Swiss musicians Marco Von Orelli (trumpet, slide trumpet) and Sheldon Suter (prepared drums) and by their Portuguese partners, Luis Lopes (electric guitar) and Travassos (electronics) release a new chapter in their project Big Bold Back Bone, all players embracing a unique electro-acoustic improvisation through transformation of their instruments.

With a discography of both contemporary and improvised music, Beligan pianist residing in Norway Jonas Cambien (Platform, Karokh) joins forces with Norwegian double bassist Adrian Myhr (Delius, Dorner, Buck) for an album that balances concentrative and muscular interplay, influenced by Cambien's piano preparations and Myhr's sophisticated techniques.

Leveraging influences in improvisation and contemporary compositional music, Belgian/Oslo pianist Jonas Cambien, a member of Simiskina and Platform, extends his own trio of saxophonist Andre Rolighete and drummer Andreas Wildhagen with trumpeter Torstein Lavik Larsen on 2 tracks, as they balance jazz, avant, free improv and other hybrid forms in a compellingly creative album.

A 2-part single improvisation recorded live at la Maison Peinte, Labarthe-sur-Leze in 2014 from Jean-Luc Capozzo on trumpet & flugelhorn, and drummer Didier Lasserre, showing a great range of style and dynamic in gutsy playing using powerful technique and creative interaction.

Using material from solo live performances in San Francisco, Berlin, Zurich and London between 2010 and 2015, composer and sound artist Antoine Chessex developed the two compositions of this album, extracting his electroacoustic altered saxophone work and developing them into larger works that bridge extreme and psychoacoustics approaches with great sonic depth.

The Norwegian quartet formerly known as "Damp" with baritone guitarist Asbjorn Lerheim, tenor saxophonist Atle Nymo, drummer Torstein Lofthus, and double bassist Roger Arntzen, blend expressive forms of jazz with blues and rock in an expansive and rich set of tunes that both pay homage and look to new and inclusive formations of emotional and effusive music.

Cortex propels their persuasive, groove oriented approach to jazz with this swinging album that blends free jazz styles with great hard bop, in line with a band like The Thing, this Scandinavian group wants to make your body move without indulging in excess or pandering, instead following a muse that's solidly in the exuberant free jazz tradition.

Two guitarists with unique approaches to their instruments -- Paris-based Julen Depsrez and Lisbon-based Luis Lopes -- in an experimental album of evolving sound through extreme modification of guitar sound and sustain, mysteriously building their interactions from whispering sonics to growling harmonics, tightly controlled but bristling with complex energy.

French sound artist Karbe Dinel creates a complex work of sound that shifts through diverse moods and seamlessly dovetailed sections, using synthesizer and effects to create deep resonating tones and high pitched complements, mysterious grainy ambience, haunting chambers of drifting electronics; a mysterious and compelling journey in the electronic realm.

The Ex's first single from the Netherland unique and socially charged band The Ex of Terrie Ex on guitar, G.W. Sok on voice, Ome Geurt on drums and Bas on bass, starting a legacy of intelligent and pointed rock, improvised and experimental music that continues 40 years later, reissued as a 2020 Record Store Day release on colored 7" vinyl.

The Toronto-based duo of Colin Fisher on woodwinds and percussion and Carl Didur on keyboards and bass bridge acoustic and electronic improv with science fiction sensibilities in their two part "Exegesis", a critical exposition of un-genred music that borrows from global sources in service to their unusual and exotic tale; a wonderfully perplexing album.

The 1st in SpleenCoffin's double-7" series, each featuring exclusive material and packaged in reclaimed 7" audio reel boxes, this volume featuring audio tracks by French synth duo FEMME; NYC's Sunk Heaven; a piece composed from a group recording of Jeph Jerman, Tim Barnes, Bill Hutson & Ten Byrnes; and a work from Romanian audio artist SOMNOROASE PĂSĂRELE.

An hallucinogenic and commanding blending of improvisation, song, spoken word, and tonal/timbral music from double bassist Christian Meaas Svendsen's Filosofer, creating beautiful sonic environments out of which voice and message emerge and submerge, buoyed by a string quartet (two violins and two double basses), computers, turntables, synths and samplers.

Fritz Welch and Guido Hennebohl present a strange and discomforting album of electronic madness, as they "rattle them pots and pans, slap-the-cheek slurps and stick sharp elbows into a web of goof-off electronics" as they pursue the message of freedom.

Dale Gorfinkel is a multi-instrumentalist, improvisor, instrument creator and installation artist, creating unexpected aural environments exploring acoustic phenomena or creating acoustic sculptures using common materials like switches, balloons, hoses, cages, &c.

The 4th album from German saxophonist Peter Van Huffel's Gorilla Mask, the 3rd on Clean Feed, is another powerful blending of jazz and rock forms in restless and profoundly determined music, energetic but intelligently structured, with great riffs and melodic grooves from Roland Fidezius (electric bass) and Rudi Fischerlehner (drums and percussion).

An assertive album of free playing from the trio of Peter Van Huffel on alto sax, Roland Fidezius on electric bass, and Rudi Fischerlehner on drums, giving the music punk-jazz overtones in sound and rhythmic approach while clearly adhering to the heavy free jazz styles of the European masters.

Composers and performers Jani Hirvonen and Johannes Schebler create a complex universe in sound & melody, a veritable forest of sound referencing global and spiritual environments, using warm instrumental sources, field recordings, world percussion and extended use of the studio in a satisfying series of journeys with a mysteriously transcendental and devotional feeling.

Washington, DC based electronic experimenter Chester Hawkins (Blue Sausage Infant) was commissioned by director Tim Ashby to compose this work for the soundtrack to his feature-length film "Pale Trees", Hawkin's music illustrating the film's gradient of psychological colors from darkness, rage, and vengeance through a mix of kosmische drone in a Tangerine Dream vein.

Describing their approach to their submersive electroacoustic music as a seance, the Czech Republic septet IQ+1 with Peter Vrba, George Bagdasarov, Veronika Hladka, Jana Kneschke, Michal Zboril, and Katerina Bilejova release their 3rd album, a mix of strings, trumpet, clarinet, harmonium, synth, electronics & field recordings, creating a virtual acousmatic music of great detail.

Saxophonist and composer Crowmeat Bob's ensemble, Judge Schreber's Avian Choir, is a project name he's used to present his large ensemble pieces involving composition, improvisation, and conduction, here in a conducted collaboration with 15 bowed string players, a heavy metal rhythm section and Bob's own overdubs on reeds and guitar.

The 2nd release from Jason Kahn, here on voice and resonator guitar, with Christian Wolfarth on Chinese Cymbal, an antique marching snare and objects, recorded after a series of concerts across Europe in the fall of 2019, Kahn applying a percussionist's perspective to his guitar by playing it as a lap slide, as the two invoke an unusual incantatory spirit from their improvisations.

Swedish bass player Egil Kalman, here on modular syntheizer, joins Norwegian guitarist Fredrik Rasten, for a lovely album of drifting electronics and beautifully entwining acoustic guitar, unhurriedly developing environments of warm, slowly evolving chord structures that show influences from players like Catherine Lamb or the Wandelweiser collective.

Solo work from Portuguese guitarist Luis Lopes, showing a different side to his work with Humanization 4tet or his Noise Solo project, instead presenting a gentler and more romantic music marked by seductive playing with an unexpectedly tender appeal.

Two unconventional and experimenting improvisers--French-Japanese violist Frantz Loriot and Swiss percussionist Christian Wolfarth--in a deceptive album of acoustic improvisation that elusively takes on electric qualities in the hands of these two innovators, seducing the listener through unusual twists and turns of perfectly paced interactions.

Rutger Zuydervelt, aka Machinefabriek, in a 7" release of two tracks developed for a piece commissioned by Marta Alstadsaeter and Kim-Jomi Fischer for their dance piece "as much as it is worth" in 2017, the first an edited version of the final music used for the piece, a complex yet upbeat and bouncy work, the second side expanding and darkening the music.

With a list of projects including Shagma, The Core, Zanussi 5 and Mopti, the trio of Jorgen Mathisen (sax), Christian Meaas Svendsen (bass) and Andreas Wildhagen (drums), "Momentum" is an apt name for their uniquely building, unpredictable and atypical improvisations.

Recording live in the Namouche Studios in Lisbon in 2018, trumpeter Sei Miguel's octet performs a large work translating to "Fire Car", inspired by William Blake's "Jerusalem" (Chariot of Fire), reminding of early 70's Miles/fusion work as organist Andre Goncalves creates an atmospheric backbone over which the band introduces repetition and variation; mysterious and singular.

A raucous and passionate concert led by the trio of Juozas Milasius on guitar, Tomas Kutavicius on piano, and Dalius Naujokaitis on drums, with the Lithuanian Young Composers Orchestra assisting on voice, cymbals, clapping, and "trampling", creating moments of adventurous disorder that lead to beautiful passages of heartfelt playing, in what must have been a marvel to experience.

A stunning album of electroacoustic improv that truly pushes the envelope, from the MKM trio of Gunter Muller on iPods & electronics, Jason Kahn on modular synthesizer, mixer & radio, and Norbert Moslang on cracked everyday electronics, three masters of the form in their 5th Mikroton release after decades working together in configurations on labels like For4Ears.

Morsanek (aka Mark Morse) in a edited piece, 181 "tracks" of varied instrumentation; and the mysterious Vinekeeper in a complex organized sound work.

A site-specific sound installation in the nave and choir of Minoritenkirche in Krems/Stein that engages with the architecture and sound of this church space from composer Michael Moser working with Berndt Thurner, Klaus Lang, Hannah Schwegler and Nik Hummer.

A rich and beautiful drone work from Stephen O'Malley recorded at EMS in Stockholm, the title translating to "East-West Summer", as the piece emulates an accommodating evening, electronic crickets introducing and then settling into a slowly rotating and absorbing combination of tones, the flickering crickets returning to fade out the sense of restful night.

Their first proper vinyl release since forming in 2008, this studio album recorded in Berlin finds Berlin saxophonist and electronic artist Bryan Eubanks, double bassist Andrew Lafkas, and NY drummer & cymbal player Tod Capp in an extended and dark improvisation, with Catherine Lamb's "secondary rainbow synthesizer" interacting and filtering their work as a 4th member.

A Russian-Swiss collaboration between Boris Shershenkov (St. Petersburg), Kurt Liedwart and Mikhail Myasoedov (Moscow), Thomas Korber (Zurich), Christian Kobi (Berne) and Christian Muller (Biel), recording in the remote Vallée de Joux, on the border between Switzerland & France, leveraging diverse approaches to sound to create these six detailed electroacoustic improvisations.

Naples tenor saxophonist Antonio Raia's album of solo saxophone improvisations employs a mix of traditional and unusual techniques in 12 concise pieces that fragment "scraps" of melody into a diverse ruminating streams, recorded at the city's Filangeri Asylum by sound artist Renato Fiorito, using ten microphones to capture the unique qualities of the space.

A Record Store Day 2020 LP of the collaboration between Acid Mothers Temple guitarist Kawabata Makoto and French/British multi-instrumentalis RG Rough, using guitar drones, electronics, concrete sounds and percussion to create a sonic junble, occasionally soothed by a near-lullaby, only to be subsumed by a cascade of strings or fades into a repetitive minimal piano figure.

A deluxe 2 album release: "Glassware" on CD was composed by Swiss saxophonist Christoph Gallio for a commission by the Art Council Of The Canton Aargau, performed with Raphael Loher (piano), Ernst Thoma (synth), Dominique Girod (bass), and Nicolas Stocker (drums); then reworked into something creatively experimental in the 2 LP "As If You Were Here"; engaging and spellbinding!

Multi-disciplinary artist living in Berlin, Stefan Roigk developed "Suffering For The Promised" over a 14 year period, composing this large work of acousmatic music as an atmospherically intense yet utterly fragile piece, combining concrete sounds, field recordings and devotional vocal fragments in an eclectic and highly intimate composition of great depth and detail.

A Slovokian experimental group with rock roots and a somewhat DaDa approach to unusual song forms using perplexing repetitions and interventions, led by guitarist and vocalist Roman Radkovič with Josef Novák on keyboard, Jiří Šíla on accordion, Zdeněk Řihošek on harmonica & double bass Zdeněk Caha on drums & voice, and Miloš Šandera on percussion.

An historical recording of Hermann Scherchen directing the RTSI Orchestra in a rehearsal of Beethoven's 6th Symphony, 1964, one of the works Scherchen is most associated with.

SNIK IS led by trombonist Kristoffer Kompen and bassist Ole Morten Vagan, who provide the compositions for their quartet with saxophonist Kristoffer Berre Alberts and drummer Erik Nylander, in an album that ranges from meditative free playing to hard swinging bop oriented jazz.

Rapid fire playing and a wicked humor fuels drummer Olie Steidle's album with guitarist Frank Mobus, keyboardists Kit Downes and Dan Nicholls, and bassist Phil Donkin, mashing together electro-jazz, art rock, hardcore and club music into upbeat and twisted music, building up to a narrative "Speed Junky on Funny Human Darts"; insanely embraceable and stunning.

Known more for his double bass work, Christian Meaas Svendsen releases a stunningly beautiful album of unusually orchestrated pop songs with an 8-piece band of Nordic improvisers and performers, a dramatic album of tension and release which, despite lyrics in Norwegian, draws all listeners in through inventive and innovative musical structures.

Recorded at the same time and influenced by the recording of their 2020 album The Anthony Braxton Project, the NY Thumbscrew trio of Tomas Fujiwara on drums, Mary Halvorson on guitar, and Michael Formanek on double bass & electric bass present 9 original compositions, three pieces from each of the musicians, of melodically inclined forward thinking, creative jazz.

Italian sound artist Mauro Diciocia presents the second installment in a trilogy of related recordings, informally named "Le Musiche", using field recordings from a variety of settings mostly around Salento in southern Italy, organizing his recordings to create auditory sketches in sound, telling abstract yet compelling stories that envelop the listener.

The fourth ECM album from NY Saxophonist Tim Berne and drummer Ches Smith, here in a trio with textural guitarist David Torn in three extended compositions merging jazz, rock and ambient forms, the middle track augmented with the Scorchio String Quartet and Craig Taborn, as they ebb and flow intense energy, fascinating compositional turns, and superb playing.

The NY duo of Ben Miller (voice) and Franck Vigroux (electronics) in a studio recording influenced by industrial, punk, and electroacoustic music.

After percussionist and composer Gerry Hemingway migrated to Luzern, Switzerland he joined forces with the creative improvising community in that city, in particular with guitarist Manuel Troller and saxophonist and bass clarinetist Sebastian Strinning, the trio taking the name Tree Ear, blending free and idiomatic improv in bold, uncommon and spellbinding ways.

The followup to their 2019 Corbett vs. Dempsey album and formalizing their trio name as "The Underflow", is an epic double LP of diverse and inspired free-ea from the trio of Mats Gustafsson on flute, fluteophone, baritone saxophone & live electronics, David Grubbs on electric guiar & voice, and Rob Mazurek on piccolo trumpet, wooden flute, electronics, percussion & voice.

This year's An Ayler Xmas, the 4th in the series from saxophonist Mars Williams, expands to a double CD with recordings from two bands: Josh Berman, Jim Baker, Kent Kessler, Brian Sandstrom & Steve Hunt (Chicago); and Steve Swell, Hilliard Greene, Chris Corsano, Nels Cline & Fred Lonberg-Holm (NYC); in incredible free jazz mashups and bash-ups of Holiday favorites.

Astroturf Noise is Sam Day Harmet on mandolin, Sana Nagano on violin, Zach Swanson on bass, Billy Martin on percussion, and Sarah Bernstein on violin, living at the intersection of American folk & roots music and free improvisation, using effects and sonic additions in an unusual mix that the quintet makes completely natural and all their own.

Multi-instrumentalist Daniel Carter's Telepathic Band with Patrick Holmes (clarinet), Matthew Putman (keyboards), Hilliard Greene (bass) and Federico Ughi (drums) present their first volume of "psych-jazz", in actively mesmerizing music that explores the border between the "default world" and the "dream world", a meditation on electricity through profound playing.

Recorded on the last night of 577's Forward Festival 2017 in Brooklyn, the quintet of Daniel Carter (reeds & trumpet), Patrick Holmes (clarinet), Matthew Putman (piano), Hilliard Greene (bass) and Federico Ughi (drums) take their audience on three remarkable journeys of almost chamber-oriented collective free jazz, adventurous and not-to-be-missed examples of modern jazz.

Debut of this group named by NY multi-instrumentalist Daniel Carter, with Stelios Mihas on guitar, Federico Ughi on drums, and (mysterious) Irma Nejando on bass, presenting this studio album of free, well-matched and interactive collective improvisations of acoustic and electric instrumentation, each track dedicated to artists who inspired the members of the quartet.

Taking his cues from the electronic music of his Detroit roots, free jazz drummer Gerald Cleaver presents an album of synthetic rhythms and sonic landscape, each piece composed in detailed arrangements of compelling and adventurous structures, from propulsive grooves to sinuous soundscapes, a surprising and exciting twist showing Cleaver's strong compositional skills.

The first of two volumes from legendary Downtown NY pianist Cooper-Moore and saxophonist Stephen Gauci, recorded after a seven-month residency at Happylucky No. 1 Gallery in Brooklyn, allowing the two players to develop a natural dialog of unique and idiosyncratic approaches to their instruments, resulting in these 6 commanding recordings freely improvised in the studio.

Pulling inspiration from disparate influences such as early liturgical music, Ornette Coleman, Laurie Anderson, Yoko Ono, Milford Graves, and composers Morton Feldman and Lou Harrison, Kid Millions and Sarah Bernstein create a cyclical form of spontaneous thematic music through powerful electronics, wild vocalizations, and unrelenting drum textures.

Having played together in a variety of settings, but never as a trio, saxophonist Sabir Mateen, clarinetist Patrick Holmes and drummer Federico Ughi met in a recording studio in Tuscany, Italy to record this album of wide-ranging free improvisation, Mateen's Farfisa playing and vocal declamations bringing a Sun Ra element to the vehement and profound dialog.

Drummer Donald Sturge Anthony McKenzie II trades off duos with a set of masterful musicians in the second volume of his "Silenced" project, here with guitarist Elliott Sharp for a complex and inspired dialog; with bassist Bill Laswell for a rich and moody soundscape; and with guitarist Vernon Reid in a piece for McKenzie's daughter; plus one solo drum piece.