Ran Blake, piano / Sara Serpa, voice

"At a time when so many singers and accompanists play it safe, it’s refreshing to hear vocalist Sara Serpa and pianist Ran Blake do something different—maybe even risky—with the standard jazz song repertoire..

There’s a lot of good stuff here and a lot of stuff you don’t know, but possibly most essential of all is the DVD, which is just amazing.

“Lighthouse’ is an anthology from the entire Tim Blake pantheon, a 3-CD set selection from work with Gong, Hawkwind and 5 solo albums, plus a DVD of a live solo performance from 1979, and extensive liner notes from Hawkwind-head Ian Abrahams, including extracts from interviews. You can take this release in a couple of ways: as an introduction to his work, for...

“Blanket, as the name suggests, envelop the listener in a comforting quilt of sound, transporting them to dreamy landscapes of sweeping, celestial beauty with a kaleidoscopic symphony of soaring guitars, tinkling piano, warm bass and propulsive drums.
How To Let Go, the quartet’s debut full-length album, takes dexterous ambient textures and amplifies them through a deeply resonant, emotional filter. The album is designed to uplift, enchant and provide a beautiforous escape from an often harsh and...

"Swiss trombonist Samuel Blaser makes his Whirlwind debut with his new quartet album Spring Rain a tribute to US clarinetist and composer Jimmy Giuffre. Intentionally blurring the boundaries between jazz, blues, free improvisation and contemporary...

For their fifth album, the long-lived Dutch avant rock band, founded in 1989 change gears a little bit. Their usual dense, intense compositional work is still there and on display, but due to the addition of drummer Fabriz...

A Catalan, Barcelona jazz rock band. This was their only record and was released by Zeleste. In addition this this record, they played with Música Urbana in the soundtrack of the film "Tatuaje" in 1977 (a serious rarity that you'll never hear - but now...

PROMO. "On the final day of the Festival, Eugene Chadbourne, the unique North Carolina advocate of hillbilly anarcho-improv, took the stage with Florida-born techno-conceptualist Kevin Blechdom (born Kristin Erickson) -- with long hair and gender...

Theo Bleckmann - voice
Alicia Olatuja - voice
Dan Tepfer - piano
Erik Friedlander - cello
Carl Maraghi - bass clarinet
Sean Smith - bass
David Hajdu - words

“New York is a city of ghosts. An ordinary-looking building on an unexceptional street can harbor the spirits of countless human dramas of past years: family secrets, forgotten news, lost traditions, heroes unsung, artworks unseen...
If every building on every block has stories to tell, one place in...

Theo Bleckmann-voice
Ben Monder-guitar
Skuli Sverrisson-electric bass
Jim Black-drums

All you need to know that this is a GREAT album is those four names! and it IS a great album.

"The emphasis is on expression, intensity, freedom and interdependence, blurring lines between sound and song, improvisation and composition. Bleckmann's ethereal to raucous vocal inventions (sometimes multiplied by live electronics) dovetail with Monder's oblique guitar lines, searching harmonies.

Peter Blegvad-guitar, vocals
Chris Cutler-drums, percussion
Bob Drake-guitar, vocals, percussion
John Greaves-bass, piano
Karen Mantler-organ, vocals, glockenspiel, harmonica

Adding the organ of Karen and the 'personalities' of Bob and Karen was an inspired move!

"After 19 years, the return of the Peter Blegvad Trio, in supernal form and now a quintet with Karen Mantler and Bob Drake. Recorded over 10 days at studio Midi-Pyrenees the old way: sitting in a room, working

An early 90's solos, featuring ace contributions from John Greaves, Chris Cutler & Kristoffer Blegvad, Tim Hodgkinson. Always intelligent, funny songs & lyrics.

“A reissue of Serge Blenner's Magazin Frivole, originally released in 1981. Cold, concise analog synthesizer instrumentals -- on his second album Serge Blenner remained true to his style, albeit shifting course slightly towards pop territory. The juxtaposition of dark harmonies and pop structures is what makes this album so appealing. In places, it feels like a blueprint for early Depeche Mode. Having seen his first album La Vogue snapped up by the Sky Records and fast-tracked for release in 1980...

"As is made all but plain by the title, Appearing Nightly is a live outing recorded by Carla Bley's big band over two nights at New Morning in Paris in the summer of 2006. Of course we've heard Bley's large group in live settings many times over the years, but in this case it's been five years since we've heard them at all -- at least on a recording. Her last outing with a large ensemble was in 2003 for the pre-election year political album Looking for America.
Bley's last couple of records were...

"Around 1980, Carla Bley seemed to find herself torn between several possible avenues of expression. On the one hand, you had her wild (and wildly successful) projects like Escalator Over the Hill and Tropic Appetites, where styles and musicians were combined with inspired abandon. Then there was the romantic classical aspect as shown in her composition "3/4" and, with jazz influences, her fine, ambitious Social Studies release. But, always lurking beneath the surface was her itching desire to have...

Paul Bley: piano
Gary Peacock / Mark Levinson: double bass
Barry Altschul: drums

“First released in the spring of 1971, these historic recordings from March and July 1967 capture the sound of a genre being born in the free ballads of Annette Peacock, played with extraordinary sensitivity by Paul Bley’s trio.”
Annette Peacock: “Critics introduced new terms, describing this music as sparse, understated, minimal, radically lyrical. The free ballad captured the imagination of listeners.

Annette Peacock - electric bass, synthesizer, electric piano
Paul Bley - electric piano, synthesizer
Han Bennink - percussion

"Recorded Live March 26th, 1971 at Club B14 in Rotterdam, Netherlands, Improvisie is a part of the 1971 trilogy of Paul Bley and Annette Peacock's combined experimental recorded work.
Improvisie is taken from a compelling period for three iconic figures of the free jazz movement, and their pioneering use of the first-ever Moog synthesizers...

“The first ever reissue of Paul Bley's The Paul Bley Synthesizer Show, originally released in 1971. This stunning album was recorded over three sessions in New York City on December 9th, 1970, January 21st, 1971, and March 9th, 1971. The Paul Bley Synthesizer Show produces new songs and tough translations of previous works from Mr. Joy while joining the likes of other seminal works in 1972's Dual Unity, 1971's Improvisie, and Bley-Peacock Synthesizer Show's Revenge: The Greater The Love, The Bigger The...

A pretty reasonably good live recording of this short lived, promising group that took the remnants of Cream and Traffic and shook them together into an even more volatile mixture!
Recorded in Gothenberg, Sweden on 18th June 1969; CD in deluxe hard back book. Includes 40 pages of archival imagery. Hand numbered edition.

Long-time Waysiders will remember this Residents-influenced recording project who released two fun, primitive slabs of home-made vinyl. Nice to have them here again and done so nicely!

"Way back in 80’s, before the term “Alternative” was hijacked to correspond with Seattle “Grunge”, the genre was held in high-esteem for its “D.I.Y. / Low-Fi” ethic.
The Blitzoids - along with The Residents, R. Stevie Moore and Eugene Chadbourne - epitomized this school of thought in the USA. From the...

Very nicely packaged in a hand-printed, letterpress, gatefold CD sleeve made of heavy-weight 'art construction' paper.

“Somewhere within The Final Mapping Of New Constellations is a sonic holy place where the traces of The Stars Look Down have...

"A very obscure and one of the rarest albums from Italian rock music scene of the 70's. This album takes on ecology as its theme and sings of the evil of polluting the planet. Terrific basic progressive music housed in a creative gimmick sleeve with...

A beautiful modern exploration of Sephardic melodies, creatively arranged by the masterminds of the popular rock group Elysian Fields.... [Tzadik]