Recording in Toronto, the core trio of drummer Nick Fraser, saxophonist Tony Malaby and pianist Kris Davis are joined on four tracks by tenor saxophonist Ingrid Laubrock and trumpeter Lina Allemano, in an album of composed and collective improvisation, merging Toronto, NY and European influences in an accomplished album of diverse approaches and orchestrations.

Saxophonist Mark Hanslip and drummer Emil Karlsen, two active figures on the UK free improv and jazz scene, in a sax & drum duo fueled by live performances, here in their first album of informed and exploratory dialog, five works that run the gamut from textural open playing to fiery free jazz, a solid first endeavor and addition to Karlsen's Noumenon label.

A much needed reissue of the ROVA Saxophone Quartet's historic 1983 tour of Russia, Latvia and Romania, as Jon Raskin on alto, baritone & soprano sax plus clarinet, Andrew Voigt on alto, sopranino & soprano sax + flute, Bruce Ackley on soprano sax & clarinet, and Larry Ochts on tenor & sopranino sax tear apart six incredible multi-reed improvisations; incredible!

An excellent example of modern fusion as drummer G. Calvin Weston (Ornette Coleman, James Blood Ulmer), also on pocket trumpet, joins the Phoenix Orchestra, a Philadelphia-based string & electric octet, for a funk driven album of spectacular playing with melodic force and compelling rhythm, showing shades of Cobham or Mahavishnu but with its feet fully in the present.

A split 7": on one side Sleepytime Gorilla Museum percussionist/drummer/composer Moe! Staiano's West Coast rotating ensemble Surplus 1980 in a teaser for an upcoming release with G.W. Sok, Kyle Bruckmann, members of Fred Frith Trio and Total Shutdown; on the other side King Champion Sounds featuring G.W. Sok, formerly of the Dutch band the Ex.

2019 Record Store Day release, a 7" from trumpeter Dave Douglas in two different configurations: the lead track from his album "Engage" featuring guitarist Jeff Parker and cellist Tomeka Reid along with Anna Webber, Nick Dunston & Kate Gentile; and a B-Side from 2018's "Uplift" featuring Joe Lovano and Bill Laswell alongside Mary Halvorson, Julian Lage, and Ian Chang.

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.

The 3rd Clean Feed album from this Portuguese band of unusual orchestration and intentions that cross jazz and rock idioms, from the trio of Sergio Carolino on tuba, Mario Delgado on guitar, and Alexandre Frazao on drums, with rapid fire attacks and tight compositional moments balanced by wonderful open, sonic moments, surprising with a cover of King Crimson's "Starless".

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.

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.

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.

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.

A masterful performance at Radio Studio Zurich in Switzerland in 2018 from London jazz pianist Alexander Hawkins, improvising over a wide range of interests from jazz & blues to avant compositional work, with impressive skill as he runs complex and diverging figures on each hand that are coherent and exhilarating to follow, balanced with beautiful reflective sections.

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.

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.

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.

A mysterious album of viola, viola d'amore, organ, and field recordings, merging the compositional minimal approach of Wandelweiser artist Eva-Maria Houben with Creative Sources performers Ernesto & Guilherme Rodrigues, the field recordings creating a virtual setting of environmental stillness, evoking slow motion in the unique "thisness" of haecceity.

The second in Ivo Perelman's 7-CD "Strings" series with a core duo of Perelman on tenor saxophone and Mat Maneri on viola, are joined by Downtown NY cellist Hank Roberts on 7 of 9 tracks, and bass clarinetist Ned Rothenberg on 4; the addition of Roberts adds an emotional drive to their recordings, as Rothenberg brings spectacular technique and creative power.

With two violins (Mat Maneri & Mark Feldman) and one viola (Jason Kao Hwang), Ivo Perelman initiates his 7-CD "Strings" series, freely improvising in an unusual collective setting as an illusionary string quartet, Perelman functioning as a virtual cello on the saxophone, another tenor instrument he played for years before turning to the sax; stunning.

Two distinct yet emotionally connected works from pianist Marilyn Crispell, violinist Tanya Kalmanovitch a partner in both; first, a "Memoria" for Crispell's relatives who died in World War II, in spacious and moving character, Richard Tietelbaum adding mood through haunting electronics; and 7 piano & violin duos, from the masterfully eccentric to the beautifully reflective.

Wind player and composer Anna Weber pays homage to 20th Century composers' works for percussion, using Xenakis, Feldman, Varese, Stockhausen, Babbitt & Cage as influences in compositions leaving room for improvisation from her septet of Jeremy Viner (sax & clarinet), Jacob Garchik (trombone), Christopher Hoffman (cello), Matt Mitchell (piano), Chris Tordini (bass), and Ches Smith (drums).

Making something out of "nothing", audio explorers and sonic organizers Eric La Casa from France and Australian Eamon Sprod spent a week on the waste grounds in the North East of Paris along the Canal Ourcq, capturing field recordings which they used to develop these active compositions, captivating by morphing everyday sounds into something intriguingly mysterious and remarkable.

Tomeka Reid is a Chicago based cellist, composer and free improviser, versed in classical and jazz contexts, here in a duo with Italian drummer Filippo Monaco recording in his studio in Milano, a lively conversation of extended acoustic improvisation using diverse techniques and approaches with an arsenal of percussive instruments; impressive and engaging.

Known best for his Chicago trios, Argentinian born clarinetist Guillermo Gregorio joins forces with New York contrabassist Brandon Lopez for 12 "episodes" of free improvisation that never loses track of a jazz basis, both players using an arsenal of techniques, from circular breathing to extracting sound from the physical forms of their instruments.

Roscoe Mitchell's 25 Piece Orchestra returns with an outstanding follow-up to his 2017 release "Discussions", recorded in concert at the Littlefield Auditorium in Mills College, reworking earlier pieces that take advantages of Mitchell's systems designed to articulate and capitalize on the tensions between composition and improvisation; an impressive achievement.

Roscoe Mitchell 25 Piece Orchestra returns with an outstanding follow-up to his 2017 release "Discussions", recorded in concert at the Littlefield Auditorium in Mills College, reworking earlier pieces that take advantages of Mitchell's systems designed to articulate and capitalize on the tensions between composition and improvisation; an impressive achievement.

Chicago and New York come together in Brooklyn to record this excellent encounter between pianist Matthew Shipp and flutist Nicole Mitchell, with Michael Bisio on bass and Newman Taylor Baker on drums, bridging exciting free playing with strong lyrical elements, balancing kinetically exuberant interaction with introspective and dark moments; inspired and masterful.

Reissuing the 1977 album from UK guitarist Ian Brighton, written as an instrumental story for children, apparently very sophisticated children, in a mix of composed and freely improvised passages, using non-idiomatic approaches with unusual and extended techniques, open atmospheric passages and strange transitions, a peculiar and wonderful album of imaginative playing.

Scottland's large improvising ensemble of around 20 musicians, merging backgrounds in free improvisation, jazz, classical, folk, pop, experimental musics and performance art, in a 2-CD release of a piece commissioned by the BBC and featuring pianist Marilyn Crispell and saxophist Evan Parker, written using graphic scores, through composition, photographs and artwork.

A persuasive album of lyrical groove-based electric free improv from the Hungarian quintet of Daniel Vaczi on saxophones & piano, Balazs Horvath on double bass, Zsolt Sarvari Kovacs on drums, Marton Fenyvesi on electric guitar & effects and Aved Janos on saxophones, Vaczi also programming the Budapest Music Center's player piano in unusual ways for the 3-art "Fabula".

Each track on this album is named for a tractor brand (Eicher, Kubota, &c.) and the liner notes are directions regarding a tractor's maintenance, as the ea-trio of UK improvisers Pat Thomas on piano & electronics, Dominic Lash on double bass, and Lawrence Casserley on a signal processing instrument provide 10 inventive improvisations that validate a sound working condition.

Recorded in 1989 and only now released, this studio album includes Pat Thomas on keys & electronics in a sextet with guitar & bass, synth, turntables, electronic wind instruments, drum machines, samplers, &c., merging ea-improv approaches with disruptively odd asides, fragmented voices, and swelling interventions, making something otherworldly out of then-revelatory technology.

Paul Dunmall's 2018 studio album in a quartet with James Owston on bass, Jim Bashford on drums, Philip Gibbs on guitar, and Dunmall on tenor saxophone, Gibbs's hollow-body opening up the band sound as Owston and Bashford trade rapid responses or provide solid grooves, the themes of the dialogs focused on space and time through intricate, complex and profound interaction.

Two saxophones take the front line in Paul Dunmall's 2018 studio album, the leader on tenor saxophone with fellow tenor player Julian Siegel, also on bass clarinet, while Mark Sanders drums and Percy Pursglove handles bass and also trumpet, as the band falls into a hard bop mode, weaving lines together over wonderfully turbulent and soulful grooves; outstanding.

Looking back and fondly imagining some of the locations and configuration that UK guitarist Ian Brighton played in the 70s, Brighton developed the pieces on this album, each compositions varying the personnel from life-long partners (Taylor, Wachsmann, Mattos) to musicians Brighton has performed with since his 2016 return to improvisation (Carrier, Beresford, Metcalfe).

A set of pointillistic improvisations from the collective, chamber-oriented, freely improvising trio of Biliana Voutchkova (violin), Alexander Fragenheim (double bass) and Antonis Anissegos (piano), recording in the studio in Berlin in 2016 for seven "archives" named for the length of each relatively succinct improvisation, from "Archive 4 04" to "Archive "7 38".

A tour-de-force of solo improvisation from French trombonist Christiane Bopp, flawlessly captured by sound engineer Jean Marc Foussat, as Bopp transforms her instrument through technical skill, lyrical ability, and unusual technique, creating virtual duets, furtive expression, and thundering emotion, an absolutely impressive example of modern trombone language.

Very much in an AMM mold of electroacoustic improvisation, this album of intense cooperation and sonic depth presents five sections numbered by Roman numerals, performed in the studio by the adept and investigative quintet of Thanos Chrysakis on computer & synthesizers, Sue Lynch on reeds, James O'Sullivan on guitar, and Joe Wright on sax & dynamic feedback system.

Jakob Ullman's 5th solo work for piano is atypical for a piano performance, using electronic playback and requiring three assistants sustaining a soundscape to realize a concept of "gravity" that Ullman applies as laws in a conceptual soundscape modified by a series of abstract images, resulting in unexpected sonic environments, tones, timbres and momentum.

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 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.

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.

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.

The final issue of the premier Canadian new music magazine Musicworks' 40th anniversary year, with Darcy Spidle on the cover, plus articles on Luke Nickel, Lina Allemano, Andre Cormier, Joseph Shabason, Thanya Iyer, the Ociciwan Contemporary Art Collective, plus a 9 track CD with music from Darcy Spidle, Shabason, Iyer, Luke Nickel & Heather Roche, &c. &c.

Returning to his native Chicago after a stint in NYC, saxophonist Greg Ward (Tortoise) formed this new group with Matt Gold and Dave Miller (guitars & effects), Matt Ulery (bass), and Quin Kirchner (drums), recording this impressive album of modern jazz: lyrical, funky and perfectly paced, engaging but never indulgent, with unexpected compositional twists and turns.

The 3rd album from the trio of Larry Ochs (Rova Saxophone Quartet) on tenor & sopranino saxophones, Downtown NY mainstay and West Coast migrant Mark Dresser on bass, and Ganelin Trio alumnus Vladimir Tarasov on drums and percussion, in four superb examples of collective improvisation captured live in two concerts in Berkeley and San Diego, CA in 2016.

The second volume of Lithuanian soprano and tenor saxophonist Liudas Mockunas's unusual album of water-based saxophone technique, augmenting the instrument by placing the bell of the sax into water, here in an epic live performance that uses both water and extreme technical skills and authoritative intent as he draws astoundingly diverse sounds from his instrument.

Cornetist Bobby Bradford leads this quartet with soprano saxophonist Hafez Modirzadeh, also playing karna and khaen; bassist Roberto Miguel Miranda; and East Coast drummer Vijay Anderson, in a live concert at the Blue Whale in Los Angeles in 2017, a sophisticated avant jazz outing including a set of variations for Ornette Coleman, a great example of modern creative form.

A unique freely improvised sax and bass duo from Angles leader Martin Kuchen on alto and sopranino saxophones, and Rafal Mazur on acoustic bass guitar, recording live at BAZA Club in Krakow, Poland in 2017 they perform the two part "Baza", initiating with mastery and determination, morphing to more meditative playing, and ending with impressive assertion.

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.