Drolleries are small creatures adorning the margins of 13th-15th century illuminated manuscripts; Sam Weinberger is a Brooklyn saxophonist known for groups W-2, and this Bloor project with electric guitarist Andrew Smiley and drummer Jason Nazary, an assertive and rugged trio playing Weinberg's compositions about the perceptual phenomenon of ever-changing repetition.

The first release from the trio of Nels Cline, Gerald Cleaver, and Larry Ochs in a 2016 concert at Gallery5 Arts, in Richmond, Virginia, captured as part of the trio's series touring around the Northeast each December since 2015, playing what Larry Ochs describes as music that "seeks sonically to soothe, to inspire, and to conspire", in three urgent and powerful improvisations.

Saxophonist Jorgen Mathisen (The Core) composes for and leads his quartet with fellow Norwegian players Erlend Slettevoll on piano, Trygve Waldemar Fiske on double bass, and Dag Erik Knedal Andersen on drums, through six lyrical free jazz compositions, often in a Coltrane mode, his music influenced by sci-fi, Sun Ra, and Philip K. Dick; a solid record of modern jazz.

Red Trio pianist Rodrigo Pinheiro joins Polish free improvisers, drummer Kuba Suchar from the European band Robotobibok (which became Mikrokolektyw), and double bassist Zbigniew Kozera from Sundogs and LEM, for five collective improvisations, diverse and dynamic dialogs of profound technique and creative intention.

A tribute to pianist and composer Bernardo Sassetti from a trio that includes two members of Sassetti's Trio--bassist Carlos Barretto and drummer Alexandre Frazao--along with pianist Alberto Conde and violist Jose Valente, as they interpret Sassetti compositions, a Federico Mompou piece Sassetti played frequently, along with original compositions from all members.

Portuguese guitarist Jose Dias steps away from his quartet and trio, and from the many scores for theatre, contemporary dance and animation film that he's composed, to focus on his solo electric guitar work, in this album that applies subtle affects and a warm, ethereal ambiance to expressive and passionate pieces, each conveying a sense of narrative and purpose.

Free collective improvisation from the Portuguese trio of Paulo Alexandre Jorge on tenor saxophone, Luis Desirat on drums, and Monsieur Trinite using objects, captured live in Almada at Casa da Cerca, the three contrast hard-edged collective playing with open and expansive passages, regrouping their sonically interesting approach to free jazz in and out of the idiom.

A collaborative French instrumental rock band led by and with compositions from the core quartet of Anthony Belguise (drums), Jean-Loup Faurat (guitar), Regis Laugier (bass) and Nico Morcillo (guitar), with a list of 22 international guests across 8 songs and instrumentals, including Rafael Toral, Maria Radich, Paulo Furtado, Carlos Zingaro, Rui Carvalho, &c.

AMM alumni, pianist John Tilbury and guitarist Keith Rowe, join with Norwegian performer/conceptualist Kjell Bjorgeengen, whose work is often an amalgamation of sound waves, moving images and lights; here Kjell suggested a painting by Nicolas Poussin as a focal point for the trio's improvisation at this performance in Stavanger, Norway.

The longstanding relationship between US alto saxophonist living in the Phillipines, Rick Countryman, and legendary free improvising Japanese percussionist Sabu Toyozumi, heard in two previous albums, is here captured live in concert in the Phillipines in 2018, revealing active and thoughtful dialog of great expression and skill, an inspired encounter of free playing.

Drawn from 305 traditional ballads from England and Scotland alongside their American variants, anthologised by Francis James Child during the second half of the nineteenth century, are here sung by Ed Pettersen in the fascinating intersection of traditional lyrics and experimental interpretations of melodies, performed by the 11-piece London Experimental Ensemble.

Working together since 2014 in larger ensembles, NY reedist Don Byron and Cuban-born, US pianist Auran Ortiz find a modern yet lyrical heart in their duo collaboration on an album that includes original compositions and intimate renderings of pieces by Duke Ellington, Federico Mompou, Geri Allen, and J.S. Bach, a uniquely diverse and wonderfully embraceable release.

NY Bassist Michael Formanek composes for and leads his Elusion Quartet with saxophonist Tony Malaby, pianist Kris Davis, and drummer Ches Smith, a heavyweight set of improvisers who take on Formanek's sophisticated and elusive compositions, using unusual meters and complex yet comprehensible structures, performed with prodigious skill and passionate approaches.

The Oakland, CA-based Fred Frith Trio with bassist Jason Hoopes on double bass and electric, and Jordan Glenn on drums and percussion, extend their sonic excursions in this 2nd album that finds Frith on electric guitar and organ, as they evolve incredible soundscapes or shred through intense and intricate interplay; a rich album of dexterity, mood and power.

The rhythm section from the Amok Amor quartet--drummer Christian Lillinger and bassist Petter Eldh--are reformed as a trio with pianist Kaja Draksler, to create a thrilling, twisting and turning band of quick-witted, avant jazz angles, confusing and thrilling with unexpected shifts in direction on an informed, fun-filled and thoroughly modern album.

Implying the antithesis of confusion, NY drummer Tom Rainey's trio brings together close cohorts and family--Ingrid Laubrock on saxophone and Mary Halvorson on guitar--for an album recorded close to home, in Connecticut's Firehouse 12 studio, where they record the large title track and five shorter-form examples of their diverse and intimate approaches to collective improvisation.

The brilliant UK pianist Howard Riley is caught live in a US tour in the fall of 1976, recorded at 3 locations in NYC and in Buffalo, NY, each of the well-recorded improvisation a masterwork of extended form as he plays both outside and inside the piano, ranging from warm sections of lyrical quality to fast-paced streams of consciousness in a Cecil Taylor mode; magnificent.

Blending free jazz, electronic music, glitch, and collective improvisation, the Swiss trio of Dominic Landolt on guitar & effects, Ramon Landolt on synth, samples & piano, and Mario Hanni on drumsÊ& effects, bring a modern and experimental edge to their diverse approaches to free improv, colored with electronica and rock overtones; a fascinating brew.

After reedist Ken Vandermark's residency at The Stone in 2016, he went into the studio with improvisers Nate Wooley on trumpet, Sylvie Courvoisier on piano, and Tom Rainey on drums to record this spectacular album of forward-reaching jazz using stunning technique and wonderful lyrical complexity, as they run through compositions from Wooley, Vandermark and Courvoisier.

Recorded in the late 1970's in Canada while improvising rock, jazz, pysch, folk, country & blues guitar madman Doctor Eugene Chadbourne was living there, this is the second of four LPs documenting his work at the time, this album presenting 6 solo pieces of profound playing amidst an unusual experimental nature and a uniquely Chad sense of humor.

Lebanese trumpeter Mazen Kerbaj, known from "A" Trio and collaborations with Franz Hautzinger, Toshimaru Nakamura, Birgit Uhler, &c., here joins two Berlin percussionist--Burkhard Beins and Michael Vorfeld--both members of Berlin Echtzeitmusik, to record this fascinating studio album of extraordinary technique and sonic control.

Reissuing the 1st CD on UK free improvising guitarist Derek Bailey's Incus label is this 1982 duo with Brazilian percussionist Cyro Baptista, a remarkable dialog that draws percussive qualities from Bailey and lyrical aspects from Baptista, as the two push each other into inventive and exotic exchanges in an exuberant album; an incredible start to the Incus CD series.

An unusual pairing between UK non-idiomatic improvising legend Derek Bailey and clarinetist Tony Coe, best known for his work with Franz Koglmann (heard on Hatology) his work with Tony Oxley, and work in avant classical settings; here they find common ground in a miniature chamber improv approach of both technical virtuosity and atonal lyricism.

A confluence of reeds as Brazilian-born, NY-based tenor saxophonist Ivo Perelman meets NY-born, Chicago-based bass clarinetist Jason Stein, the 2nd of Perelman's recent reed duos after his meeting with bass clarinetist Rudi Mahall; here Pereleman ascribes a spiritual connection with Stein in the remarkable compatibility of wonderfully controlled, complex interplay.

The first in a series of recent duo recordings from Brazilian-born, NY-based tenor saxophonist Ivo Pereleman is with German bass clarinetist Rudi Mahall, both incredibly skilled players that complement each other in timbre and range, while finding common ground in intertwining lines, incredible counterpoint, and an innate adherence to lyricism.

An essential reissue of the only album from this Rock in Opposition supergroup, with two members of Henry Cow & The Work--bassist Mick Hobbs and Tim Hodgkinson playing "Hawaiian laptop noisy guitar" and keyboards--and Andy Wake from Unrest Work & Play, in a great set of songs with a literate and post-punk viciousness and unusual approaches to rhythm and sound.

Using historical references to rethink the present--the first 7 months of the Russian Revolution; and the accusal of Marius Plateau's murder by Germaine Berto--and working with Lucio Capece, Marcel Dickhage, Farahnaz Hatam, Moor Mother & Cathleen Schuster, Mattin performed this intense work of sound and narrative at the Digging The Global South Festival in Cologne, 2017.

Electric guitarist Olaf Rupp, one of the leading figures of Berlin's Echtzeit scene, and Rudi Fischerlehner, an active Berlin improvising drummer, have been playing together as Xenofox for years, releasing albums and playing festivals, here captured at A L'Arme Festival at Radialsystem, in Berlin in 2017 with turntablist Joke Lanz adding to their controlled chaos.

The sixth album from guitarist Hedvig Mollestad Thomassen's scorching Norwegian instrumental rock trio, having built a strong following through their impressive approach to rock, schooled from both early hard/progressive band but also driving fusion bands, with a penetrating edge in authoritative soloing and intense rhythmic interplay.

The sixth album from guitarist Hedvig Mollestad Thomassen's scorching Norwegian instrumental rock trio, having built a strong following through their impressive approach to rock, schooled from both early hard/progressive band but also driving fusion bands, with a penetrating edge in authoritative soloing and intense rhythmic interplay.

A limited live album from German saxophonist Peter Brotzmann's long-running Full Blast trio with the precise and dynamic Swiss rhythm section of Marino Pliakas on electric bass and Michael Wertmuller on drums, captured at Audio Rebel, in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil in 2016 as they tear through a tumultuous set of five burning improvisations of passionate playing.

Two legendary saxophonists--New York's Joe McPhee on alto and UK's John Butcher on tenor--meet at "The Hill" in the Chihuahuan Desert in Texas, where artist James Magee is building a set of raised buildings arranged on the compass points to house his work, providing fascinating resonant properties for McPhee & Butcher's exceptional interaction.

Composer & violinist Jason Kao Hwang wrote "Blood" as he meditated upon the traumas of war retained within the body as unspoken vibrations that reverberate across community and generations, performed in an incredible east/west octet with Taylor Ho Bynum (cornet), Joseph Daley (tuba), Andrew Drury (drums), Ken Filiano (bass), Sun Li (pipa), Steve Swell (trombone), & Wang Guowei (erh).

Named for "Ten Hundred Inch Radii", a performance of film and music from the series "Environments" by composer and filmaker Phill Niblocks, shot in upstate New York in 1972 and released now for the first time on DVD, a mesmerizing and hypnotic film with two soundtracks: the original 1972 from analog tape, and a 2008 edition from the Nelly Boyd Ensemble updated in 2015

The core trio of the Boston collective Leap of Faith Orchestra of improvisers, approaching large work using unique compositional techniques and an arsenal of traditional and unusual instruments and percussive devices, here joined by Elinor Spiers on violin, log drums, glockenspiel, metal, wood, crotales, and cymbells, for a uniquely detailed and immense improvisation.

The Leap of Faith string-heavy grouping in a concert at Outpost 186 in Cambridge, 2018 with PEK on bamboo saxophones, reeds, tarota, contrabassoon, sheng, melodica, aquasonic & bells; Glynis Lomon on cello & aquasonic; Grant Beale on guitar; Lukasz Pavlikovsky on cello & aquasonic; Albey onBass on electric bass; Silvain Castellano and Adrienne Schoenfeld on double bass.

Austrian drummer percussionist Rudi Fischerlehner (RM, Xenofox, Parrot Feathers, &c) in his first solo album of energetic, polyrhythmic construction, titled for a chance proximity to a note on 15/8 rhythms and Rene Pollesch's book "www-slums", apt for the blend of precise playing and creative abstractions heard in this engaging and propulsive album.

Retrospective of Terry Rusling, a Canadian composer of electronic music working for the CBC in the 60's, who was introduced to the Electronic Music Studio at the University of Toronto, where he was awarded the title of Research Associate, receiving a Canada Council Grant to travel and work in Belgium, Utrecht, Paris, &c.; 2 of his graphic scores are part of John Cage's "Notations" project.

Premiere recordings of two major works from Canadian guitarist Tim Brady: "Desir" in 3 movements, a concerto for electric guitar and large chamber ensemble that showcases Brady's playing; and "Eight Songs about: Symphony # 7" where each song is a character in a fictional, subtle and ironic commentary about Dmitri Shostakovich's Symphony No. 7 premiered on August 9th, 1942.

"Sekstet is comprised of musicians with backgrounds ranging from a host of anomalies of contemporary music, jazz, noise and improv.

Their debut CD is ready in the autumn of 2010 and is the result of their first meeting at the Henie...

Like mad scientists of sound, sonic explorers Tim Olive and Cal Lyall met in a Tokyo studio in 2012 armed with hydrophones, magnetic pickups and electronics to record this richly detailed and slowly unfolding work, blending organic and mechanical elements of indeterminate origin, finding absorbing dialog without clamor or tumult; intriguing and engrossing.

845 label leader and sonic explorer Tim Olive uses magnetic pickups and electronics in this meeting with radical living room concert sound artist, poet and improviser Yan Jun in Kobe, Japan, Jun using a variety of electronics, radio and field recordings as the two improvise in a wonderfully mischievous set of errant dialog and restrained deconstruction.

Australian composer Alister Spence wrote this in five parts composed for an improvising orchestra, which was first premiered in 2016 by Satoko Fujii's orchestras in Kobe, Nagoya and Tokyo, and the Glasgow Improvisers Orchestra; this recordings in 2017 at Big Apple Jazz Club in Kobe revisits the work with Fujii's Orchestra Kobe, conducted by the composer.

The first release on Japan's Armageddon Nova, now reissued as a limited 180gm double vinyl LP, presenting a 2012 concert at Performing Arts Center, in Japan in 2012 by the duo of free improvising alto saxophonist Aishi Oyauchi, a peer of Karou Abe in the 60s, and contrabassist Deku, a member of the 70s free improvising group New Jazz Syndicate.

Austrian drummer percussionist Rudi Fischerlehner (RM, Xenofox, Parrot Feathers, &c) in his first solo album of energetic, polyrhythmic construction, titled for a chance proximity to a note on 15/8 rhythms and Rene Pollesch's book "www-slums", apt for the blend of precise playing and creative abstractions heard in this engaging and propulsive album.

Two basses and a lower-end saxophone from the trio of Damon Smith on double bass, Andrew Durham on electric bass, and Danny Kamins on baritone sax, Durham also adding effects and "Radio Manipulation" to their deep sound, Durham & Kamins the core of CARL with Damon Smith adding extra underpinnings to their slowly developing, sometimes pensive, sometimes cantankerous, profound improvisation.

Recorded live at Silence Sounds in Guelph Canada, the duo of Xavier Charles on clarinet and Eric Normand on electric bass & objects eschew idiom in favor of their unique natural language on their instruments, applying patient development of truly idiosyncratic and fascinating command through a single extended work punctuated in seven diverse passages.

From 2008-16 until drummer Frank Rosaly moved to Amsterdam, alto saxophonist Nick Mazzarella's Trio was an active part of Chicago's creative jazz scene; in early 2018 Rosaly returned for a visit and Mazzarella composed a suite of 6 new pieces to commemorate the trio's tenth anniversary, the exuberant result this excellent concert recorded at Co-Prosperity Sphere!

A beautifully hypnotic album of saxophone, accompanied by Pan-Ney, Shruti Box and Organ, recorded in overdubs by composer/wind player Werner Durand in this 2nd chapter of his trilogy focused on the Pan-Ney, a self-built instrument for repetitive foundations, as Durand draws on elements of nature, mythology, dance, religion, literature and folklore.

Toronto-area saxophonist Colin Fisher, best known for his group I Have Eaten The City, with his collective quartet of NY players Daniel Carter on tenor, alto & soprano saxophones + clarinet & flute, Brandon Lopez on upright bass, and Marc Edwards on drums & percussion, for three extended and exploratory improvisations of exemplary creative insight.

The 5th release from the trio of multi-instrumentalist/vocalist Keiji Haino, guitarist Jim O'Rourke and Oren Ambarchi on wineglass and percussion is an introspective and beautifully developed set recorded live at their March 2013 concert at SuperDeluxe.

An extended and rich confluence of strings from R Keenan Lawler and John Krausbauer, using resonator guitar and banjo, sustained tones that intertwine in a beautiful and optimistic drone, minimalistic yet drenched in a profusion of harmonic detail; a beautiful and elusive dream mixing between an Indian raga and an alien electronic environment.

Recorded in the mid-90s, Livebatts! was a project of John White (Cornelius Cardew, Scratch Orchestra) developed to exploit "toy" keyboards of the 80s--cheap battery-driven instruments that hold tremendous potential for "serious" music-making--used here in a playful quartet with vocalist MJ Coldiron, Andrea Rocca (guitar & samples) and Nancy Ruffer (electrified flute).

Quietly lurking as it prepares to attack, this Kobra is the free improvising quaret of Aurora Nealand on accordion, alto saxophone, voice & objects, Steve Marquette on acoustic & electric guitars, Anton Hatwich on bass, and Paul Thibodeaux on drums, captured live at Chicago's Hungry Brain during the Instigation Festival for a mysterious 2-part "New Omens" and some "Telly Attire".

'Spilla' means 'to play' in the language of Neapolitan musicians, and playing here are NY guitarist and composer Elliott Sharp and Italian guitarist Sergio Sorrentino, presenting world premier recordings of 4 works recorded live in Vercelli, Italy: two improvisations and two graphic scores performed on electric guitar with incredible technique and passion.

Stochastic music for percussion and synthesizers from New York avant conceptualist and keyboardist Charlemagne Palestine, here on piano & electronics, with the Italian duo Trrma' of Giovanni Todisco on percussion and Guiseppe Candiano on synth, in two side-long works of irregular rhythm, complexity and dissonance that build and recede in a suspenseful journey.

Focusing on melody, rhythm, harmony, and texture, violinist/composer Jason Kao Hwang's Sing House employs a perceptive and swinging blend of Western and Eastern influences as his impressive band with Andrew Drury on drums, Ken Filiano on bass, Chris Forbes on piano, and Steve Swell on trombone present four lyrical, propulsive and wonderfully embraceable "songs".

While both improvisers were in New York City for the 2019 Vision Festival, multi-reedist and European Free Improv legend Peter Brötzmann met Chicago cellist and electronics artist Fred Lonberg-Holm to record their 3rd album together, their 1st album in the studio a diverse set of incredible concentration, with Brötzmann performing on tenor saxophone, woodwind, and clarinet.

A momentous 2020 concert at London's Cafe OTO, presented in two discs, the 1st with label leader Jean-Marc Foussat in a solo improvisation on synth and voice, the 2nd in a trio with Daunik Lazro on tenor & baritone sax, and Evan Parker on soprano sax, the 2 saxophones weaving and responding to Foussat's remarkable alien soundscapes and vocalization in an immersive extended improvisation.

German saxophonist Ingrid Laubrock and Vancouver pianist Kris Davis, both living and working in NY, and having worked together in a variety of groups including Laubrock's Anti-House, a trio with drummer Tyshawn Sorey, Tom Rainey's Obligatto, &c. &c., concentrate their sophisticated playing with this duo album of 7 original compositions and 2 free improvisations.