"Pianist Georg Graewe and drummer Mark Sanders have been playing together since 1995, when Sanders joined the 1995/96 incarnation of THE GEORG GRAEWE QUINTET (w/ Mats Gustafsson, Sebi Tramontana and Mark Dresser). They have since perform...

Since 2005 bassist and percussionist Mark Wastell has been organizing concerts of ever-changing groups of improvising musicians under the collective name The Seen, using predominantly improvised material with occasional instructions or themes, here presented in 5 CDs, each a complete concert recorded at venues including Cafe Oto, Red Rose Theatre, &c.

"The music takes on short, fleeting forms: fading here, held and moody there, as though the improvisation encouraged skepticism of firm certitudes. The tightness of the discourse, however, demands enlightening energy and lucid tautness....

"Despite a well-documented incident where Larry Ochs was legally challenged for inflicting psychological damage on a festival goer who'd been expecting "jazz" (it's a great modern parable), he doesn't have quite that confrontational a v...

"Mandorla Awakening II: Emerging Worlds is Nicole Mitchell's second album for Chicago-based FPE Records. Composer and flutist Nicole Mitchell, once hailed by Chicago Reader music critic Peter Margasak as the 'greatest living flutist in ...

"Mandorla Awakening II: Emerging Worlds is Nicole Mitchell's second album for Chicago-based FPE Records. Composer and flutist Nicole Mitchell, once hailed by Chicago Reader music critic Peter Margasak as the 'greatest living flutist in ...

"Their singularity of intent is palpable. The group drive furiously into the promise of freedom offered by improvised music to build their own unpredictable edifice. If there's a lesson to be drawn, it's that borbetomagus's focused, lat...

"Reading through (cd 1) and reading from (cd 2) a book of words to a single letter, to breath and silence. Picking words attached to her, then caressing her with our breath, just enough to taste her, sometimes distracted, held back eve...

"A one-time student of the free improvisational saxophonist, George Garzone, the prolific David Peck (aka PEK) is a multi-instrumentalist/composer and the founder of Evil Clown Records. The ambitious scope of PEK's larger mission is wor...

"The creative music cooperative known as Leap of Faith had a long initial run from 1993 to 2001 and then re-booted in 2015. At their core, from the beginning, have been multi-instrumentalists David Peck (aka PEK) and Glynis Lomon. PEK, ...

"Composer and multi-instrumentalist, PEK, set his sights on something bigger with the Leap of Faith Orchestra's Supernovae. The previous incarnation of the LOFO expands from the fifteen musicians on The Expanding Universe (Evil Clown, 2...

"Possible Universes is the latest release from the multi-faceted Leap of Faith collective. In the orchestra formation, the group has released some half-dozen recordings but the "full" orchestra is a biannual occurrence where the normall...

"HMS was born from a meeting of Joe Houpert and Nathan McLaughlin (who recorded as Loud and Sad) with Erich Steiger in Baltimore...where they recorded their debut album "Resolution." Since that time they have had releases on Avant Archi...

"This is the second release form this duo following 2015's " ", Foster and Bennett straddle a lot of lines... they can handily deliver Coltrane-esque sax and drums blowing and then on a dime turn to intimate extended technique workouts....

"Working together since 2004 in a trio with Guunter Muuller, the duo project of Christian Wolfarth and Jason Kahn signals a return to their collaboration - this time with Jason Kahn singing and not on electronics. Though both musicians ...

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"Orfeo 5 play what might best be described as improvised narrative landscape music, their pieces evolving over time to create a sense of place and journey. Their influences include Alex Cline, Jon Hassell, Evan Parker and Nils Petter Mo...

"Open ended jazz playing with no stylistic limits - written scores, graphic scores, improvisation - improvisation which is inclusive of melody and structure - whatever we feel like playing - plenty of space for the music to develop its ...

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"Like what happened in Rios Encausurados (Seminal Records, 2015), in the compositions / improvisations of Marco Scarassatti, the recorded sounds of the sound landscape are again of special relevance. In this case, are the own recordings...

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"Brooklyn-based electroacoustic outfit W-2 have been honing their distinct sound over the past 2.5 years. Comprised of tenor saxophonist Sam Weinberg and synthesizist Chris Welcome (the Flying Luttenbachers) , W-2 is set to release thei...

"I would describe my album as intense, stark, and full of contrast. It is a single, 27 minute piece that is fluid and deliberate in its development. Texture, rhythmic propulsion, and counterpoint are crucial elements. I create different...

"As always, the geometry is of the n-dimensional sort. The number of dimensions that vary is impressive: membership, instrumentation, location, duration, and so on. Certainly, the overall shape of each VGO performance is highly variable...

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"In Gerald Murnane's Barley Patch, he writes of a character who, listening to music in an old timber building, would hope to find "the crowd of dust-motes that he sometimes saw swirling or drifting in a shaft of sunlight." As he listene...

"This peculiar stringtrio seems to grind and polish the sound world as with sandpaper and whirl up so much grinding dust that it crunches under the fingers, yes on the teeth. All the romantic recollections of the strings are deleted and...

"A friction quartet, at times quite energized. In addition to viola, cello, and double bass, the instrumentation is notable for Kriton B.'s daxophone, a rather obscure instrument in the class of "friction idiophone," which consists of a...

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"An interesting title to begin with. The situation of feeling like an extraneous body in a system that works according to peculiar principles. Or, in a more "mental" acceptation, the priceless condition of being completely delivered fro...

West Coast oboist and english horn improviser composes a startlingly enjoyable work based on Matt Shears' book of recursive, encyclopedic poetry of the same name: 10 pieces colliding elements of skronk, spoken word, fried electroacoustic noise and dark prog within a Creative Music framework, with a core quartet of Aram Shelton, Jason Hoopes and Jordan Glenn, plus guest Weston Olencki and a large cast of readers.

The Korekyojin trio of Tatsuya Yoshida on percussion, Kido Natsuki on guitar and Mitsuru Nasuno on fretless bass, plus violinist Miyamoto Rei on several tracks, take their intricate and exuberant rock into acoustic territory with this impressive album, which includes acoustic takes on "Arabesque", "Careless Heart", "Four Holes in the Sky", &c.

A combination of cyclical themes, made-up folk dances, and invented improvisations from UK reedist Chris Cundy, performing on bass clarinet at the Cheltenham Synagogue for 10 compositions developed specifically for this Confront recording as playful pieces intended as popular music for solo bass clarinet.

Intricate interplay in modern jazz from guitarist Miles Okazaki in a quartet with fellow New Yorkers Craig Taborn on piano, Anthony Tidd on bass, and Sean Rickman on drums--Tidd and Rickman his compatriots in Steve Coleman and Five Elements--performing Okazaki's playfully complex and innovative compositions that drive some serious grooves.

Experimental sound artists Jeph Jerman and Tim Barnes continue the exploration heard in their erstwhile and Confront releases, here in two new tracks recorded in Arizona and Louisville as they prepared for their 2016 performance at the No Idea Festival in Austin, TX.

With connections from both the free jazz and improvising rock scene, including Borbetomagus, Many Arms, Caribou, Anthony Braxton, William Parker, Zevious, &c, the trio of Colin Fisher (saxophone, guitar), Johnny DeBlase (electric bass) and Kid Millions (drums) debut their Monas project of intense, electronically spiked, free form improvisation.

Clarinetist Tom Jackson and pianist Keith Tippett have worked together since 2001, with bassist Ashley-John Long joining them in improvisation in 2009, adding violist Benedict Taylor that same year in London, here meeting in the studio for 4 subtle and expansive recordings.