Music > jazz

Jacques Ponzio continues his tribute to Thelonious Monk by exploring the intense yet fleeting relationship between the pianist and saxophonist Steve Lacy.

The raucous autobiography of the famed New York free jazz pioneer.

Easily one of the most striking and memorable releases by either artist to appear in recent years, Sergio Armaroli and David Toop's "And I Entered Into Sleep", issued as the tenth and final album in Die Schachtel's Decay Music series, traverses uncharted realms at the borders of literary reference, sound art, ambience and abstraction through delicately musical sounds, revealing new depths at every turn.

18 collages which pit boxers against musicians (Morton Feldman, Luciano Berio, Bill Evans... and countless other instrumentalists whom years of conservatory training had not prepared for the confrontation).

Bill Evans / Scott LaFaro / Paul Motian (1959-1961): the story of one of the most original, dazzling and influential trios in jazz history, and of the recording of three legendary albums.

The untold story of a visionary record producer.

Rob Mazurek graces the Keroxen Records waves with a genre defying album of field recordings, modular electronics, trumpet harmonies and spirit call chants.

A dialogue between two avant-garde figures, one poetic, the other musical.

Christian Laurella, writer and tour manager ("orchestra conductor", as Ahmad Jamal puts it), recalls his European tours with the greatest figures in American jazz—Chet Baker, Archie Shepp, Tony Williams, Jaco Pastorius, etc.

The reissue of Chico Mello and Helinho Brandão's self-titled release from 1984, the first return to vinyl of this classic of Brazilian experimental music with its original cover art and complete track listing.

Composed by Jim O'Rourke and pieced together by Jim together with longtime collaborator and trumpeter Eivind Lønning at Jim and Eiko Ishibashi's home in the Japanese mountains, this engrossing new album blows brass wails and tense fanfares across O'Rourke's manipulated Kyma tapestries for a deep, captivating trip into the aether.

Issued on LP for the first time, Atrás del Cosmos's Cold Drinks, Hot Dreams,, originally issued on cassette in 1980, is a heady and lush live set by who many consider to be the first free jazz ensemble in Mexico.

Jacques Ponzio recounts in text and images Thelonious Monk's 10-day stay in Paris in the spring of 1954.

The complete texts and photographs published in the fanzine dedicated to free jazz.

A music drama performed in the Hebbel Theatre Berlin in 1994—a key work from Sven-Åke Johansson & Alexander von Schlippenbach.

Presenting the second thematic volume on the "Aquapelagos" series, a collection of split LPs where selected artists offer their own take into water surrounded cultures and communities, Discrepant introduces an unique collaboration in the series in the shape of no other than two improvising giants, Mike Cooper and Pierre Bastien. This volume blows the lid wide open with a sound journey inspired by the equally majestic and mysterious Indian Ocean, a wide space of open ocean bounded by Africa, to the west, Asia to the north and north-west and Australia, to the south west.

Four excerpts from a duo concert by Arthur Clees (drums) and Jan Jelinek (live electronics).

Mike Cooper's new masterful experiment mixing free jazz, Oceanic, and Hawaiian inspirations, in collaboration with Geoff Hawkins, Jon Raskin and Tim Hill (saxophone), Elliott Sharp and Michael Thieke (clarinet), Scot Ray (lap steel guitar) and choreographer and dancer Ariella Vidach.

A live, raw, collective sound by Maurice Louca & his band Elephantine.

A collection of quotations from Thelonious Monk, organized as an alphabet book (new revised and augmented edition). More than a hundred entries based on the testimonies of musicians (Steve Lacy, Sahib Shihab, Henri Renaud) and journalists (Leonard Feather, Ira Gitler, Val Wilmer…).

Wesley Brown narrates the day when trumpeter Miles Davis was assaulted by the New York Police Department. A dramatic and humorous story, told from multiple perspectives including that of Frances Taylor, Davis's wife, and the musicians in Davis's bands: a timely meditation on the psychological impact of police brutality, through the lens of a day in the life of Miles Davis.

New improvised quartet synthesizer / voice / accordion / saxophone / drums, recorded in concert in Paris then mixed / edited by Jean-Marc Foussat.

Over the course of 40 minutes, the guitar treatments of composer, multi-instrumentalist and label head (Black Truffle) Oren Ambarchi (he also plays an audobon bird call) and the percussive work of Eric Thielemans perfectly merge in an outstanding improvisational session.

A newly unearthed recording of an interview between Sun Ra and composer, sound and intermedia artist and Fluxus associate Charlie Morrow recorded at his New York studio in 1989. This outstanding voice-only recording develops more like a kaleidoscopic sermon than any standard interview.

In this memoir, Harlem-born trumpeter Ahmed Abdullah recounts decades of national and international touring with the Sun Ra Arkestra and charts the rise of New York loft jazz scene, offering a fascinating portrait of advanced music in Brooklyn and lower Manhattan from the 1970s through the 1990s.

The first solo album of the French saxophonist, flutist and visual artist Sakina Abdou is the culmination of a path initiated more than twenty years ago on various aesthetic paths and in different contexts and artistic experiments, of a sound research started in 2021 around the solo saxophone, and of a tour in the United States in the fall of 2022.

In a long conversation about the guitar(s), Philippe Robert and Noël Akchoté sift through the history of the instrument and its practice, from the Renaissance lute to the 12-string, from the Stratocaster to the tabletop guitar surrounded by utensils and effects, from the blues to free improvisation.

An album of lost Derek Bailey sessions recorded with his friend and collaborator Charlie Morrow, that testifies to his art of collective experimentation.

Sound American #29 celebrates Art Ensemble of Chicago founder and American iconoclast, Roscoe Mitchell.

An essay by Guillaume Belhomme on the singularly modern work of the painter Eugène Carrière (1849-1906), accompanied by a piece by Japanese saxophonist Harutaka Mochizuki, inspired by the master's paintings.

An original meeting, powerful and explosive, between Charlemagne Palestine, Eric Thielemans and Oren Ambarchi.

Since 2002, Berlin based musicians Tony Buck and Magda Mayas have been developing their duo music as SPILL, recording, touring and occasionally collaborating with international guests. Having spent the last 20 years establishing their unique approach to the piano and percussion combination, SPILL celebrates this milestone with the release of their 5th album Mycelium.

Wesley Brown narrates the day when trumpeter Miles Davis was assaulted by the New York Police Department. A dramatic and humorous story, told from multiple perspectives including that of Frances Taylor, Davis's wife, and the musicians in Davis's bands: a timely meditation on the psychological impact of police brutality, through the lens of a day in the life of Miles Davis.

Actualising the concert of Archie Shepp–Bill Dixon Quartet at the 8th World Festival of Youth and Students in Helsinki 1962, Free Jazz Communism contextualizes the politics of free jazz music in light of global decolonisation movements, anti-war activism, structures of racial capitalism, and forms of avant-garde music (new augmented edition).

2 LPs of long-form, lyrical, groove-based free improv by acclaimed guitarist and composer Jeff Parker and his ETA IVtet.

Dark-folk songwriter Chantal Acda and beyond drums-percussion musician extraordinaire Eric Thielemans propose, after Philip Glass, a new score for Koyaanisqatsi, re-actualising the incredibly beautiful, raw, rhythmic and touching images of this 80-ties cinematographic masterpiece.

Complete facsimile of The Cricket, an important but underknown music magazine edited by poets and writers Amiri Baraka, A. B. Spellman, and Larry Neal in 1968–69—a rare document of the Black Arts Movement.

The height entry in Blank Forms' ongoing series of anthologies is devoted to the Amercian experimental musician/composer/intermedia artist Jerry Hunt.

The French musician, composer and instrument builder returns to Discrepant label and brings an astonishing array of instruments from different cartographies and legacies.

The photographic archives of Roberto Polillo who abundantly documented the concerts of the greatest American jazz musicians in Italy in the years 1960-1970.

A tribute to Cecil Taylor's Akisakila, re-imagined & arranged by Pat Thomas piano & XT: Paul Abbott (drums, synthetic sounds) and Seymour Wright (actual & potential saxophone).

The retrospective of the website and the magazine Le son du grisli (2004-2021): 16 portraits and 38 interviews of musicians, 842 record and concert reviews.

An impressive title on Don Cherry's far and wide discography. On this date he went literally East, playing Tibetan and Asian instruments. The album was originally released in 1974 on the Scandinavian label Sonet and highlights a session of the previous year with famous Swedish jazz improvisers Bengt Berger and Christer Bothen.

A pair of contemporary music giants re-release a long-lost 2003 live recording, previously available only as a CD-R.