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"Mirkwood were from Dover, Kent, in England. They played progressive rock with two guitars and a thought-provoking text. They owed not only to their musical abilities, but also to their capacity of transforming new ideas into music that they were among the leading bands in Kent.
Their one and only LP (Flams Ltd. PR 1067) was recorded on 17 January 1973. It still was released in the very same year in a number of only 99 pieces. Thus, today it is worth about 1000€ when in mint condition. New legal...

Ricardo Arias: transverse flute, soprano sax, kazoo
Mauricio Ramírez: percussion, drums and jaguar
Nicolás Eckardt: guitar & electric banjo
María "Mange" Valencia: soprano & bass clarinet, alto sax, shehnai

Excellent, entrancing album from Dur et Doux, interestingly featuring an ensemble from Bogota, Columbia. Not strictly acoustic, but certainly more acoustically based than many of the (great) noisy French bands they tend to release! Recommended.
“A creature of a strange...

The greatly awaited and anticipated 2nd album by this great California sextet of dual guitars, dual woodwinds, bass and drums. There's also vocals and some keyboards. The group mixes contemporary sounds (i.e. the guitars are often 'crunchy') with stop...


Created in 1998, Misre et Cordes is one a guitar quartet with Pascal Battus (surrounded guitar), Emmanuel Petit (acoustic guitar), Dominique Rpcaud (electric guitar) and Camel Zekri (acoustic guitar and electronics). Recorded at CCAM studio in Vand|uvr...

Chad Fowler – sax, flute
George Cartwright – sax, guitar
Chris Parker – piano and keyboards
Kelley Hurt – vocals
Luke Stewart – bass
Steve Hirsh – drums

“Discover the masterful blend of blues, jazz, and soulful introspection in "Miserere". Created in Little Rock, Arkansas, "Miserere" bridges connections new and old, some spanning over three decades. This album presents a deep exploration of human vulnerability, grounded in southern gospel and jazz aesthetics.
Special.


"Misiani and his band, Shirati Jazz, did not invent benga, the energetic dance music of the Luo people of Kenya and Tanzania, but they were the ones who defined its modern form, with its hypnotic electric guitars and fabulously active bass, and made it...



“During Mission Of Burma's brief tenure from the late 1970s up until 1983 they'd share stages with the likes of Sonic Youth, Pere Ubu, Gang Of Four, Black Flag and other icons of rock's subculture. Sadly, they never quite achieved the worldwide popularity that those bands enjoyed having pulled the plug right on the brink of critical and commercial acceptance.
Since splitting up in 1983 (owing to Roger Miller's worsening tinnitus condition), their musical influence has taken on mythical form...

Previously unreleased live concert in fantastic sound, recorded September 2, 1974 by Radio Bremen. Missus Beastly went through a lot of stylistic and personnel changes during their career, and this set of very, very good and much more 'out' jazz/rock doesn't resemble anything else in their oeuvre.
With Eddy Maron-guitar (fresh from Dzyan), Jurgen Benz-saxes, Friedemann Josch-flute, Norbert Domling-bass and Lutz Oldemeier-drums.

Very long awaited, first-ever CD release of the third Missus Beastly album. After their great, self-titled, Gorilla-adorned, Germany jazz/rock classic second album, there were a lot of changes in personnel, with more and more overlap with the musicians of Embryo, but the quality of the band and their work remained high.

"Dr. Aftershave and the mixed-pickles” was Missus Beastly’s third album, which once more presented some mostly instrumental, solid jazz rock. It was at the same time the first...

Hot damn, I've been waiting for a legit release of this on CD for about 15 years!! This is a great jazz-rock album from 1974, with a line-up that includes two reeds, keyboards...

Originally released in 1969, Missus Beastly, along with Xhol Caravan are considered one of the earliest underground bands. This is the first ever legitimate reissue of this album, and comes with the usual...

Fourth and final release by Missus Beastly, reissued here for the very first time; until Garden Of Delights announced this one, I wasn't actually aware it existed!
Burkard Schmidl-keyboards, guitar
Locko Richter-bass, violin
Friedemann Josch-flutes, soprano sax
Jan Zelinka-drums

"Instrumental jazz-rock, recorded perfectly in the Stuttgart sound studio Zuckerfabrik in April 1978. Its style resembles that of its predecessor, “Dr. Aftershave and the mixed-pickles”...

Missus Beastly put out two albums in their lifetime, the first was a psychedelic blues album from 1969, and is considered one of Germany's earliest 'underground' releases.

The second album, from 1974, was a great jazz/rock album, featuring a splendid bunch of unknown musicians: Dieter Mierkautsch (piano, keyboards), Friedmann Josch (flute, soprano sax), Jürgen Benz (flute, alto sax), Norbert Dömling (bass, guitar), Lutz Oldmeier (drums). None of these guys really went on to have any kind of...

Very mellow, instrumental fusion/progressive from Finland, the group consists of: Keijo Hakala (bass), Timo Kajamies (keyboards), Jukka Pitkänen (trumpet, flugelhorn), Kimmo Pörsti (drums,percussion), Kari Rantakallio (sax, wind synthesizer), Tommi...

Very mellow, instrumental fusion/progressive from Finland, the group consists of: Keijo Hakala (bass), Timo Kajamies (keyboards), Jukka Pitkänen (trumpet, flugelhorn), Kimmo Pörsti (drums,percussion), Kari Rantakallio (sax, wind synthesizer), Tommi Varj

"Song for My Sister is the Note Factory’s first release since 1999’s Nine to Get Ready. Recorded February of 2002 in Roscoe’s home of Madison, WI, the lineup has changed with the addition of Corey Wilkes, Vijay Iyer, Vincent Davis, and Leon Dorsey...

This 1976 release is one of Joni’s very greatest of great works. She’s in her full exploratory period here, using jazz influences and crazy tunings and a relatively small number of musicians, all of whom turn in stunning, restrained performances which are perfectly subservient to the needs of the songs. Even Jaco Pastorious, one of the most tragically talented musicians ever, and who never met a performance need that he couldn’t over-play on, is simply perfect on here.

“Joni Mitchell's Hejira is...

Joni Mitchell-guitar, piano, vocals
Michael Landau-guitar
Russell Ferrante-keyboards
Larry Klein-bass
Vinnie Colaiuta-drums

Excellent quality radio broadcast sonics.

“By the time Joni Mitchell released her eleventh studio album, Wild Things Run Fast, in 1983, she’d sped her own way through a career marked by continual artistic evolution, with albums such as Ladies Of The Canyon, the game-changing Blue and the jazz-led Hejira reshaping all notions of singer-songwriter.

“Throughout the 70s, Joni Mitchell established herself as one of the greatest singer-songwriters of all time, with albums such as Blue, Court And Spark and The Hissing Of Summer Lawns pushing the boundaries of what was expected of the “singer-songwriter”.
Moving to a new label, Geffen, at the start of the 80s, and embarking on yet more wide-ranging excursions that took in the burgeoning synth-pop sound, Mitchell staged the Refuge tour of 1983, in support of her then latest album, Wild Things Run...

“Shadows and Light is one of my favourite albums of all time so I was a bit nervous about this. The sound quality is not great, despite what the CD promises is remastered wonderfulness. I tried this on state of the art hi fi equipment which was not a good idea. I then put it on a cheap tatty CD player which lives in the kitchen and it is fine. It just sounds like a concert on the radio.
The performances are excellent and Pat's solo on Amelia is actually better than on S+D although it stops abruptly...

“Shadows and Light is Joni Mitchell's second live album, and it serves as a good retrospective of her jazzy period from 1975-1979. As expected, she assembles a group of all-star musicians including Pat Metheny (guitar), Jaco Pastorius (bass), Lyle Mays (keyboards), and Michael Brecker (saxophone) who give these compositions more energy than on the studio recordings. The musicians are given room to jam, and they sound terrific on uptempo songs such as "Coyote" and "In France They Kiss on Main Street."...

Maybe my favorite of Joni’s great, great mid 70s run of fabulous albums! Very sophisticated, tunefully catchy and also...WEIRD!

“Joni Mitchell evolved from the smooth jazz-pop of Court and Spark to the radical Hissing of Summer Lawns, an adventurous work that remains among her most difficult records. After opening with the graceful "In France They Kiss on Main Street," the album veers sharply into "The Jungle Line," an odd, Moog-driven piece backed by the rhythms of the warrior drums of Burundi...

Matt Mitchell - piano, Prophet 6, electronics
Kim Cass - upright bass
Kate Gentile - drums, gongs, percussion
Ches Smith - vibraphone, glockenspiel, bongos, timpani, gongs, Haitian tanbou, percussion
Dan Weiss - tabla
Patricia Brennan - vibraphone, marimba
Katie Andrews - harp
Anna Webber - flute, alto flute, bass flute
Jon Irabagon - sopranino sax, soprano sax
Ben Kono - oboe, English horn
Sara Schoenbeck - bassoon
Scott Robinson - bass sax, contrabass

The debut recording as leader by this amazingly great pianist with huge abilities and wide-ranging interest (who else has been a member of Thinking Plague, Claudia Quintet and Tim Berne's Snakeoil? Hmm? This is a duo album featuring Matt and Ches Smith...

Oblong (tracks 1-12):
Matt Mitchell - piano, compositions
Kate Gentile - drums, percussion

Aplomb (tracks 13-24):
Matt Mitchell - piano, compositions
Ches Smith - drums, gongs, percussion, vibraphone, glockenspiel, tam-tam, timpani

“Oblong Aplomb is the much-anticipated follow up to Mitchell’s debut album Fiction (2013), the tour-de-force duo recording with longtime percussion counterpart Ches Smith. Oblong Aplomb not only takes the duo concepts initiated on Fict

“Phalanx Ambassadors is the latest release from pianist/keyboardist/composer Matt Mitchell, whom PopMatters calls "the most complete and well-integrated improvising pianist of the last 15 years." They also called his prior release, A Pouting Grimace, "brilliant and varied... animated by breathtaking compositional imagination and startling arrangements." His bold new release features works that burst forth with intricate detail, featuring precise execution of complex polyrhythms and irrational meters...

Matt Mitchell: piano
Chris Speed: tenor saxophone, clarinet
Chris Tordini: bass
Dan Weiss: drums

"Matt Mitchell is one of the most in-demand pianists in jazz. As a member of Tim Berne's Snakeoil, the Dave Douglas Quintet, Rudresh Mahanthappa s Bird Calls, John Hollenbeck s Large Ensemble and Claudia Quintet +1, among many others, he has played an integral role on a huge swath of the most critically-acclaimed releases of the last few years. Highly regarded for bringing contemporary...

“Zealous Angles is the first documentation of pianist/composer Matt Mitchell's long-running trio featuring bassist Chris Tordini and drummer Dan Weiss. Mitchell has been called by The New York Times "a pianist of burrowing focus and an indispensable fixture of the contemporary vanguard."
He is an anchor member of several significant and acclaimed creative music ensembles such as Tim Berne's Snakeoil, Dan Weiss's Starebaby, Miles Okazaki's Trickster, Ches Smith's We All Break, Kate Gentile's Find...

“Snark Horse is a book of 70 highly-detailed one-bar compositions by pianist / composer Matt Mitchell and percussionist / composer Kate Gentile designed to incite inventive, multi-directional improvisation. It is also the name of a revolving cast of musicians – including Mitchell and Gentile – who have performed this music in various combinations since 2013....

"Mandorla Awakening II: Emerging Worlds is Nicole Mitchell's second album for Chicago-based FPE Records. Recorded in May of 2015 at Chicago's Museum of Contemporary Art, it features her longtime collaborators Renee Baker (violin), Tomeka Reid (cello, banjo), Alex Wing (electric guitar, oud) and Jovia Armstrong (percussion), along with new members Tatsu Aoki (bass, shamisen, taiko) and Kojiro Umezaki (shakuhachi). Also in the mix is Chicago artist, scholar and poet avery r young, who brings the her lyrics...

Nicole Mitchell - flutes
Fay Victor - vocals
Aruan Ortiz - piano
Tomeka Reid - cello

"Maroon Cloud, a powerful eight-part suite by celebrated flutist Nicole Mitchell, is a paean to the human gift of imagination and its ability to foster resistance in our dystopian times. It features a drum-less quartet with Mitchell, cellist Tomeka Reid, pianist Aruán Ortiz and vocalist Fay Victor, recorded live at National Sawdust in Brooklyn as part of John Zorn's Stone Commissioning Series....

Mankwe Ndosi, voice
Nicole Mitchell, flute
David Young, trumpet
David Boykin, tenor saxophone
Tomeka Reid, cello
Justin Dillard, piano
Josh Abrams, bass
Marcus Evans, drumset
Avreeayl Ra, percussion...

"...the appeal of Intergalactic Beings is how composer/flutist Nicole Mitchell leads her ten-member ensemble in interpreting a theme that’s far from common."-Jazz Word

"These songs are full of raw energy, alternating exploratory ensemble playing with alluring thematic statements reflecting the composer’s deep sense of form."-Well You Need It


"Nicole Mitchell's second avant-jazz suite based on the Xenogenesis novels of Octavia Butler was recorded live on April 30, 2010, at the Museum...

Fabio Paolizzo VIVO (original electronic system)
Nicole Mitchell piccolo, flute, alto flute, vocals

“For many Black folks, the mythology of Medusa has been a fascinating tale because the image of a beautiful woman with snakes for hair could easily be seen as a European interpretation of a Black woman with dreadlocks. What if the story of Medusa illuminates European men's fear of the power of Black women?
Medusae is a symbol for a multitude of concepts which we bring together with our...

Nicole Mitchell’s Black Earth Ensemble :
Lisa E. Harris, vocals / theremin / electronics / composition
Nicole M. Mitchell, flute / electronics / composition
Julian Otis, vocals
Zara Zaharieva, violin
Ben LaMar Gay, trumpet / electronics
Tomeka Reid, cello
Avreeayl Ra, percussion

“The work of award-winning African American science fiction author Octavia E. Butler becomes increasingly prophetic as we move through the challenges of the new century. Her novels

Camae Ayewa voice, texts, electronics
Nicole Mitchell flutes, electronics

“Shimmering columns of light will guide you, a grand synesthesia riding on a kaleidoscope, oscillating between hushed moments, where sound unfolds the firmament, unfurled like a cloak upon the shoulders of the real world. Listen: this is not a “track”, a circular appendage looped around a spindle and activated by some muscular stone on stylus. Too many people bled for the diamond there, too many questions remain...

"As the album moves on, it only gets better and better, and Nicole elevates herself to new heights."
Nicole Mitchell (flute, alto flute)
Craig Taborn (piano, Wurlitzer electric piano)
David Boykin (tenor sax)
Chad Taylor (drums, acoustic guitar)

“Roscoe Mitchell Orchestra performs two masterpieces for the Fault Zone Festival April 21 2022. Distant Radio Transmission Fault Zone and Sustain and Run Ii features Roscoe on Alto Sax, James Fei on Synth, vocalist Thomas Buckner and a stellar thirty piece orchestra.. Also from the festival is Cards in 3D colors a duet written by Mr Mitchell for Piano and Violin and two Pieces from Space Trio.”

"Referred to an 'American Iconoclast' by the New York Times, Rosco Mitchell is an internationally recognized saxophonist, composer, and founder of the Art Ensemble of Chicago. 'Discussions Orchestra' is derived from several musical improvisations found on Roscoe Mitchell's 'Conversations with Kikanju Baku and Craig Taborn'. The songs have been transcribed and performed by a twenty piece orchestra."

“Recorded at home during the pandemic Roscoe Michell creates beautiful music that is simply at peace with itself.
On 19 newly recorded compositions Roscoe plays his own percussion array with articulate precision and creates hauntingly interesting atmospheres. He overdubbed saxophone on seven pieces thereafter. A wonderful release perfect to combat the tension of our times.”

"Saxophone Legend Roscoe debut on Wide Hive Records with composer Tyshawn Sorey and fellow Art Ensemble of Chicago member and trumpet player Hugh Ragin. "One of the top Saxophone payers of the sixties, Roscoe Mitchell is a particularly strong and consistently adventurous improviser long associated with the Art Ensemble of Chicago"-All about Jazz

"Live at the Burghausen Jazz Festival 2007. One of the great conceptualists and musical architects of the post-Coltrane era with his band of paired instrumentalists. Two drummers, two bassists, two terrific pianists, and the composer himself and young...

“Each of the four pieces on the album is a product of the Roscoe's tireless efforts to devise systems to articulate and capitalize on the tensions between composition and improvisation in both his own work and music as a practice at-large. Three of the four works ("Rub," "Wha-Wha," and "Frenzy House") are part of the "Conversations for Orchestra" series, the history of which is described in detail in the liner notes for Mitchell's 2017 album "Discussions" (Wide Hive Records WH-0339). In brief, the...

“Roscoe Mitchell (Art Ensemble Of Chicago) was 2023's recipient of an American Society of Arts and Letters award which let to the creation of this work. Mainly a trio and quartet work Roscoe plays Bass saxophone as well as his percussion array.”

This work has the AEC reedman playing solos, duos, & trios with violin, drums, bass (Richard Davis), bull roarers & wind wands. [Victo]