Avant Garde 2023

New music - recorded 2022. Oxley needs no introduction as one of the inventors of this style of playing. He remains active in music some 60 years after he burst onto the scene as one of the finest percussionists the UK has ever produced. For his current music he concentrates on electronic sounds via his manipulation of close mic'd sound objects, with the acoustic percussion element skilfully provided by Holker. A dense weave of detail and texture and a vital new entry point into Oxley's continuing body of work.

For his third Discus Music, towering free jazz saxophonist Paul Dunmall has brought together an absolutely incredible group of musicians, including saxophonists Soweto Kinch and Xhosa Cole, vibraphonist Corey Mwamba and drummer Hamid Drake. Four punchy compositions and one group improvisation allow everyone maximum space for expression and exciting interaction.

Berlin-based Swedish bassist and producer Petter Eldh returns with a new Koma Saxo album Post Koma, out on We Jazz Records, 10 November. The title Post Koma aptly describes the vibe of this one: The Koma Saxo sound continues its evolution, morphing into a holistic vision of jazz now and soon, where live instrumentation and repurposed sampling lose their boundaries.

A single saxophone, a glockenspiel, two microphones, a zoom recorder. These are the materials Patrick Shiroishi brought down with him late one night into the cavernous parking structure below a hot pot restaurant in Monterey Park. It was around 1:30AM; the spot was not too far from where Shiroishi grew up, a blank slate shown to him by his dear friend, Noah Klein. A vacant space for a new kind of collaboration—between saxophone and silence, between noise and reverberation, between negative space and self.

Sometimes one has to be careful with the names chosen by the bands. Cortex is no cerebral music but is entirely organic, as remembers the Periscope, where they recorded this album in which their melodic and free jazz is exalted. In the steps of Mats Gustafsson or John Zorn's Masada, the Norwegian quartet delivers with this new album another proof, if needed, of their place in the jazz world : the place which quivers.

Recorded live on 25th February 1979, Teatro Cristallo, Milan, Italy. Second of two performances. Previously unreleased. Stereophonic sound. 24-bit Hi-Res audio.

The first ever reissue of Dorothy Carter's 1978 folk/psych/drone masterpiece. A truly unique album in Dorothy's catalog, Waillee Waillee's essence sits in Dorothy's mastery of the dulcimer; its shimmering notes fully enmeshed with the cavernous drones of Bob Rutman's bowed steel cello. The core of this album, Dorothy's only with a full band, lies in the contradiction of traditional psych-folk idioms and the minimal avant-garde, referencing Laraaji and Henry Flynt as much as Karen Dalton.

A soaringly joyous album from British trumpeter Kenny Wheeler – one that has him leading a larger group in a style that resonates with similar projects of the time from artists like Mike Westbrook or Michael Gibbs!

Sonor Music Editions unveils another mega-rarity from the renowned Sermi Records vaults: composer and saxophone player Sandro Bugnolini’s Freedom Jazz suite - originally released as a part of the fourth installment of the iconic Intermezzi library series recorded in the late 1960s.

Brooklyn-based bassist/composer Kenneth Jimenez presents his new work Sonnet to Silence on We Jazz Records, 17 November. Consisting of 7 original compositions by Jimenez performed by his quartet including pianist Angelica Sanchez, drummer Gerald Cleaver and saxophonist Hery Paz, Sonnet to Silence echoes the original fire of New York free jazz while stepping into a terrain of its own, boldly forward-thinking.