“Never-before-issued music from three very different settings in upstate New York, all recorded in the period running up to Poughkeepsie multi-instrumentalist Joe McPhee's Nation Time.
From a year before that landmark LP, in the same hall at Vassar College, McPhee led a band with soulful vibraphonist Ernie Bostic and voluble rhythm section of Tyrone Crabb and Bruce Thompson, both of Nation Time fame, performing a John Coltrane-oriented set that included versions of Mongo Santamaria's "Afro Blue"...

Peter Kowald, bass, tuba, alphorn
Paul Rutherford, trombone
Günter Christmann, trombone
Peter van de Locht, alto saxophone
Paul Lovens, drums

Recorded January 19, 1972 Akademie Der Künste Berlin by Eberhard Sengpiel.

“The only LP featuring a band under Peter Kowald's name, Peter Kowald Quintet comes from a vital moment in the German bassist's career. A close colleague of Peter Brötzmann's in their formative years, including the saxophonist's debut For Adolphe Sax and th

“Gentle, incisive solo music for violin and electronics by one of the unsung giants of free improvisation.
Philipp Wachsmann emerged in the fertile mid '70s underground free music scene in London, playing with everyone from Simon Mayo to Barry Guy to Derek Bailey to Evan Parker, starting a band called Chamberpot, and making albums for the collective artist-run label he managed: Bead Records.
These LPs, 26 of them in total, were made in tiny batches and are now rare as hen's teeth. Writing...

“The untold early history of Amsterdam's seminal collective. Founded in 1967 by three of European free music's leading lights -- pianist Misha Mengelberg, drummer Han Bennink, and saxophonist and clarinetist Willem Breuker -- the Instant Composers Pool (ICP) was simply one of the most important vehicles for experimentation and improvisation in the history of creative music.
Culling ideas and materials from jazz, modern and contemporary classical music, Fluxus, traditional music from the Balkans and...

“Artist and musician Rosa Barba paired up with drummer Chad Taylor for their first duo record, In a Perpetual Now of Instantaneous Visibility. Documenting a September 2019 performance and installation at New York's Park Avenue Armory, part of an invitation by pianist Jason Moran, the CD's two mesmerizing tracks clock in at over 30-minutes each. Patiently built as collaborative soundscapes, they feature Barba's unorthodox conjoining of cello and film projector in which she uses the celluloid as an...

“The duo of saxophonist Larry Stabbins and percussionist Roy Ashbury was a mainstay of the London improvised music scene in the early 1970s. They recorded their lone LP, Fire Without Bricks, in 1976, and issued it in a tiny edition on the cooperatively run Bead label.
Stabbins has toggled between more pop-oriented projects like Working Week and Jerry Dammers Spatial AKA Orchestra and adventurous free music in bands led by Peter Brötzmann and Tony Oxley.
Born in Wolverhampton and based initially.

Günter Christmann - cello, trombone
Alexander Frangenheim, double bass
Mats Gustafsson - soprano saxophone
Thomas Lehn, live-electronics
Paul Lovens – percussion

“Since its first iteration in 1979, Vario has appeared in some fifty different versions, with a great variety of musicians, also actors, dancers, and filmmakers. It's the brainchild of Günter Christmann, a powerhouse of improvised music in Germany whose influence is out of scale with his acclaim. Since his emergence on.

“With his riveting performance in the inaugural Sequesterfest online festival in April 2020, Ken Vandermark inspired the Black Cross Solo Sessions. Already in the early days of lockdown, making good on the promise -- or threat -- of protracted off-road time, Vandermark had dedicated himself to the creation of a new book of works for solo reed instruments, which he debuted that day. The result of this watershed moment for the Chicago-based improvisor and composer was a body of works that reassert his...

“Okkyung Lee's is perhaps the most harrowing of the Black Cross Solo Sessions stories. At the onset of COVID, the cellist was called to travel to Korea to be with her dying father. The trip was sudden and didn't allow her to bring her instrument, but once there she was unable to return to New York because of the stringent lockdown. For months she was stranded without her cello, unable to practice or make any music. This intense alienation took a long time to lift. Indeed, even after she made it back to...

“Chicago-based saxophonist and clarinetist Ken Vandermark was invited to arrange a set of seventies music for a concert in 2019, and among the pieces he chose were tracks by funk legends Parliament and post-punk iconoclasts DNA.
On this 12-inch 45rpm EP, Vandermark's band Marker presents a unique take on "Night of the Thumpasorus Peoples," drawn from Parliament's 1975 LP Mothership Connection, and DNA's "Egomaniac's Kiss," which first appeared on the classic 1978 Brian Eno-produced collection No...

“Two masters of wind instruments blowing in from the Windy City. In 2003, as part of the seventh annual Empty Bottle Festival of Jazz & Improvised Music, Joe McPhee and Evan Parker squared off for a round of intimate dialogues. The resulting recording is just the second time they had played as a duet, the previous also being in Chicago, at a studio in 1998, where the limited their instrumentarium to tenor saxophones, resulting in the Okka Disc classic Chicago Tenor Duets (2002).
In this case, they...

Active from the early 70s until about 2010, Hans Reichel was a guitarist and instrument builder who built a number of very wonderful and unique guitars during his lifetime.
He has a relatively small number of solo albums (which is where I think he shines the brightest) and this one, from 1981, is probably his masterpiece. Impossible to describe (NOTHING else sounds like Hans’ guitars) and noisily beautiful. Highly recommended.

“Subtitled some more guitar solos, Bonobo Beach was German....

“German pianist Georg Gräwe, one of the most impeccable and imaginative improvisers in contemporary free music, made his debut recording, New Movements, in 1976, under the auspices of Free Music Production, the legendary Berlin-based organization run by Jost Gebers. At FMP's Jazz Now festival, in April of that year, Gräwe presented his working band, a classic hard-bop configuration with trumpet, saxophone, and rhythm section. Indeed, some vestiges of that hard-bop feel permeate the music, however it's...

“In 1966, pianist Alexander von Schlippenbach assembled his first large ensemble to play his compositions “Globe Unity” and “Sun.” This 14-piece band, which brought together some of the leading figures in European improvised music, would eventually expand – incorporating not only Europeans but also American and Asian musicians – and assume its rightful name: Globe Unity Orchestra.
In this, its nascent outing, beautifully recorded at Ariola Studio in Cologne, Schlippenbach’s band was already

“In the year that Juneteenth was finally declared a national US holiday, 2021, Joe McPhee and Tomeka Reid united for a live concert in celebration. Multi-instrumentalist McPhee was deeply moved by the historical nature of the circumstances, the incredible freight of that history of oppression and liberation represented in the legislation, both the insanity of its overdue-ness and the joy of its institutionalization. As a preamble to the music, McPhee led off with two poems, read with trembling, vehement...

“Swedish saxophonist Mats Gustafsson might have a separate discography for his solo records. He's investigated the possibilities of unaccompanied reed music from almost every angle.
Presented with the opportunity to make a new solo record under the isolation of the pandemic, Gustafsson returned to a project he'd conceptualized but never realized: the playing-card pieces of Peter Brötzmann. Although these Fluxus-like prompts are better known through the two card sets the German saxophonist created...

“One of the architects of no wave with his band DNA, a pioneer of noise guitar, sublimely inventive producer, and slinkily seductive songwriter, Arto Lindsay has worn countless musical hats.
Invited to make a solo record for the Black Cross Solo Sessions, Lindsay boiled it down to essential ingredients, waxing a collection of bristling new songs and works for solo guitar; on six of a baker's dozen tracks, his angelic voice offsets the bracing dissonance of his acidic electric.
Recorded at...

“First-ever reissue. 11th Street Fire Suite is a post-BAG (Black Artists Group) classic. An emotionally ranging set of blues-drenched duets by alto saxophonist Luther Thomas and flutist Luther C. Petty, it's one of the great documents of the St. Louis creative music diaspora, a wild ride through turbulent and beautiful terrain on a slab of vinyl that's as rare as hen's teeth in its original form.
Relocated from their midwestern hometown to New York City, Thomas and Petty entered the studio in 1978....

“On their first stand-alone record as a duo, Ken Vandermark and Hamid Drake celebrate their 30+ year playing relationship with an electrifying live set of pieces, all featuring music composed by legendary free jazz musician Don Cherry. Restricting himself here to tenor saxophone, Vandermark has developed an almost telepathic understanding with Drake, whose masterful work on the drum kit has rarely been more focused and relaxed. The music was recorded in Corbett vs. Dempsey's main space on the closing day...

“The second release in an ongoing series that will reconstruct the legacy known and the legacy damned of the most overlooked and under-documented American free rock unit, Dredd Foole and the Din.
During an era of peak corporate control on popular music, when guitars were in the closet, improvisation was in retreat, and the flames of fire music were dimming, Dredd Foole and the Din emerged as part of a new underground kicking against the pricks, holding the line with the firmly clenched spirit of...

“In 1981, British percussionist Paul Lytton and German guitarist Erhard Hirt met and recorded for a couple of days in Belgium. This explosive, ahead-of-its-time first encounter, which had been planned as a release on the legendary Po Torch label, has remained dormant for over four decades.
In that period, Lytton and Hirt teamed up often, joining forces with saxophonist/clarinetist Wolfgang Fuchs and bassist Hans Schneider as the quartet X-Pact, a group that has recently reformed -- several years...

“On this maiden recording, Chicago-based bassist Jason Roebke leads a new quartet, featuring his original compositions and a stellar lineup. The music, which was brilliantly recorded at Steve Albini's legendary Electrical Audio and expertly mixed and mastered by Alex Inglizian at Experimental Sound Studio, is performed by veteran reed player Edward Wilkerson Jr., whose own bands Eight Bold Souls and Shadow Vignettes were among the great ensembles of eighties/nineties Chicago, extending the AACM tradition...

“At the tail end of 1996, saxophonist Mars Williams and drummer Hamid Drake took the tall corner stage at Chicago's Empty Bottle for two sets of duets. The rock club had just started a weekly Jazz & Improvised Music Series, curated by Ken Vandemark and John Corbett, which would run for nearly a decade. This rare pairing brought together two pivotal figures in the city's creative music scene, both of whom had extensive experience in diverse areas of music, from the free jazz focus of this intimate...

“When Mars Williams dove into his vault to excavate several recordings for a Mars Archive series on Corbett vs. Dempsey, he immediately landed on a concert date from a decade earlier.
The event, recorded at Chicago's Elastic Arts Foundation in 2012, featured a trio with Williams on reed instruments, Darin Gray on bass, and Chris Corsano on drums. This configuration had already been highly enough estimated by Williams that he'd posted one set on Bandcamp, but he saved the other set for future release..