"In 1998, at WNUR Radio, Evanston, the legendary German bassist Peter Kowald met two Chicagoans in the studio for a brisk set of string trios. Fellow-bassist Kent Kessler and cellist Fred Lonberg-Holm, essential members of the Chicago scene, are well known as international improvisors too, and the threesome dug in for a fierce face-off. The session was closely recorded in the studio’s intimate confines, which could barely contain their energy. Kowald proposed a set of six miniatures, all ranging around...

Peter Brötzmann, tenor saxophone
Fred van Hove, piano
Han Bennink, drums, percussion
"Recorded at the height of their powers as the leading free jazz trio in Europe, 1971 includes some of the hottest and heaviest music ever made by Brötzmann, starting with an inflammatory, incandescent 26-minute live track recorded at the New Jazz Meeting auf Burg Altena. Only available on a nearly-impossible-to-find LP sampler issued at the time by the festival, this marks "Just for Altena"'s first...

Rüdiger Carl, tenor saxophone Günter Christmann, trombone Detlef Schönenberg, drums

Tracks 1-6 originally released on FMP (FMP 0060, 1973). All other tracks previously unreleased.
Recorded for the German FMP label in 1972, this is one of the landmark recordings of free jazz in Europe, a mind-blowing studio session featuring Carl on tenor saxophone, Günter Christmann on trombone, and the astonishing Detlef Schonenberg on drums. Volatile and precise, anticipating much of the future sound of.

Joe McPhee, alto and tenor saxophones, pocket cornet, adapted pocket cornet
André Jaume, alto and tenor saxophones, bass clarinet
Recorded December 15, 1979, Paris.
Originally recorded and sequenced for release on Hat Hut Records, never issued.

"Multi-instrumental master McPhee and his longtime colleague, French saxophonist and clarinetist Jaume, joined forces for this studio recording in 1979 that was prepared but never released. It is primarily structured around pairs of tunes by...

"First CD compilation of recent seven-inch and twelve-inch records by the enigmatic Wendy Gondeln, mixing electronic music, sawed violin, and Martian intelligence into a thoroughly spicy and utterly confounding goulash. Featured collaborations include Tim Berrescheim, Norbert Möslang, JB Slik, Wolfgang Voigt, and Michael Wertmüller. Projections also includes some of the art installation projects for Albert Oehlen works of recent vintage, such as "Alarm," composed by Wertmüller, well known among other...

Phillip Wilson, percussion
Olu Dara, trumpet, horn (serpent)
"In November 1977 and May 1978, months before drummer Phillip Wilson recorded his great LP Duet with trumpeter Lester Bowie for the Improvising Artists label, Wilson hit the studio for Esoteric, a recording of solos and duets with cornetist Olu Dara. Wilson (1941-1992) was one of the key percussionists in creative music, the Art Ensemble of Chicago's early trapsman, one third of the fusion band Full Moon, and an all around fount of inventi

"At the end of his time in Chicago, in 1999, Brian Calvin recorded a batch of new songs with poet Devin Johnston. Designed to be an album, mostly recorded and mixed by Jim O'Rourke, who also plays bass and contributes background vocals on some cuts, they were never released, languishing in the vaults for almost two decades. Calvin and Johnston had both been members of USA, the band that recorded an LP and an EP for Drag City in the two years before this music was recorded. On the occasion of...

"One of the most celebrated folks in improvised music, Swedish saxophonist Mats Gustafsson made three ultra-limited edition vinyl LPs, each featuring a different dedication to a favorite musician from the past. Released in batches of 99, these records found Gustafsson playing compositions by Duke Ellington, Albert (and his brother Donald) Ayler, and the important post-bop baritone player Lars Gullin. Long out-of-print, these priceless slabs of free music have quickly become sought after collector’s items...

"In 1981, Joe McPhee culled together one of his greatest bands to record Topology, his classic outing for Hat Hut. Feturing an expanded version of Po Music, his ensemble with saxophonist André Jaume, guitarist Raymond Boni, and bassist François Mechali, the group included pianist Irene Schweizer, percussionist Pierre Favre, baritone saxophonist Daniel Bourquin, cellist Michael Overhage, and trombonist Radu Malfatti. One of the tracks left on the cutting room floor was a spectacular take on Ornette...

Joe McPhee, brass and reeds
"In his upstate NY secret laboratory, home-based in Poughkeepsie, Joe McPhee diligently documented his activities throughout the '70s, with the help of Craig Johnson, the producer who started CjR as an outlet for McPhee's music. Among the unreleased tapes waxed in that span, Alone Together is unique and especially beautiful. Like Sound on Sound (released by Corbett vs. Dempsey in 2010), these recordings make use of multitrack recording, overdubbing McPhee upon McPhee...

Joe McPhee on tenor and soprano saxophone
Recorded live by Claude Robert October 11, 1977 at Salle Ste Croix des Pelletiers in Rouen, France.

"Variations on a Blue Line/'Round Midnight was recorded in October, 1977, during a highly significant period in Poughkeespie, NY, multi-instrumentalist Joe McPhee's work, as he was pioneering the transatlantic, collaborative spirit that has helped to define the last three decades of his career. Blue Line comes from a concert in Rouen, France, when McPhee...

"An epic outing on electric guitar, recorded in November 2013, as part of an evening of music and film at the Art Institute of Chicago. The CD features a single magnificent improvisation, ranging from brittle, delicate passages to full-throttle flame-throwing. Performing an accompaniment to James Nares’ brilliant film Street, Moore played with his back to the screen, letting the sounds and images converge and diverge of their own accord. The result was an extraordinary stand-alone live recording that...

"Swedish saxophonist Mats Gustafsson and Chicago saxophonist and clarinetist Ken Vandermark have worked together extensively since the mid 1990s, in groups of their own and as members of the Peter Brötzmann Chicago Tentet. Oddly, they had never performed duo before March 2013, when they squared off at Corbett vs. Dempsey gallery. The result was a delirious journey through extended techniques, intimate improvisation, and full-throttle flame-throwing, with an emphasis on the more delicate, sensitiv

"This is a reissue of Eugene Chadbourne's album, first released as a cassette on No Prestige Records in 1988.
Dateline: Christmas Day, 1977, San Francisco. On an ailing quarter-track tape deck, in a marathon session, Eugene Chadbourne recorded a series of slide guitar solos playing compositions by the likes of Thelonious Monk, Charlie Parker, John Coltrane, and Ornette Coleman, along with a few standards and originals.
Although the recording quality was imperfect, the playing was absolute...

"A reissue of Suns Of Arqa's Seven, originally released on Arka Sound in 1987. Perhaps the pinnacle of the Suns Of Arqa discography, Seven was released in 1987 and was in fact the band's fifth LP. With its stunning cover design and outlandishly ambitious sound, steeped in dub but festooned with plainchant and Indian music, it was alone in the market, its closest relatives maybe African Head Charge or New Age Steppers, but with a host of original ideas and musical intersections and an incredible, almost...

Beaver Harris, drums
Don Pullen, piano
Hamiet Bluiett, baritone saxophone
Ricky Ford, tenor saxophone
Buster Williams, bass
Francis Haynes, steel drums
Candido, percussion (1)
Sharon Freeman, Willie Ruff, Bill Warnick, Greg Williams, french horns (1)

"Of all the never-issued-on-CD items in history’s dustbin, A Well-Kept Secret is perhaps the most egregious. The beautiful studio recording, made under the watchful ear of über-producer Hal Willner, was first issued o

Ken Vandermark, reeds
Michael Snow, piano

"Although he is best known as a groundbreaking experimental filmmaker, one of the architects of structural cinema, and visual artist, Michael Snow has been active as a musician since the 1950s. In Greenwich Village of the 1960s, his loft was the site of concerts by Cecil Taylor and other paragons of free jazz, and Snow’s film New York Eye and Ear featured a soundtrack by Albert Ayler’s group and starred its members.
A brilliant keyboardist and..

“It's been nearly five decades since Joe McPhee assembled a group of musicians to perform the weekend concerts that would become Nation Time, his second LP. It was December 1970, thirty-one-year-old McPhee was inspired by Amiri Baraka's poem 'It's Nation Time,' and the students at Vassar Collegedidn't know what hit them. 'What time is it?' shouted McPhee. 'Come on, you can do better than that. What time is it?!!' The music on Nation Time came out of a fertile, but little-known creative jazz scene...

“It's easy to be cynical these days, maybe difficult to imagine that music can change the world, but not for Joe McPhee and Hamid Drake. With Keep Going, they will make the planet a better place for humanity, a place to be humane, to preserve humankind. At 78-years-old, Poughkeepsie multi-instrumentalist McPhee is a national treasure, and he's making more music than ever before, pushing himself to tour incessantly, issuing astonishing new records at a fierce rate. But this release, with legendary Chicago...

Byard Lancaster - flute, alto saxophone
Khan Jamal – vibraphone
Monnette Sudler – guitar
Billy Mills - bass; Dwight James – drums
Rashid Salime – congos
Omar Hill – percussion
vocalists on "New Horizon/Backstreets of Heaven" are unidentified.
Recorded at Columbia University, NYC, in 1973.

“Hailing from the Germantown section of Philadelphia, well known as the site of the Sun Ra Arkestra communal homestead, Sounds of Liberation were at the forefront of '70s Black

“A reissue of ICP Tentet's Tetterettet, originally released in 1977. Recorded in 1977, the Instant Composers Pool's Tetterettet is the first classic of the band's larger incarnations.
Assembled out of elements recorded live in Uithoorn, Utrecht, and the band's home base of Amsterdam, with Misha Mengelberg using a cut-and-paste collage method akin to Teo Macero's work with Miles Davis, the record features an all-star lineup that added three leading lights of free music: bassist Alan Silva and...

Torbjörn Zetterberg - double bass
Susana Santos Silva - trumpet, tin whistle
Mats Äleklint - trombone, harmonica
Jonas Kullhammar - tenor saxophone, flute
Alberto Pinton - baritone saxophone, clarinet, flute
Jon Fält - drums

“If you've missed out on bassist Torbjörn Zetterberg, now's your chance to play some catch up ball. He's one of creative music's most eloquent exponents, having emerged from the fertile Swedish jazz scene around 2005.
With his band Torbjörn Zetter

Arto Lindsay – guitar
Joe McPhee - alto and tenor saxophone, pocket trumpet
Ken Vandermark - tenor and baritone saxophone, clarinet
Phil Sudderberg, drums

“One day in the studio, something ridiculously great happened. It was deep Chicago winter, cold as shit. Four musicians assembled for a round-robin set of improvisations -- duets, trios, a few quartets. Approached casually, the late morning bloomed into Largest Afternoon, 15 crackling encounters between guitarist Arto Lindsay...

Wendy Gondeln - violin, electronic treatments, and more
Mats Gustafsson - piano mate, saxophones, and live electronics
Wolfgang Voigt - editing and mix (track 3 and 8)
Martin Siewert - guitar and lap top guitar (track 1 and 7)

“In 2018, Mats Gustafsson provided raw saxophonic material for the elusive Wendy Gondeln, who sometimes applied a scalpel, sometimes a pneumatic drill, to rework, remix, reimagine all the Swede's squeaks, pops, blats, and tones. In some places, Gondeln adds....

“One of the all-time great records of improvised music from Europe. Period. Blisteringly hot. Uncompromisingly inventive. Staggeringly beautiful. And insanely rare.
Originally issued in the mid '70s on FMP, at its core Three Nails Left features the legendary Schlippenbach Trio -- British saxophonist Evan Parker, and German percussionist Paul Lovens joining the German pianist -- the triangle squared by the addition of German bassist Peter Kowald. Just the first track, an incredible 20-plus minute...