ESP-Disk

Larry Ochs - tenor and sopranino saxophones
Vladimir Tarasov - drums, percussion
Mark Dresser – basses

“Jones Jones is a funny name for an all-star band. To grant such distinctive musicians so anonymous, Google-proof a moniker is whimsical in the extreme. But, given its members' long and distinguished work in the service of music, this group should not be taken lightly or treated as a lark. There is humor in their work but also gravitas and depth and magic. Larry Ochs says: "The newest...

Mat Walerian: alto saxophone, bass clarinet, clarinet, flute
Matthew Shipp: piano
Hamid Drake: drums, percussion

"The surprise here is twofold; first, the discovery of a new voice, Polish reedsman Mat Walerian and second, the opportunity to hear pianist Matthew Shipp in his most sympathetic supporting role."-Mark Corroto, All About Jazz

"Stepping into the Silence, this is literary music, epic little bouts of brilliance. That expands and stretches across what you might call instan

"Lindha Kallerdahl (grand piano, organ, vocals). Lindha Kallerdahl, born in 1972, studied jazz at the renowned Swedish Jazz-Schools Skurup near Malmö and Birka in Stockholm during 1993-1996. Situated in Stockholm, she early came in touch with free music..

"Following up the critically acclaimed 2008 release, Stéphane Furic Leibovici and Chris Cheek return for this second volume, produced by Jim Black and featuring the alto saxophone giant Lee Konitz. An achievement in balance and taste, the resulting...

When Last Exit, a supergroup of musical avantists and trouble-makers first appeared in the mid 1980s, I can not begin to explain what a shock they were to the jazz and improvised music scene. Here were three well established jazz and improvisational....

When Last Exit, a supergroup of musical avantists and trouble-makers first appeared in the mid 1980s, I can not begin to explain what a shock they were to the jazz and improvised music scene. Here were three well established jazz and improvisational figures (Peter Brotzmann, Sonny Sharrock and Ronald Shannon Jackson) playing with a 'rock' guy (Bill Laswell) and playing fucking LOUD.

Playing major festivals, bursting eardrums where ever they went and recording and releasing a number of live albums..

Matt Lavelle (trumpet, flugelhorn, alto clarinet)
Reggie Sylvester (drums)

"New York avant-jazz veterans and longtime cohorts in the Bern Nix Quartet, perform in duo here on Retrograde, their debut on ESP-Disk'. Visiting destinations overlooked on John Coltrane's tour of the solar system, they craft their own space suite of earthier delights. This album was recorded live at Andrea Wolper's WhyNot Experiment? series. Matt and Reggie played two sets; the second set, with Bern Nix in the...

This 1966 recording by one of the founding members of the Little Theatre Club (thereby one of the founding members of the English free jazz movement) is considered one of the first recordings of UK free jazz. A pretty amazing lineup: Nisar Ahmad Khan...

Nisar Ahmad Khan-tenor sax
John Surman-baritone and soprano sax (making his recording debut!)
Peter Lemer-piano
Tony Reeves-bass
Jon Hiseman-drums

This 1966 recording by one of the founding members of the Little Theatre Club (thereby one of the founding members of the English free jazz movement) is considered one of the first recordings of UK free jazz.
Even more wonderfully, on February 20, 2018, ALL the musicians who appear on this album appeared at a show to celebrate t

NOTE: We have exactly 30 copies at this very, very special price and when they are gone, the price will go up to our ‘normal’ ESP price of $14.00!

Alan Skidmore-tenor sax
John Surman-baritone and soprano sax
Peter Lemer-piano
Tony Reeves-bass
Jon Hiseman-drums

The core of this group -- John Surman, Alan Skidmore, Peter Lemer, Tony Reeves, and Jon Hiseman -- recorded an LP titled Local Colour for ESP-Disk' in 1966. Pianist and leader Lemer was one of the founding

“Saxophonist/guitarist/composer/music historian/ provocateur Allen Lowe spans the history of jazz in his music in a way that few besides Jaki Byard, Beaver Harris, Steven Bernstein, and Air have ever done, intertwining blues, early jazz, bebop, and the avant-garde.
A prolific composer who was incorporating American roots music into his jazz decades before it was hip, he has led project bands featuring a broad array of jazz greats ranging from Doc Cheatham, Randy Sandke, Joe Albany, Don Byron, Ken....

"America: The Rough Cut is my statement not only on American music and American song, but also my commentary on the way American musicians of all styles handle that old-time music and those old song forms . . . The old things -- not just the blues, but gospel music and pre-blues shouts and language, plus hillbilly/minstrel song and medicine show irony -- reflect a disinterest in the polite trappings of (primarily but not only white) society, an implicit rejection of basic tonal, sonic, and harmonic....

"In the Dark is a commemoration (sic) of the worst time of my life -- a period during which, having been operated on to remove a cancerous tumor in my sinus, I slept for only brief periods of time. Sometimes I made it as long as two hours continuously, but most often I dozed off for 20 minutes, 30 minutes, maybe an hour -- encamped as I was on my couch, trying not to wake my wife as I wandered in the dark contemplating the long night ahead. Sometimes I turned the television set on and slept fitfully to...

"This historical session, recorded in 1973 for ESP-Disk, was tenor saxophonist Frank Lowe's debut as leader and is one of his most electrifying earlier efforts. Black Beings features all original Lowe material, with Joseph Jarman on alto and soprano...

"This previously unreleased recording features the remaining music from the legendary concert that produced Lowe's ESP-Disk's debut as a leader, Black Beings. This recording features Art Ensemble of Chicago saxophonist Joseph Jarman in perhaps his...

Michael Marcus - soprano sax, tenor sax, alto tarogato, G clarinet, bass flute, gong
Frank Lacy - French horn
Tarus Mateen - Marcoustico acoustic bass
Jay Rosen - drums and percussion

"Michael Marcus comes out of Coltrane, Kirk, and Dolphy but has his own sound."-Thomas Conrad, Downbeat

After paying his dues with bluesmen Albert King and Bobby "Blue" Bland and jazzman Jaki Byard, Michael Marcus had his first album released in 1991, when he was 39. He's been much more prolif

"It is an important work that needs to be heard."-Bernard Stollman, ESP-Disk founder.
Fay Victor, Walter Egan, Charles Walker, Suzy Bogguss, Freedy Johnston, Mary Gauthier, Cooper-Moore, Carmina Escobar, Matthew Ryan, Jennie Knaggs, Ed Pettersen, Thollem McDonas – vocals
Thollem McDonas – piano
Ed Pettersen - guitar and effects
Pete Abbott - drums
Jeff Lederer – saxophone

“Happening: A Movement In 12 Acts is a treatise with spoken and sung libretto by various artists about

William Parker – bass
Nels Cline - electric guitar/effects
Thollem McDonas - piano

“Gowanus Session II was seven years in the planning. Thollem McDonas, Nels Cline, and William Parker convened at Peter Karl Studios in Brooklyn on January 3rd, 2012 and recorded two complete albums. The first was Gowanus Session I, released by Porter Records in April of 2012. GS II was put aside to eventually complete the five-album palindromic cycle of trio albums Nels and Thollem ambitiously set out to...

"When MIJ, aka Jim Holmberg was found by ESP-Disk's Bernard Stollman, yodeling by the fountain in Washington Square Park, on a hot summer Sunday afternoon in 1969, he explained that an auto accident had fractured his skull and impaired his hearing...

"The great improvising guitarist, Joe Morris, returns with Luther Gray on drums and adds the masterful string section of Katt Hernandez on violin and Junko Fujiwara Simons on cello for his follow up to 2009's Colorfield. Drawing inspiration from the

Joe Morris returns both to the guitar and to ESP-Disk' with the long form improvisation album 'Colorfield'. Much as the Colorfield painters simplified their compositions to evoke emotion with color, this trio emphasizes harmony, phrase, tempo and rhythm..

"Classic and important '66 release from the innovative drummer Sunny Murray in a quintet session, remastered and with bonus interview track between Murray and ESP label founder Bernard Stollman."...

"Recorded 8/8/08 in Portland, OR, The Naked Future, is a quartet of four drunken wizards conjuring up a heady brew. Their diverse backgrounds – from the classical, rock and experimental realms – forge a release modernist in its construction with more...

Alon Nechushtan: keyboards
Roy Campbell: flute, trumpet
Daniel Carter: saxophones, clarinet
Sabir Mateen: saxophones, clarinet
William Parker: bass
Federico Ughi: drums
Live at Zebulon, Brooklyn NY, March 5, 2006

“Look at those players Alon Nechushtan brought together for this gig! The late, great Roy Campbell; reed masters Daniel Carter and Sabir Mateen; mayor of the NYC avant-jazz scene William Parker; versatile drummer Federico Ughi. Then listen: they all liv

Improvising group featuring Elliot Levin (vocals, saxes, flute) & Rick Iannacone (vocals, guitar), both of whom have played with Keith Macksoud (Present) and Paul Sears (Muffins) in Thee Maximalists along with Steve Testa (bass) and John Testa (drums)...

Larry Ochs – saxophones
Donald Robinson – drums

“Ochs is a founding member of the great ROVA Saxophone Quartet, one of the Bay Area's avant-garde treasures since 1978. Robinson -- "a percussive dervish", according to Coda -- was the drummer of choice for ROVA's revivification of John Coltrane's Ascension. The East Bay Express has said of the saxophonist's sound, "Ochs' full-bodied tenor is out of the John Coltrane/Albert Ayler 'free' tradition: forceful, passionate," while the Chicago Reader..

Mat Walerian - alto saxophone, bass clarinet, soprano clarinet, flute
Matthew Shipp – piano
William Parker - double bass, shakuhachi
Hamid Drake - drums, percussion

"Walerian is alternately introspective and fiery, and the passion of Jungle at times recalls David S. Ware's groups . . . They both soothe the soul and make the heart race . . . Walerian has obviously been studying Ware, Coltrane and their ilk . . . he's on his way to becoming a free-jazz force." --Steve Greenlee on the..

“Normal Street is another salvo in ESP-Disk's drive to revive weird rock! Writer/musician/film maker Chris Shields says: "Near the DIY venue, cooperative, and punk/freak haven, The Firehouse, in Worcester, Mass, there's a street ironically named 'Normal St.' I was lucky enough to be playing a gig with Painted Faces there a few years back. Driving up the steep, labyrinthine roads we spotted the green sign, had a laugh owing to some solid riffing by all present, and then, moved on. The gig was good, the...

Ivo Perelman - tenor saxophone
Matthew Shipp – piano
William Parker – bass
Bobby Kapp – drums

"Kapp is an excellent choice as Perelman's assessment is on the mark... 'he's very sensitive to time and space. He is dancing at the drum kit...' And while the frontline rolls along with the improvisational game-plan, Kapp's buoyant timekeeping faculties add a poetic quality to the rhythmic foundation along with Parker's resonating lines and fluid attack. The artists do what they do best by.

Ivo Perelman - tenor saxophone
Matthew Shipp - piano

“These two artists have played and recorded together so often that they do indeed almost seem to read each other's mind, and at this stage the psychic communication is so complete that it almost sounds as if we, the listeners, are eavesdropping in on a very personal and intimate conversation."-Lynn René Bayley

"The music flows naturally from their fruitful exchanges, informed by mutual listening, skill and imagination. In the span.

All of the radio broadcasts by Bud from the Royal Roost in 1953. Quite good sound for what it is and manna for boppers!

"Bud Powell ranks as one of the most vital and influential pianists in jazz history. Captured here at his peak and recorded...

Thollem McDonas – keyboards
Nels Cline - electric guitars
Michael Wimberly – drums
Recorded by Justin Frye at Pioneer Works, Brooklyn, NY Sept. 13, 2017.

“This album was recorded during Thollem McDonas's 2017 residency at Brooklyn-based multi-discipline mecca Pioneer Works. It's the second by Radical Empathy, which combines three uncategorizable improvisors. Michael Wimberly has been astonishing folks since his days in Charles Gayle bands and Steve Coleman & Five Elements in the...

“There are some jazz musicians long known by cognoscenti for a mere handful of recordings: Dupree Bolton, Earl Anderza, Hasaan Ibn-Ali, Alan Shorter, Dewey Johnson. Add saxophonist Mark Reboul to that list. Before the release of this album, his discography consisted of four tracks on three albums on which he was a sideman. On Higher Primates' Environmental Impressions (GM, 1987), he plays sax on two of the percussion-heavy album's five tracks: a fragmentary track, and a sixteen-and-a-half-minute...

“Despite the obvious obstacles, this singular San Francisco Bay Area band is staying on mission, moving forward. Over its four-plus decades the quartet has defined itself by applying an array of improvisational strategies to an ever-expanding body of new music.
The Circumference of Reason includes six tracks composed or, in the case of "NC17", designed between 2011 and 2016; then -- in typical ROVA fashion -- the pieces were worked over and performed by the quartet in rehearsals and concerts until...

“It has become clear that Matthew Shipp is the most interesting and important jazz pianist of his generation, the most continually evolving and pushing forward. Now that he's in his sixties and something of an elder statesman of the art form, he's overdue for a retrospective look at his catalog, and to help make that happen, ESP-Disk' will be reissuing some of his great early work that's gone out of print.
The 1990 trio recording Circular Temple (originally self-released on Quinton, then reissued...

“It has become clear that Matthew Shipp is the most interesting and important jazz pianist of his generation, the most continually evolving and pushing forward. Now that he's in his sixties and something of an elder statesman of the art form, he's overdue for a retrospective look at his catalog, and to help make that happen, ESP-Disk' will be reissuing some of his great early work that's gone out of print.
The 1990 trio recording Circular Temple (originally self-released on Quinton, then reissued...

Matthew Shipp – piano
Michael Bisio – bass
Newman Taylor Baker – drums
“Matthew Shipp has established himself as the premier jazz pianist of his generation over the course of a three-decade career including many acclaimed albums under his own name plus his prominent tenure in the David S. Ware Quartet and a vast array of collaborations with the likes of Spring Heel Jack, Ivo Perelman, Sabir Mateen, Darius Jones, Joe Morris, Jemeel Moondoc, Mat Walerian, and many more. ESP-Disk' in its...

Matthew Shipp - piano
Mat Walerian - alto saxophone, bass clarinet, clarinet
Michael Bisio - bass
Whit Dickey - drums

"After a duo album and two trio albums by Matthew Shipp and Mat Walerian, all for ESP-Disk', they offer a quartet album that continues their strategy of working with different musicians each time out. Michael Bisio and Whit Dickey are long-time collaborators with Shipp, but the addition of Walerian's Zen style changes the dynamics of their interactions. Walerian and..

Matthew Shipp – piano
Michael Bisio – bass
Newman Taylor Baker - drums

“Downbeat calls Matthew Shipp "an elder statesman on the free-jazz scene." Perhaps it is odd in a way to think of someone so energetic and prolific as "elder," or so outspoken as "statesman," yet Downbeat (Bill Milkowski) is right. Shipp turns 60 this December. When he speaks, people listen (the old E.F. Hutton commercials come to mind). With Andrew Hill, Mal Waldron, Cecil Taylor, Horace Tapscott, Randy Weston, and...

Matthew Shipp – piano
Michael Bisio – bass
Newman Taylor Baker - drums

“Matthew Shipp's new album is titled World Construct. It's a fitting title, for in his career of over three decades, he has constructed his own world of jazz. This press release could be entirely built from the raves of critics. "As Matthew Shipp's catalog expands, so does our understanding of the depth and breadth of his genius." "A gateway to higher improvisation that is practically without parallel. Matthew Shipp...

"In the first part of his career, Matthew Shipp avoided solo recordings, saying he wasn't ready -- and the first solo album he made, Symbol Systems (1995), happened by accident when the other player on the session didn't show up. Since then, his style expanded and matured and he recorded prolifically, including a number of solo albums, but they have remained special events, distinct statements of purpose. Zero continues in this tradition. But, of course, it is the music itself which speaks most...

Recorded August 30, 1966. Simmons play alto sax and this was his debut as a leader. It's a good, free-with-themes 1966 style adventurous ESP album and he's good a good band here: Barbara Donald-trumpet, John...

"Alan Sondheim was the young, exuberant leader of a pack of improvisers in their communal loft in Providence, Rhode Island. Undaunted by attempts to categorize electronic music as the province of academic tinkerers, a cold, unfriendly realm, with its...

"Sondheim is the first artist from ESP-Disk's 1964-75 heyday to return, since it was revived in 2005, to issue an album of new material on the fabled label. Sondheim joined the roster with a 1967 session, Ritual-All-7-70, then followed up with 1968's...

"Composed by bassist/composer Stephane Furic Leibovici (The Twitter Machine, Crossing Brooklyn Ferry -- Soul Note Records) this 'trio music is based on compositional material which is developed through organic means (not repetitive means).'...

This is a pretty great archival find and release and is exactly the sort of thing I was hoping that Mr. Stollman would find and release as he reactivates ESP and goes through the archives. Hey college students!...

2006 ESP edition; "Compared to the original pressing, this re-issue is digitally remastered by Joe Phillips and includes brief liner notes by ESP label founder Bernard Stollman. Recorded at Town Hall NYC, December 22, 1973, this concert was one of the...

"Together for the first time, ESP-Disk' is proud to present all three volumes of The Heliocentric Worlds of Sun Ra in a gorgeous fold out digipack. Originally released as two volumes in 1966, and with a third volume uncovered in 2005, the landmark...

"The Brooklyn duo Talibam!'s first ESP Disk release, Boogie In The Breeze Blocks, is a narrative earful as warped and wonderful as spicy pasta, fresh grapes and caramel crunch. An ensemble record joining 2008's Thelonious Monk Jazz Institute winner...

"Endgame Of The Anthropocene marks Talibam!'s return to ESP-Disk, a partnership that started in 2009 with the highly acclaimed Boogie In The Breeze Blocks album. Talibam! is a 14-year working unit based in New York City that can be described in various ways -- as a classic keyboards/drums expanded-jazz duo, as Dadaist provocateurs with an innate love for the history of music, as a Fluxus-informed theater troupe, as an electronic ensemble inspired by Stockhausen, or as a rhythm section at the cross hair...