"Recorded (and released) one year after Konrad Bauer's Disques Victo debut Toronto Tone, a solo-trombone-with-electronics affair, Three Wheels: Four Directions features his favorite trio at the time. Bauer, bassist Peter Kowald, and dru...

"Sombre is an unlikely pairing yielding unexpected results. The classically trained harpist Helene Breschand meets the maverick avant rock guitarist Jean-Francois Pauvros. She plays an electro-acoustic harp, which -- unlike Zeena Parkin...

"Music for Three Rivers presents four improvisations (totaling 45 minutes) from British pianist Chris Burn's performance at the Festival International de Musique Actuelle de Victoriaville in May 1996, as well as five studio recordings f...

"The long-standing improvisation outfit CCMC recorded sparsely. A short tour of Quebec in May 1997 opened the door for a live album on the label Disques Victo. The CD aCCoMpliCes culls excerpts from shows at the Festival International de...

Eugene Chadbourne and Kevin Blechdom (aka Kristin Erickson) performing songs from their 2007 Victo performance, warped banjo rock instrumentals and songs.

"The background: Xavier Charles has recorded an album (La Pièce) with the duo Kristoff K. Roll (Jean-Christophe Camps and Carole Rieussec); Diane Labrosse and Martin Tétreault record and perform together as the duo Parasite...

"Even though Canadian saxophonist Paul Cram has led his orchestra for years, first in Toronto and then Halifax, Campin Out is the first recording by this ensemble since the 1987 LP Beyond Benghazi. One cannot accuse Cram of being too pr...

"Taken from a 1987 solo date at Quebec's venerable Festival Musique Actuelle, Labyrinths finds avant garde jazz pianist Marilyn Crispell balancing Cecil Taylor's cataclysmic and staunchly free piano style with her own melodic and spacio...

"Even though J.A. Deane has collaborated with many American avant-garde musicians, his solo albums are few. Sadly, his most accessible is also one of his less interesting. Nomad is an untypical release in the catalog of the label Disques...

Jean Derome's extended Dangereux Zhomes opened the 25th Victo Festival in 2008, adding Joane Hetu, Lori Freedman, Bernard Falaise, &c. for an incredible and expressive orchestra.

"Elevations is one of the very rare albums on which bassist Lisle Ellis assumes leadership. It was recorded in a San Francisco studio in June 1993. At the core of the instrumentation is Ellis' quartet, which includes Christopher Cauley a...

"The first completely solo Charles Gayle recording was recorded during a break in the Victoriaville Festival in 1994. Gayle went into a Montreal studio and played tenor on three tracks and bass clarinet on one, and preached while accomp...

"Recorded in studio in November 1996, Ben Goldberg's project Eight Phrases for Jefferson Rubin was his second composition for sextet (after Twelve Minor, released by Avant in 1998). Rubin, who died tragically at the age of 35, was one o...

A duo of contrasts and compatabilities from German violinst Gunda Gottschalk and guzheng virtuoso Xu Fengxia, exotic and beautifully textured improvisation live from Victoriaville, 2008.

"The Hard Rubber Orchestra is a funkier incarnation of the NOW Orchestra. Led by trumpeter John Korsrud, it uses a similar pool of Vancouver musicians, although the instrumentation here focuses on brass and a rhythm section. Cruel Yet Fa...

"The quality of an album roughly depends on material for 75 percent; the other 25 percent is pacing. Rub Harder scores a hundred. The Hard Rubber Orchestra's first CD (Cruel Yet Fair, 1998) suffered from improper inclusions, a lack of fo...

"This weird little album was made by a quartet of improvisers from all ends of the improvisational planet, who came together in 1993 for a recording date. Edited by Oswald in Toronto, the result can be found here. With two guitarists (K...

The trio of violinist/vocalist Carla Kihlstedt, bassist Shahzad Ismaily and drummer Matthias Bossi explore the language of memory and dreams through songs, improvisation, and field recordings.

"Prior to the release of this CD, Mexican flutist/pianist Roberto Morales Manzanares was virtually unknown in North America. He met Japan-born violinist Mari Kimura when she played at Callejon del Ruido, a new music festival Manzanares ...

"Anamnesis: Ecumenical Mysteries was Yugoslavian saxophonist/composer Boris Kovac's first release out of Europe (on the Canadian label Disques Victo). It was also his first work recorded in Yugoslavia following the war that forced him t...

This amazing trio performed at the 25th Victoriaville Festival of Musique Actuelle in 2008 with 2 guitars, 3 turntables, one spy-microphone, and 201 spectators.

"What Is the Difference Between Stripping and Playing the Violin? contains two compositions by West Coast avant-garde artist Miya Masaoka. Although an accomplished koto player, Masaoka does not play on this CD: her hands are full conduc...

"One of the greatest records to come out of Victo's (the record label of the Victoriaville Festival in Quebec) catalog is this 13-selection set by the Art Ensemble of Chicago multi-instrumentalist Roscoe Mitchell. Issued ion 1991, it co...

This incredible trio, recorded at the 25th Victo Actuelle Festival, play complex music using shared ideas about articulation, timbre, and methods of interaction.

"Each album or performance by My Cat Is an Alien is an invitation to leave on a cosmic journey, without resorting to the numerous cliche's of the space music genre. Think instead of a synth-less Ash Ra Tempel coming across the quiet impr...

"Active for over a decade, the trio New Windshas carved a distinctive niche in the arena of New Music by exploring the ambiguous territory in-between composition and improvisation while employing the particular tonalities and timbres of ...

"Superb, simply superb, but also disorienting and disquieting: that's Happy Wretched Family, Non Credo's second album, seven years after Reluctant Hosts. The avant-pop format found on the first LP has evolved into twisted shards of pop ...

"... I regard the NOW Orchestra as one of the finest large creative ensembles active in the last decade. The combinations of high levels of individual creativity and virtuosity with a strong sense of collectivity is a rare and treasured combination that the NOW Orchestra manifests very strongly..."-George Lewis, Earshot Jazz

"On her debut album for Victo, the former Michigander and downtown New York music stalwart enlisted the skills of three of her four sisters, producer David Shea, electronic percussion maestro Ikue Mori, and guitar hero Chris Cochrane. T...

Delicately powerful and unusual improvisation from the trio of bassist Barre Phillips, violinist Malcolm Goldstein, and free vocalist Catherine Januiaux, performing at the Victo Festival in 2010.

French guitarist Richard Pinhas, Japanese electronics and noise artist Merzbow, and the American trio Wolf Eyes performed together at the 2011 Victo Festival, with this massive recording one result.

"Noir is one of Canadian pianist Paul Plimley's best trio sessions. It was recorded in a Montreal studio over two days in October 1992. Longtime partner Lisle Ellis is on bass, more recent encounter Gregg Bendian on drums, and saxophoni...

"Vancouver pianist Paul Plimley and his comrades, bassist Lisle Ellis and drummer Scott Amendola, have issued a tough little gem of a recording in Safe-Crackers. Plimley's pianism ranges in voice from fierce avant-garde improvisation to...

"The mix between spoken words and drums was disturbing at first, especially since we sometimes miss a few lines because of all the noise, but we quickly got used to it. The whole show was a kind of conversation between the two performer...

A live concert at the 11Th Festival International De Musique Actuelle De Victoriaville on May 19th, 1994, from the free improvising trio of Frederik Alarie on contrabass, Paul Leger on drum, Yannick Rieu on tenor saxophone.

"Recorded live at the Festival International de Musique Actuelle de Victoriaville in May 1996, In the Land of Milk and Honey features trombonist Anne-Marie Roelofs' Waste Watchers trio, which also features Johannes Krämer (electric ...

The West Coast Rova Saxophone quartet in a 7 track studio album from 1995, from Jon Raskin on alto saxophone, baritone saxophone, sopranino saxophone, Steve Adams on alto saxophone, sopranino saxophone, Bruce Ackley on soprano saxophone, tenor saxophone and Larry Ochs on tenor saxophone, sopranino saxophone.

Beautiful, string-heavy set with French saxophonist Michel Doneda and koto master Kazue Sawai, plus Kazuo Imai on guitar, Le Quan Ninh on percussion, Tetsu Saitoh on bass, performing at the 20th Festival International de Musique Actuelle de Victoriaville/

"Recorded live at the Victoriaville Festival in 1996, this disc features the Italian saxophone and improvisation master surrounded by a band from heaven -- or hell, depending on your view of modern free jazz -- ensuring his own "social s...

"Psycho-Acoustic is guitarist Elliott Sharp and harpist Zeena Parkins, and Blackburst is their first album together under that name (their first album was titled Psycho-Acoustic and simply credited to Sharp and Parkins). As with their f...

. Live recording from 1988.

"The avant rock/improv quartet Slawterhaus was invited to the 1990 Festival International de Musique Actuelle de Victoriaville. The first 50 minutes of Live come from their performance, the last ten from a con...

"Berlin trombonist Konrad Bauer has become a regular of the Victo label. News From Berlin, a studio session with compatriot pianist Aki Takase, is his fourth album for the Victoriaville (Québec) imprint. The chemistry between the ...

"In October 1987, keyboardist/computer wiz Richard Teitelbaum and violinist Carlos Zingaro performed at the Festival International de Musique Actuelle de Victoriaville. The next year the label Disques Victo released The Sea Between, comp...

"To document the 1989 edition of the Festival International de Musique Actuelle de Victoriaville, the label Disques Victo released a compilation album -- a one-time project. Dix Improvisations Victoriaville 1989 culls short to medium-len...

An extended improvisation interweaving acoustic and electronic instruments in a beautifully coherent evolution of mysterious and approachable sources, from the trio of Jan Bang, David Toop and Mark Wastell, combining tam tams, gongs, flutes, lapsteel, live sampling, gongs, brushes, elastic, paper and more to captivate the curious listener.

Reissuing their limited 2014 release on Joachim Nordwall Editions, the Oceans Of Silver & Blood duo of Joachim Nordwall on analog synthesizer, effects & tape and percussionist Mark Wastell on tam tam and timpani present two pieces, the first an environmental work underpinned by subtle percussion, the second a richly resonating work of threatening warmth.

Francisco Lopez initiated this project in 2006 with the Pogus CD "Montreal Sound Matter", now expanded into an acousmatic group of linked tracks from a group of impressive sound artists.

Vibraphonist Emilio Gordoa leads this superb quartet with Don Malfon on alto & baritone saxophones, John Edwards on double bass and Dag Magnus Narvesen on drums, in an incredible live performance at the 2019 Alte Gerberei Artacts Festival in Austria, a captivating set of creative techniques yielding well-controlled passages of both intense activity and unique introspection.

Two distinct session, the first CD presenting free improv trio perfomances in St. Louis, MO between Paul Hartsaw on soprano & tenor saxophones, Damon Smith on double bass and Jerome Bryerton on percussion, the 2nd CD finding Hartsaw and Smith in the studio in Oakland CA for a more experimental session, Smith adding laptop & field recordings and both employing extended techniques.

Few quintets deserve the designation of super-group more than pianist Myra Melford's quintet with Mary Halvorson on guitar, Ingrid Laubrock on tenor & soprano saxophones, Tomeka Reid on cello and Susie Ibarra on drums & percussion, performing Melford's wonderfully inventive 10-part composition.

A superb, inventive duo collusion between percussionist Ra Kalam Bob Moses and double bassist Damon Smith, continuing their collaborations that started with "Astral Plain Crash" with Vinny Golia, Henry Kaiser & Weasel Walter, here in concentrated form, recording and layer in the studio for 14 diverse dialogs using advanced techniques on drums, gongs, spring drums and double bass.

Live recordings from the trio of Chicago improvisers Jason Stein on bass clarinet and Adam Shead on drums & percussion in a trio with double bassist Damon Smith, 3 tracks recorded in the studio at Chicago's Elastic Arts and then 2 live performances captured at The Hungry Brain that same night, an album of rich proportion through the deep strings, dark drums and deep reeds.

14 musicians from 9 different countries in various collaborative groupings performing acoustic & electronic free improvisations, the focus on soundscape and limited to 15 minute performances, developed by saxophonist Harri Sjöström in 2013 as "SoundScapes Festivals" and presented in Helsinki and now in Munich as part of the art-project "Aspects of Free Improvisation 2021".

A set of dramatic improvisations of incredible technical skill and creative drive from the working trio of Luis Vicente on trumpet, Seppe Gebruers on unprepared piano and Onno Govaert on drums, unedited improvisations presented as played, "composed by an interaction between the musicians and instruments, a nameless room, audience, microphones and you."

With titles for the album and all compositions from a poem by US poet E.E. Cummings, guitarist Samo Salamon developed these structured improvisations during the pandemic, inviting a set of masterful improvisers including Martin Küchen, Luis Vicente, Vasco Trilla, Emanuele Parrini, &c. &c. to contribute to these magnificent long distance collective improvisations.

Two extended sound collages and cut-ups from field recordings and percussion recorded during tours from 2014 to 2017, the title taken from a sign in one of the hotels that Jerman & Barnes stayed at, apt for the mix of punctuating locations, dissipating noise and unusual percussive passages, a fascinating journey that expands and contracts to make captivating stories.

Following the visual scores of multi-disciplinary artist Tina Douglas, pianist Magda Mayas uses objects and preparations on piano, clavinet & rhodes keyboards to expand on Douglas' sculptural and tactile scores, exposing the fragility or imperfections in each, allowing one melody, chord or noise to become the focus of Maya's aural rendering and interpretations.

The 10th release in Japanese experimental sound artist Toshimaru Nakamura's No Input Mixing Board (NIMB) instrument series, composing from the ephemeral and extraneous sounds of a mixing board with nothing connected, these assertive pieces composed in his home studio while reflecting on the changes and obscuring of many of Tokyo's small streams and rivers.

The duo of Swiss improvisers Bertran Deznier (saxophone) and Hans Koch (clarinet, saxophone) in an outstanding release of instantaneous composition.

This is the third release from Jean Derome et les Dangereux Zhoms, which, like the two preceding it, was created from Derome's personal travel journal.

A series of live recordings and related materials that trace the development of turntable artist Marina Rosenfeld's tactile approach to experimental sound, using dub plates--vinyl albums she has had pressed to develop a personal library of sound for performance--here in six improvisations accompanied by a 24-page book with a discussion between Rosenfeld and Lawrence English.

New generation New York tenor saxophonist Zoe Amba, a Tennessee transplant whose spirit is illuminated with free styles that harken back to Ayler, recording in the studio with a trio of luminary players--William Parker on bass and Francisco Mela on drums--performing three Amba compositions, one featuring Amba on flute; the CD edition contains one bonus improvisation.

A profound contemporary work integrating improvisation into composed forms from Montreal composer and percussionist Isaiah Ceccarelli and performed by an ensemble of 16 Musique Actuelle improvisers and performers, beautifully balanced between diverse instrumental passages and texts inspired by different poetical and musical forms of the past; sublime.

Ensemble Supermusique, Montreal's premiere open-minded improvising ensemble, here led by saxophonist & vocalist Joane Hetu and conducted by percussionist Danielle Palardy Roger, present a live concert of graphic scores dating back to 1920, with works from Fred Frith (Stone, Brick, Glass, Wood, Wire), Luigi Russolo, Maxime Daigneault, Emilie Girard-Charest & Anestis Logothetis.

A set of trio improvisations on acoustic strings and drums from the Dutch trio of Henk Zwerver on acoustic guitar, Wim Janssen on drums and Aaron Lumley on double bass, performing live at Zaal 100, in Amsterdam in 2021 as the trio expand their sound through superb technique, their music balanced between energetic scurries and introspective contemplation.

Featuring cellists Nina Hitz and Lucija Gregov, double bassist Goncalo Almeida and Rutger Zuydervelt (Machinefabriek) on electronics, recording in Old Church, in Rotterdam Charlois for six pensive improvisations, a collective conversation of concurrently layered, minimalist melodic and textural lines expanded with drones, evoking the mythical Greek multi-headed monster.

A newly commissioned suite of ten pieces requested by the City of Gent and Handelsbeurs Theater to commemorate 600 years since the creation of the Gent Altarpiece by Jan Van Eyck performed with an international group of younger musicians, orchestrated with an unusual mix of instruments including serpent, lute, organ and sampler; a discerning and accomplished major work.

John Zorn composes for, conducts and plays saxophone with his Simulacrum group with Kenny Grohowski on drums, Matt Hollenberg on guitar and John Medeski on organ & electric piano, a scorching band that combines Downtown NY jazz and metal forms as they explore the life and thoughts of Dutch 17th century Age of Enlightenment philosopher Baruch Spinoza.

David Bennet & Vilhelm Bromander is a Stockholm-based duo exploring microtonal soundscapes and timbral relations, focused on subtle relations between sounds using texture, intonation and timbre, beating, common partials and difference tones, creating sonic landscapes often based on triggering psychoacoustic phenomena, here following a semi-open score in a four part work.

An extended 7-part solo improvisation from Swedish double bassist Johan Berthling (Angles, Fire!, Nacka Forum, Sten Sandell Trio, &c) using magnificent technique, timing and pacing in a diverse set that includes a reference to Charlie Hayden's "Turiya".

The first release on the Swedish label Association For Free Improvised Music (FRIM) is the trio of Gustaf Hielm (Mats/Morgan Band) on bass, Elin Forkelid (Anna Högberg Attack!) on saxophones and Erik Carlsson (Swedish Azz, Skogen) on drums, a free-blowing session of heavy collective playing in the European Free Jazz tradition for two extended "Question" & "Answer" sessions.

The literal album title belies the subtle interplay between Swedish improvisers, cellist My Hellgren and Peter Söderberg, the latter known for his work on classical lute but here on guitar, oud and theorbo (a long-necked lute that adds additional bass notes), recording an extended, warmly beautiful and intricate acoustic dialog of gentle tension and masterful skill.

Ultimately it's Martin KŸchen's saxophone improvisations that lead these sensitively moody environments built around multi-tracked tapes of ambiance from snare, speaker, radio and tambora (a 2-headed drum) used unusually to create subtle and spacious drone environments over which KŸchen performs, hauntingly, emotionally and beautifully captivating his listeners.

Performed with Stockholm musicians including pianist Alexander Zethson, wind player Martin Küchen and trombonist Mats Äleklint, organist Linnéa Talp explores the areas of sound that emulate breathing, push/pull or back & forth motion, in eight beautifully paced recordings led by the organ's rich and microtonal vibrations & timbre and imbued by the contributor's subtle additions.

Two very different but openly creative improvising duos on a split CD, initiating the Swedish label and concert organizer FRIMS's split recording series: first 4 improvisations from legendary free improvisers Raymond Strid on drums & percussion and guitarist Mattias Windemo; then an extended dialog from new generation players Marcus Warnheim on alto saxophone and Karin Ivgves on piano.