
PREORDER
RELEASE DATE: 1/17/2025
The reissue of 1972's Italian jazz funk classic, directed by Il Maestro Piero Umiliani. Trumpetist Francesco "Cicci" Santucci and saxophonist Enzo Scoppa cut their teeth in the late '50s, playing with the Italian group Modern Jazz Gang, along with other Italian jazz greats such as Sandro Brugnolini and Amadeo Tommasi. In June 1971, "il maestro" Piero Umiliani made his Sound Workshop recording studio in the heart of Rome available to them, so that they could create an album under his supervision. The result was Olimpiade, a jazz-funk album featuring Franco d'Andrea on electric piano (who would go on to play with the group Perigeo a year later), and Belgian musician Joel Vendrokenbrak on organ. It should be noted that this session was also released on Dire, under the name On the Underground Road, but is here reissued for the first time with its magnificent original cover. A poster of the artwork and a printed insert featuring the Sound Workshop studio are also included with this reissue.
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PRF 011LP
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Fearlessly Accessing the Divine Spirit From Here on Out is the vinyl debut from Los Angeles pianist, composer, and producer Diego Gaeta. He has previously released projects as Club Diego and with the trio Human Error Club (whose members Mekala Session and Jesse Justice helped produce this record). He's become a fixture in various musical environments, working with Lionmilk, The Pan Afrikan Peoples Arkestra, Carlos Niño, Photay, and Black Nile, among others. This album is a synthesis of many of those relationships, and carries chamber, jazz, ambient, and folk influences, ultimately giving it an uncategorizable feel similar to works by Arthur Verocai or David Axelrod. Gaeta recorded the initial ideas for the album by himself after experiencing a burst of creativity during the lockdown of 2020, in the aftermath of a season of protests in Los Angeles, on a piano at his home in El Sereno. Once he had created the tracks as Ableton sessions, he realized the gravity and context of how he was processing his ideas so he, as he puts it, "felt like taking them outside the hands of midi and into the hands of friends." Gaeta was able to assemble his dream band, which ended up being a nine-piece ensemble, or a nonet. The recording process began the following summer in June 2021 as the musicians were all adjusting to the newfound dynamic of getting tested for COVID, waiting a few days, and then meeting up to record. The title track and single, featuring vocals by Jimetta Rose, begins with a speech by Gaeta delivered when playing with Black Nile in 2019 at the Levitt Amphitheatre in MacArthur Park. Moor Mother and Zeroh are found on their respective tracks, "Memory Screen" and "Eccolo" -- both delivering a distinct, commanding vocal performance. Low Leaf colors the track "Soft Spot" with harp, a beautiful ballad nestled in the center of the album. Other players include Gregory Uhlmann on guitar, Jon Kaye on violin, Devin Daniels on alto saxophone, Caleb Buchanan on bass, Dante Luna on vibraphone, Patrick Behnke on viola, Bryan Baker on tenor saxophone/flute, and Mekala Session on drums.
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SOW 055LP
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$23.50
PREORDER
RELEASE DATE: 1/17/2025
Recorded in 1959 and released on Blue Note the following year, Peckin' Time is the result of one of those fine studio sessions featuring a bunch of jazz heavyweights. Here is the perfect tandem of Hank Mobley on tenor sax and Lee Morgan on trumpet. Two great stylists in full shape, greatly backed by the ultra-elastic rhythm section of Winton Kelly on piano, Paul Chambers on bass, and Charlie Persip on drums. All true masters of the Bop vocabulary including all the possible variants from Blues to Latin.
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