"On "Coat of Arms" Leo Ciesa displays his powerful, melodic, polyrhythmic, compositional and virtuosic drumming. He is perhaps best known for the hardcore jazz duo ICONOCLAST, which he co-founded with saxophonist Julie Joslyn, and for being a longtime..

Prog experts will remember the German progressive rock band Tibet, whose sole album was reissued by Musea. This is a new band by their guitarist!

"THE PERFECT MENTAL CINEMA! CINEMA is the current project of Jürgen "Pöngse" Krutzsch, who already was a well-known Krautrock size with his band TIBET in the Seventies. The project name fits, because the titles of this album run like movies in the mind's eye of the listener. Pöngse - supported by Brigitte Grafe and guitarist Benjamin Peiser - knows to...

"Formed in 1991, Circle is the most visible and prolific name in the Finnish rock underground. With Forest the band have touched on their most accessible sound yet with four lengthy, percussive heavy songs that navigate through dark Kraut-inspired...

"Circle's long lost 3rd album from 1996 finally re-released! Ambient soundscapes and hypnotic rock shake hands with the avant-garde, fusing into an ominous puppet theatre soundtrack - for adults."

"Circle's entire discography is so hard to follow and hard to categorize. All albums have flaws but what's most important, all of them have a tremendous feel. This is pure trance music ; this finnish band is simply the new Can of the 21st century ! Try only one album and you'll be hooked for life."...

Circle are a long-lived and hugely prolific Finnish underground rock band. Using elements of minimalism, stoner-rock, doom-metal, Krautrock and a lot more (sometimes at the same time and sometimes not), they've got a huge number of albums out on a billion labels (most notably their own, Ektro) and with a wide variety of sounds and approaches, but always using repetition and hypnotic ideas in a very good way.

"Somewhere between the freeform acidkrautfolk of Amon Duul I and the spacey contemplative..

"Originally released in 2002, Sunrise is perhaps the ultimate psychedelic, Kraut-metal record. Don't bother asking yourself how many 'psychedelic, Kraut-metal' records actually exist, rather just enjoy the mind-melting riffs and trance-inducing rhythms...

Circle are a long-lived and hugely prolific Finnish underground rock band. Using elements of minimalism, stoner-rock, doom-metal, Krautrock and a lot more (sometimes at the same time and sometimes not), they've got a huge number of albums out on a billion labels (most notably their own, Ektro) and with a wide variety of sounds and approaches, but always using repetition and hypnotic ideas in a very good way. The opening track on this one sums up everything that is great about this band!....

"Circles are one of the most fascinating of German ambient/electronic bands from the post new-wave era."-Alan Freeman (Audion, Crack In The Cosmic Egg)

"Highly recommended for anyone into Harmonia, Cluster, Fripp & Eno, Heldon, Conrad Schnitzler, NEU!, Throbbing Gristle, Ilitch, Irmin Schmidt, Amon Düül II.

In the late 1970s and '80s there was a lot happening in the German post-krautrock underground that few people knew about -- lots of independent artists doing their own thing, either...

"A musical adventure with many references to Italian popular music, the Balkan, Neapolitan song, jazz and the great tradition of the country band, to evoke the special magic of a circus, the poetry of traveling in a caravan, the bravado of the trapeze...

"This international improvising ensemble has been going since 1984 with various members, but a couple of years ago leader and legendary Norwegian sax and clarinet player Frode Gjerstad handpicked a new band of musicians that has meant something special...

Circus 2000, from Turin, were formed in 1970 and released late that year both their first album and single (containing italian versions of two songs from the LP). The album had no line-up references on the cover, and many people at the time thought the...

A Swiss quintet who feature vocals/banjo, soprano sax/flute/accordion, clarinet, bass clarinet and double bass. The music is well orchestrated and quite wonderful, while I find the lyrics a bit smart-aleck-ish personally, but those who enjoy humor in m...

In Naples, the music of the wandering street musicians known as 'a Pusteggia has long been highly appreciated, not only by people, but by composers...I dedicate this work to all those artists who taught me so much while I was a Pusteggiatore myself. Fo...

Ty Citerman is one of the founders of the great Gutbucket. This is something hugely different.

“Ty Citerman’s gorgeous new concept album features a lush trio of guitar, electronics and the imaginatively versatile vocalists Sara Serpa and Judith Berkson. Staunch leftist texts from the 150 year-old Yiddish labor movement are given an unprecedented modern musical treatment here: delicate, plaintive, hypnotic and passionate.
For his first album as bandleader in six years, Citerman generously...

This is Italian music for diatonic accordions, performed by the trio of Civma Stefano Delvecchio, Mario Salvi & Roberto Tomesi on accordions, voice and percussion. Recorded live, the record really resonates with the rich sound of their instruments. [Fe...

"Percussionist and composer Domen Cizej’s vision surpasses the limits of the ordinary. On his debut Introducing Domen Cizej, the Amsterdam-based artist introduces himself in full range. A box set of five albums, each with a different ensemble, message, and power, offers an opportunity to hear Cizej’s vision in depth and in totality. The box set opens with the thunder of an eight-member percussion ensemble that can be experienced as a “body in a repetitive coordinated motion, aiming at transcending its...

Cameron Ralston double bass / Jason Scott saxofone / Bob Miller trumpet / Scott Clark drums + JC Kuhl bass clarinet & Bryan Hooten trombone on "Broken Treaties"

"The title of this recording isn’t a mere literary reference (to “Bury My Mind at Wounded Knee”, by “Dee” Brown). Just like the novel, the music inside is a tragic and soulful portrait of one of the darkest pages of human history and particularly the United States past (with effects continuing to present days): the Native-American genocide...

Cameron Ralston bass
Jason Scott saxophone
Bob Miller trumpet
Alan Parker guitar
Toby Summerfield guitar
Scott Clark drums

"I've been watching drummer and composer Scott Clark for a few years now & he is really developing into a major force in music. This is composed free-ish jazz and includes two electric guitarists which give it more of a rock / postrock feel than most free jazz. One of the guitarists is the great Toby Summerfield of Algernon and Larval!...

Includes five complete albums:
Stanley Clarke
Journey to Love
School Days
Modern Man
Clarke-Duke Project

Zack Clarke piano and electronics
Chris Irvine cello
Charlotte Greve saxophone, clarinet, flute
Nick Dunston double bass
Leonid Galaganov percussion, waterphone, shakuhachi

"Mesophase is a term used in physics describing a state of matter that is neither liquid nor solid, sharing properties of both while defining a state unique unto itself. By extension, the concept can also apply to a reconciliation of emotional polarities or conflicting ideas. Zack Clarke leverages the idea of a...

So, this package shows up here about 18 months ago, and it has a long letter from this guy and a CDR of the recordings by his psychedelic pop band from 1967-1970. A few tracks were released at the time as singles, but most of their recordings were not ...

The 2nd release by this sensational 'jazz and beyond' ensemble. Their music, while clearly influenced by the jazz idiom, goes far beyond jazz, and many parts of this record have more in common with musicians such as L'Ensemble Raye, Hamster Theatre, Ni...

The Claudia Quintet is proof positive that the pessimists were wrong: jazz is not dead, despite being embalmed by major labels and confined by some musicians to dead ends. In the works of this sensational NY-based, 'jazz and beyond' ensemble, jazz has broken through its rigid shell and been reborn in shimmering and beautifully alluring new form. It lives and breathes in music that melds influences from classical minimalism, new music composition, and progressive and post-rock with an astonishingly fresh...