August 21, 2026:
Another extremely hot week here in the Mid-South, with temperatures breaking records. Aside from the dash to and from the car, I spent most of my time indoors avoiding the heat. That gave me plenty of time to work on this week's new releases and make some programming changes to our Economy Shipping in response to the new EU duty charges, aka the de minimis rules. We have some hopeful news on that front, which I'll get to after my favorite notice of the week:
Shipp / Perelman IN PERPETUUM:
Our association with saxophonist Ivo Perelman on Squid Note Records continues with the second album in the Duologues series, an upcoming duo recording with longtime collaborator Matthew Shipp, now available for pre-order ahead of its October 2nd release.
Aside from releasing these fantastic albums, Ivo Perelman has gone farther to announce that we will be releasing a duo with Matthew Shipp every year on our label going forward. It's great news for us, and reaffirms our commitment to getting new music out into the world.
GREAT NEWS!
Squidco will release a new Perelman/Matt Shipp duo every year IN PERPETUUM.
The first one comes out October 2nd, Duologues 7 "Distillation"
Here you can pre-order it and listen to track 4( Vol 1) and track 9( Vol 2) — Ivo Perelman
Duologues 7: Distillation
"Across three decades of collaboration, tenor saxophonist Ivo Perelman and pianist Matthew Shipp have developed one of the most sustained and distinctive musical relationships in contemporary improvised music"-Squid Note Records
Last Friday we released our second Squid Note Records release with Ivo Perelman, the duo of Ivo Perelman and Matthew Shipp: Duologues 7: Distillation. This is a "double" digital album, two studio sessions between the two that does indeed "distill" the excellent rapport between these two frequent collaborators.
More on EU Duty and De Minimis:
As of July 1, 2026, the European Union eliminated its previous customs-duty exemption for imported goods valued at EUR 150 or less. At the same time, VAT continues to be required on goods imported into the EU. These changes have made selling relatively inexpensive recordings from the United States to individual European customers considerably more complicated. We value our European customers and do not want these new requirements to prevent listeners from buying the music we carry, so we have been working to establish a practical way to continue serving the EU.
For customers in the European Union, we are currently using Discogs as the conduit for Squidco orders. Discogs operates as a marketplace facilitator and, for qualifying orders, collects the appropriate VAT from the buyer at checkout and remits it through its Import One Stop Shop (IOSS) registration.This allows the VAT portion of an EU order to be handled correctly at the time of purchase rather than being collected from the customer when the package arrives.
In addition to VAT, the EU's new rules impose customs duty on low-value imports that previously entered duty-free. To accommodate this, we have created special EU shipping rules in our Discogs store that incorporate the additional customs-duty cost into the shipping charge. These shipping rules are named "EU Duty Paid via Economy". We then ship these orders using FedEx International Connect under Delivered Duty Paid (DDP) terms. The customs information for each recording is transmitted with the shipment, and the applicable duty is paid through FedEx rather than being left for the customer to pay upon delivery.
Our goal is simple: whenever possible, the amount you pay when placing the order should cover the VAT, shipping and required customs duty, without an unexpected VAT or duty bill when the package reaches you.
You can browse and order from our Discogs storefront here:
Philz Weekly Recommendations:
The summer in the Northern Hemisphere brings a slower release schedule, but this week delivered a concentration of excellent new albums well worth paying attention to. The album I found most exciting comes from Fundacja Sluchaj! (Listen Foundation!), featuring the trio of Benjamin Dwyer, Rafal Mazur and Ramon Lopez in collective improvisation of remarkable depth and communication. Across two extraordinary performances, they move through a wealth of transitions while drawing on the "Way of Spontaneity," rooted in ideas of unity, the indivisibility of reality and constant motion.
My listening then moved to the fourth entry in the High Laver Levitations series from AMM drummer Eddie Prévost's Matchless Recordings label. Binker Golding, Olie Brice and Eddie Prévost follow their Secret Handshake with Danger album by distilling the trio into a superb balancing act between fully free improvisation and free jazz-informed collaboration.
This next album almost needs no introduction, so masterful are the personnel and so deeply rooted are their long-standing collaborations: B:A:N:S BAND, with Sophie Agnel, John Butcher, Pascal Niggenkemper and Stale Liavik Solberg. The level of sophistication and their ability to create an extraordinarily broad palette of sound is remarkable, through saxophone excursions and inside-and-out piano playing with preparations. Close listening is especially rewarding with this album.
I am also very excited about the latest Glass Triangle album from the trio of Zeena Parkins, Mette Rasmussen and Ryan Sawyer. Their first collaboration was titled Glass Triangle, with the subsequent releases adopting the name for the project itself, and this third album demonstrates the depth of their now long-standing association through a succinct set of improvisations that fit naturally within their Downtown New York roots.
Two other bands return this week as well. First, Martin Küchen's Angles project appears as a quartet this time on Relative Pitch Records, offering new takes on four compositions from previous releases. That includes "Every Woman Is A Tree," the title piece from the 2008 Clean Feed album of the same name, with Küchen, Kjell Nordeson, Johan Berthling and Mattias Ståhl providing continuity between the two albums. After so many years, I continue to find Angles a remarkably consistent band, particularly considering how far-ranging Küchen's own work can be.
Relative Pitch also released the second album from Believe, the Australia-centric quartet of Peter Farrar on alto sax, Novak Manojlovic on piano, Clayton Thomas on double bass and Laurence Pike on drums. Building on their communication through extensive work and performance, the group takes listeners on an intense journey through jazz influences and fully free playing.
Also on Relative Pitch, the quartet of Joe Morris, alto saxophonist Rob Brown, tenor saxophonist/flutist Anna Webber and drummer Matthew Rousseau balances composed and free playing, with all of the compositions coming from Morris. A master of collective interaction, Morris puts forward structures that yield excellent group interplay while still creating space for each musician to shine.
Last, if you haven't yet dipped your toe into the vast Boston-based Evil Clown universe of bands revolving around David Peck, I find the Evil Clown Shorties series to be a great starting point. Each piece is succinct, recorded as a complement to the larger sessions the musicians perform, giving listeners a chance to sample the groups they are drawn from, including Leap of Faith, Turbulence, Perturbations, Metal Chaos Ensemble, String Theory, &c.
 Enso (Benjamin Dwyer / Rafal Mazur / Ramon Lopez): Rhizoming (Fundacja Sluchaj!)
Irish guitarist Benjamin Dwyer, Polish bass guitarist Rafal Mazur and Spanish percussionist Ramon Lopez form Enso, a trio devoted to spontaneous collective improvisation, drawing on the idea of the single unbroken gesture to create fluid, continuously transforming music in which guitar, bass, drums and tabla interweave through close listening, shifting relationships and a kinetic sense of motion.
 Glass Triangle (Parkins / Rasmussen / Sawyer): 3 X 1 [CD + DOWNLOAD] (Relative Pitch)
Zeena Parkins, Mette Rasmussen and Ryan Sawyer return for Glass Triangle's third album, expanding the electric harp, alto saxophone and percussion language of their earlier releases with voice, preparations and bells, while distilling their volatile free improvisation into shorter, sharply focused pieces balancing texture, space, momentum and spontaneous collective change.
 Believe (Farrar / Manojlovic / Thomas / Pike): Nature's God [CD + DOWNLOAD] (Relative Pitch)
The second volume from Australian quartet BELIEVE's 2023 sessions at Golden Retriever Studio, with Peter Farrar on alto sax, Novak Manojlovic on piano, Clayton Thomas on double bass and Laurence Pike on drums, extending their intensely responsive collective improv through five pieces balancing free jazz, dense interaction, percussion-rich textures and moments of finely suspended restraint.
 Various Artists: Evil Clown Shorties Volume 8 (2026) (Evil Clown)
The eighth Evil Clown "Shorties" collection gathers 14 compact improvisations drawn from 14 releases by nine ensembles and 28 musicians, offering a concise survey of the label's early-2026 activity as reeds, brass, strings, electronics, bass, percussion and spoken word cycle through rapidly changing configurations that distill Evil Clown's broad-palette approach into brief, sharply contrasting snapshots.
Squidco Publishing Roundup:
You can view our latest fully cataloged albums in the Recently Section.
You can also browse new titles as they enter our Just In Stock Section — meaning we physically have the album and can ship it, though we may still be updating additional information about the release.
To see restocks of previously listed titles, visit our Recently Restocked page.
And if you're interested in a future release, you can ask us to notify you by email via our Upcoming Releases page — no obligation necessary.
August 14, 2026:
A more typical week as we fell back into our routines of receiving, purchasing, cataloging, and publishing, though in a somewhat more compact form, with only one large update in the middle of the week. The slower months bring fewer releases, which allows us to focus more closely on those that do come in, and this week brought some really excellent additions to our catalog, which I'll detail below.
Meanwhile, my work week was split in two important directions. First, the new European de minimis rules, along with recent VAT collection requirements, continue to dog us. We received a sales report from our merchant processor showing that orders from most of Europe and the UK have dropped off significantly, no doubt because of the complications and potential for additional charges. Trade wars and bureaucratic layers are a terrible reason to interrupt the flow of cultural exchange, and we're working to resolve these issues.
To that end, this week on our Discogs storefront, one of the marketplaces where we sell, we've added a new shipping method for the 25 EU countries implementing the new de minimis rules. Since Discogs is able to collect and remit VAT, this addition will allow us to collect the duty those EU nations expect as well. We've added an additional 3 euros per item sold, plus 3 euros per order, so that we can declare the packages we send through FedEx as "DDP," meaning duty paid. FedEx will ultimately charge those duties back to us, and EU customers should receive their packages without additional charges or customs delays.
While we don't agree that there should be additional charges on these orders, this solution through Discogs at least provides a path for European customers eager to collect the latest US domestic releases without unnecessary complications.
The other part of my work week was spent preparing the next Duologues album from Ivo Perelman for our digital label, Squid Note Records. This follow-up is a double album drawn from two studio sessions recorded by Jim Clouse at Park West Studios in Brooklyn, pairing Perelman with pianist Matthew Shipp. I'll have a pre-order link in my next entry and on our own website. In the meantime, if you haven't picked up the exceptional duo album by Perelman and Damon Smith, Duologues 6: Core of Existence, now is a great time to catch up on that, or any of the other seven albums we've released on Squid Note!
Philz Weekly Recommendations:
This week's mailing list is a mix of new releases and a few previous albums that we've priced lower. The new releases are an especially strong set, starting with the last album from the recent batch of ezz-thetics releases from Hat Hut, Ltd., the Verona Sextet's Leap And Bounds. It's an excellent album that draws on some of my favorite performers, including Tony Buck from The Necks and Elliott Sharp, who, along with Sergio Armaroli, has released some of the most interesting hybrids of improvisation and compositional form over the last decade or so, plus the great Magda Mayas on piano.
I'm quite sure that Two Balls Are Enough, but that doesn't stop the unlikely duo of saxophonist and flutist Mats Gustafsson — also playing slide flute, clarinet, harmonica, organ, and electronics — and electroacoustic accordionist and vocalist Kimmo Pohjonen from demonstrating the point through nine exciting improvisations. Pohjonen was new to me, but reading about his work throughout Europe, I can see how his inquisitive approach to the accordion has led him toward this wild mix of experimental and traditional forms.
Two albums come to us on Random Acoustics, centered around Georg Graewe and featuring exceptional support from more Squidco favorites — Gerry Hemingway, Frank Gratkowski, and Mark Sanders across the two releases. The music is characterized as chamber jazz, but the interplay, dynamics, and intricacy of the musicians' interactions transcend the form, creating a particularly distinctive approach to improvisation.
Corbett vs. Dempsey has released a set of sessions led by Chicago alto saxophonist Nick Mazzarella, recorded in Siena, Italy with bassist Silvia Bolognesi, drummer Cristiano Calcagnile, and trumpeter Emanuele Marsico. The album moves through a range of approaches, from collective improvisation to composed material, resulting in an extremely well-balanced example of contemporary creative jazz.
Chicago-based Chinese multi-instrumentalist Lao Dan continues to emerge as a fascinating voice, and his new quartet album with pianist Mabel Kwan, bassist Joshua Abrams, and percussionist Michael Zerang captures a tremendous set at Elastic Arts in Chicago. What makes the band especially distinctive is Dan's instrumentation, as he moves between tenor saxophone, Chinese flute, and suona, the traditional Chinese double-reed wind instrument.
Two last notes. We didn't pick up the LP edition of the Alexander Schlippenbach Trio's Elf Bagatellen when it was first released, carrying only the CD. It's an exemplary album with Evan Parker and Paul Lovens, and we finally have a few copies. The price might seem steep, but it's a beautifully presented gatefold edition of their recent, masterful work.
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Rodrigues / Rodrigues / Torres / Schlippenbach / Kellers:
Parkins / Rasmussen / Sawyer:
Gerry Hemingway / Izumi Kimura / Frank Gratkowski / Christian Weber:
Christoph Gallio:
Ryoji Ikeda:
Motif with Axel Dorner:
Mary Halvorson / Hubert Bergmann:
Olivia Block:
Matthew Wright (Jernberg / Ensemble Klang / Spheric Totemic):
Thanos Chrysakis:
Golding / Brice / Prevost: High Laver Levitations Vol 4: Sound-Out - jazz is dead, long live jazz (Matchless)
B:A:N:S BAND (Sophie Agnel / John Butcher / Pascal Niggenkemper / Stale Liavik Solberg): Foam & Mesh (Fundacja Sluchaj!)
Angles 4 (Kuchen / Haker-Flaten / Stahl / Nordeson): Angles 4 [CD + DOWNLOAD] (Relative Pitch)
Morris, Joe / Rob Brown / Anna Webber / Matthew Rousseaux: Counter Spectacle (Fundacja Sluchaj!)
