The soundtrack to the documentary Loving Highsmith about thriller novelist Patricia Highsmith, with music composed by Belgium guitarist Noël Akchoté along with pieces by Cole Porter, Mancini, Johnny Mercer, Frank Sinatra, Hildegard von Bingen, Carl Fischer, &c, presented in two CDs, one each of duets between Akchoté and New York guitarists Mary Halvorson and Bill Frisell.

Dedicated to Cor Fuhler, Tasmanian guitarist Nick Ashwood's extended composition is a thoughtfully introspective work of rich sonority, shifting harmonics and abstract tones generated through guitar bowing, recorded live to tape in two continuous recordings, the second overlaying the first as the work unfolds in a meditative and beautifully pensive manner.

The project and ensemble "Songs" brings together Swiss trombonist & composer Samuel Blaser and pianist & composer Oscar Strasnoy, taking the instrumentation and concept of Lucio Berio's Folksongs and expanding it into Blaser's "Worksongs", a set of songs around Mississippi Delta blues, and Strasnoy's "Chanzuns Popularas Rumanchas" based on the traditional music of the Canton of Grisons.

Two extended dialogs between New York City saxophonist Rob Brown and Argentinian-born NY-based drummer Juan Pablo Carletti, a member of the Rob Brown Quartet and associate with Tony Malaby, Daniel Levin, &c., here in energetic exchanges that bring out the depth of experience and skill from Brown and the quick-witted response from the younger generation drummer.

The 2nd of two studio albums from the quartet of Daniel Carter on saxophone & flute, Matthew Shipp on piano, William Parker on bass and Gerald Cleaver on drums, recordings from the same sessions as the 1st volume with five shorter works, as the long-time collaborators and friends show their nearly telepathic rapport in adventurous and masterful modern jazz.

Named for the long history of collaboration over decades, the NY free jazz Telepathic Band of Daniel Carter on saxophones, clarinet & trumpet, Patrick Holmes on clarinet, Matthew Putman on piano, Rhodes, Hilliard Greene on bass and Federico Ughi on drums are heard live at the 2018 Forward Festival in Brooklyn, NY for four outstandingly informed improvisations.

An examination of the lives and work of anti-fascist political activists Natalia and Leone Ginzburg during World War II, researched and developed by late vocalist and composer Jewlia Eisenberg, this album completed by her longtime collaborator Marika Hughes and performed with musicians including Nils Frykdahl, Darren Johnston, Dan Cantrell, &c.

The 3-headed monster Khimaira--a lion head in front, a goat head at its back and a snake head at its tail--is rendered by the transatlantic trio of NY saxophonist Chris Pitsiokos, Portuguese trumpeter Susana Santos Silva and Swedish bassist Torbjourn Zetterberg, using profound technique, snarling interaction and contemplative patience to coax the beast in masterful interplay.

Well-recorded performances of Coltrane's most noted works--"Naima", "My Favorite Things" and "A Love Supreme"--in superb concerts from Berlin in 1963 and Antibes in 1965 with his classic quartet of pianist McCoy Tyner, bassist Jimmy Garrison and drummer Elvin Jones, revealing the expansion and freedom these compositions receive through the flexibility of live performance.

The 2nd Derviche album on Ayler Records from the French electric bass and drum improvising duo of Eric Brochard and Fabrice Favriou, in five sequences of assertive and masterful instrumental improvising rock, ecstatically heavy material of thick detail and ominous overtone, intended to be played as a continuous suite and clearly intended for maximum amplitude!

The debut of Ensemble Nist-Nah, a nine-piece collective group of French percussionists led by Nantes-based Australian drummer and percussionist Will Guthrie, incorporating a diverse set of influences including Gamelan performance, contemporary composition, noise and jazz into rich and ecstatic performances, an exciting album of informed approaches to modern and traditional percussion.

The first trio collaboration between London pianist and innovator Pat Thomas and Swedish improvisers, Sture Ericson on saxophones, and Raymond Strid on drums, performing live at Cafe OTO in London in 2019 for four improvised soundscapes about the fictional character "Bagman", using extended and prodigious technique with both disruptive and melodic intentions.

Written by Catalan composer Ferran Fages for pianist Lluïsa Espigolé following a quote by Catalan author Carles Camps Mundó — "Barely anything: deformities of silence" — this delicate work of resonance, space and suspense slowly unfolds, the score giving Espigolé choices for timing and placement as each meaningful note or combination subsides.

A beautiful trio album of compositions from pianist Yuko Fujiyama and presented in a mix of solo pieces and duets & trios with cornetist Graham Haynes and electronic improviser Ikue Mori, for a subtle set of elegant improvisations balancing spacious moments with responsively relaxed interplay rich with anticipation, punctuated with two poems by Shutaro Tankikawa.

Led by tenor saxophonist James Brandon Lewis and poet Thomas Sayers Ellis, this 12-piece ensemble of pointed and ecstatic free jazz and spoken word are heard at the 2019 Sons D'Hiver Festival in Paris, 2019, their sound influenced by chamber elements and sharpened through insightful and demanding observations and the influence of Amiri Baraka (LeRoi Jones).

Canadian improvising clarinetist François Houle and Swiss trumpeter Marco von Orelli are heard live at the Bird's Eye Jazz Club, in Basel, Switzerland, 2020 for eleven dialogs reminiscent of the work of John Carter and Bobby Bradford, though uniquely in their own modern language of chamber-oriented jazz through original compositions from both artists.

Using harmonic intersections and extraneous sonic emanations from two clarinets, the duo of Kai Fagaschinski and Michael Thieke (also of The Magic I.D.) continue their long-standing International Nothing project of composed works through patient interactions of powerfully focused technique, here in their fifth album presenting a 42-minute work of delicate, dark beauty.

Using double bass, violin and objects to affect their instruments, Amsterdam violinist Miriam Den Boer Salmón and Chilean double bassist Amanda Irarrazabal present ten succinct sonic landscapes through fully free improvisation, their interactions building and scraping, intersecting and interacting in fascinating and frightening ways.

Collaborating since 2004, Berlin alto saxophonist Anna Kaluza and double bassist Jan Roda--a member of Kaluza's Quartet with trombonist Christof Thewes and drummer Kay Lübke--in a studio album of duo improvisations, documenting their live performances in the same configuration since 2020 through ten succinct dialogs of informed affinity.

The Geometry quartet of Tomeka Reid on cello, Taylor Ho Bynum on cornet, Kyoko Kitamura on voice, and Joe Morris on guitar in their sophomore release of subtly ferocious acoustic improvisation, acute and obtuse angularity through both highly interactive playing and spacious sprawls that merge melody and pointillist styles, expanded through Kitamura's imagistic vocals; outstanding.

An extended monologue on the alto saxophone from Tokyo-based Masayo Koketsu (Carrier/Koketsu/Fuwa/Itani), driven by an innate sense of timing to introduce assertive utterances, growls, throttling and intense interaction offset with long pauses, digressive asides and reflective moments, a remarkable album of modern free jazz in the Japanese tradition.

This single extended performance brings together a collective of improvisers playing low range instruments in order to build an acoustic sonic sculpture, from the quintet of Daunik Lazro on baritone saxophone, Jouk Minor on contrabass sarrusophone, Thierry Madiot on bass trombone & telescopic tubes, and both David Chiesa and Louis-Michel Marion on 5-string double bass.

Two innovative sonic luminaries--Japan's Masami Akita, aka Merzbow, and New York City's David Lee Myers, aka Arcane Device--remix each other's work, bringing Myer's unique approach to feedback and ethereal electronics to harness Akita's agressive sounds, and in reverse, Akita's sense of disruptive sonics explode Myer's more contemplative feedback music.

Destroy All Monsters and Sensorium Saxophone Orchestra guitarist Ben Miller in an album of experimental solo guitar works, augmenting his guitar with effects, synthesizer, bass, tapes and radio to create seven fascinating works that reflect on his rock background through solid rhythmic and melodic hooks, but also captivates through unusual and surprising sonic elements.

A perfect example of the radiant electronics David Lee Myers, aka Arcane Device, has developed over decades, in nine shimmering works of clear tones, controlled feedback and electronic errata, each piece transitioning in sublime ways as Myers evolves luminescent stories in glowing atmospheric sound, a richly lustered album of sound sculpting.

Xenography is the ability to write in a language which the individual has not learned, an apt description of the rich dialects sculpted from feedback sources and expertly routed through circular circuits of sound processors by New York sound artist David Lee Myers, AKA Arcane Device, captured and layered into these astounding electronic compositions.

Using environmental sounds & field recordings from 5 continents--Oceania: Tarkine Rainforest; Asia: Okinawa; Europe: Ancient Olympia And Iceland; Africa: Uganda, Botswana & Namibia; America: Amazon Rainforest & Niagara Falls--sound artist Thanasis Kaproulias takes listeners on an incredible journey through sound from reflective to cathartic, from ominous danger to awe-inspired beauty.

Each track of the Meridian, or Eastern desert land's traditional noon-time middle of the day, represents various stages, chronologically understood, of the day of an ανθρωπός (human), represented through deep double bass, drums, objects and electronics from Turin, Italy improvisers Michele Anelli and Nicholas Remondino.

German-born Canadian composer living in Deux-Montagnes, Quebec Michael Oesterle has a long relationship with the Quatuor Bozzini beginning with their first commission 25 years ago, here in four works including a tribute to English mathematician Alan Turing, the large-scale "String Quartet No. 4", and a piece inspired by Quebec poet Nicole Brossard's book Mecanique jongleuse.

Revealing 40 years of collaborations between late trumpeter Toshinori Kondo and West Coast guitarist Henry Kaiser, in configurations of duos between Kondo & Kaiser--most notably a beautiful and extended 2016 improvisation--then earlier duos from 1978, a 1980 trio with pianist Greg Goodman, a 1979 trio with saxophonist John Oswald, ending with a wonderfully idiosyncratic 2020 duo.

Having collaborated as a duo first at Goldsmiths College in 1981, UK pianists Howard Riley and Keith Tippett met for this spectacular 2016 concert as part of The Steinway Spirio Two-Piano Festival in Soho, London, each bringing decades of experience as lyrical and inventive players, together complementing each other in merging disparate forms from Joplin to Debussy to Mujician.

Continuing NoBusiness' archive series of late reed & wind player Sam Rivers, this wild and sophisticated concert from 2002 was recorded at the Freeport-McMoRan Theatre in New Orlean's Contemporary Arts Center, by the long-standing Sam Rivers Trio with Doug Matthews on upright & electric bass and bass clarinet, and Anthony Cole on tenor sax & piano.

Soundscapes, drones, disruptive aberrations, textures and perplexingly absorbing interactions btween French guitarist and sound artist Xavier Mussat and saxophonist Quentin Rollett (Red Krayloa, Nurse with Wound), performing live at Instants Chavires, in Montreuil, France in 2020 for eight diverse and unusual improvisations.

Essential to any collection charting the transition from Birth of the Cool era jazz to the modern explosion of harmonic and compositional forms, are pianist George Russell's two most essential albums from 1961 & 1962--Ezz-thetics and The Stratus Seekers--in a sextet & septet including Eric Dolphy, Don Elliss, Steve Swallow, &c., remastered to reveal their vital clarity.

A live performance at the 2010 GIO Fest III in Glasgow, UK, from three of the UK's leading free improvisers--late guitarist John Russell, John Butcher on saxophones and Dominic Lash on double bass--a superb concert in five improvisations of incredible technical skill through both energetic and restrained passages, a brilliant example reminding us of the loss of the great guitarist.

A solo album from Austrian-born, NY-based pianist Elias Stemeseder, a member of the Jim Black Trio and Dre Hocevar, here presenting 14 original compositions, succinct works of inventive structures and insightful improvisation along with a traditional Austrian tune "foeggslia'l", an album revealing great skill, quick wit, and a complex mind that yields delightfully intrepid discovery.

Part of Japanese composer Taku Sugimoto's Solo for Strings series, these works focus on bowed stringed instruments played only with natural harmonics, arranged with clarinets and flute, using long tones and repetition that allow the performer decisions on their length, performed by a Berlin-based octet including Catherine Lamb, Johnny Change, Samuel Dunscombe, &c.

Creating complex intervals that the players must "notice among each other" as a model for coexistence, cellist Stefan Thut's score for three string players and sine waves, here configured for double bass (Félicie Bazelaire), acoustic guitar (Fredrik Rasten) and cello (Thut) with Léo Dupleix on sine waves tuned to multiples of prime numbers and attached to the wooden boxes that serve as transducers.

The trio of North Carolina Triangle free jazz players Crowmeat Bob on bass clarinet, clarinet, alto & tenor saxophones, Phil Venable on upright bass, and Charles Chance on drums, Venable and Chance known from The Paul Swest band, here in a studio album of seven collective free improvisations using open and often abstract approaches to melody and rhythm.

Three muscular and inventive solo improvisations on the acoustic upright bass from North Carolina bassist and composer Phil Venable, a member of Tragic Assembly and The Phil Venable - Paul Swest Duo, recorded in the studio in 2022, the three "Basswork" parts are mostly demonstrating his strong walking and plucking skills, at times applying objects to his strings.

Focused on the unusual physical properties of their instruments as tubes and air chambers capable of remarkable palette of sounds, overtones, thumps and inexplicable manifestations, Berlin-based trumpeter Brad Henkel and recorder player Miako Klein present two extended conversation of intensely compatible and wildly controlled, extended approaches to improvisation.

The 3rd installment in percussionist & composer Matt Weston's serialized opera for percussion ensemble + electronics, a set of narratives and counter-narratives that explore mental health struggles as they develop over time in varying circumstances, realized through a combination of site-specific graphic, multidimensional and instantaneous scores.

Three realizations of composer David Behrman's "Unforseen Events" work using computer algorithms to respond to pitch cues from an instrumentalist, first in Berlin in 1989 with Curran and Werner Durand on soprano sax, then in NY in 1999 with Jon Gibson on soprano sax; plus "ViewFinder" with Werner Durand using a motion-triggered camera to alter electronic & wind instrumental sound.

Recorded during the 2002 studio sessions that yielded the albums A Short Visit to Nowhere and Broken English, this unreleased recording of a Mars Williams composition is issued as a 1-sided LP with the stellar lineup of Brötzmann with Williams, Ken Vandermark, Jeb Bishop, Fred Lonberg-Holm, Kent Kessler, Michael Zerang, Hamid Drake, Mats Gustafsson and Joe McPhee.

Reissuing the first release on the Ictus Records label run by percussionist Andrea Centazzo, this 1976 album was the culmination of two weeks of touring through Italy with saxophonist Steve Lacy, presented as a set of improvised free duets investigating timbral relationships, the fragmentation of melody, and abrasive, provocative noise.

Destroy All Monsters and Sensorium Saxophone Orchestra guitarist Ben Miller in an album of experimental solo guitar works, augmenting his guitar with effects, synthesizer, bass, tapes and radio to create seven fascinating works that reflect on his rock background through solid rhythmic and melodic hooks, but also captivates through unusual and suprising sonic elements.

A meditation on the life of Japanese-Americans after living in California's concentration camps during World War II, performed by Patrick Shiroishi through layering of c melody saxophone, alto saxophone, baritone saxophone, tenor saxophone, sopranino saxophone and voice, reflecting on his own grandfathers's seemingly unbearable experience through patience and dignity.

The last installment in Strut's Sun Ra reissue series is also the first time that Sun Ra Arkestra Meets Salah Ragab in Egypt album has been reissued, bringing to light these studio recordings between the Arkestra and Egyptian drummer Salah Ragab, recorded during Ra's 1983 Egyptian tour, and featuring two Ragab compostions from his Cairo Jazz Band.

The Sun Ra Arkestra configured as the 14-piece Centennial Dream Arkestra under the direction of Marshall Allen are heard in an ecstatic live concert at Istanbul's Babylon music club in 2014, released as a double LP audiophile edition, with performances of Sun Ra classics including "Astro Black", "Saturn", "Discipline 27B", and "Satellites Are Spinning".

Reissuing and remastering the two PSF albums from Japanese improvising guitarist Masayuki Takayanagi's New Directions group of bassist Motoharu Yoshizawa, saxophonist Mototeru Takagi and drummer Sabu Toyozumi, plus a previously unreleased side-long "Mass Projection" recording, presented in a deluxe 3 LP box set with images by Yuji Itsumi and liner notes in English and Japanese.

A 12-inch 45rpm EP from Chicago Ken Vandermark's band Marker with guest Joe McPhee on tenor saxophone, performing the Parliament Funkadelic track "Night of the Thumpasorus Peoples" and DNA's "Egomaniac's Kiss", with Vandermark on tenor & baritone saxophones plus guitarists Andrew Clinkman & Steve Marquette, keyboardist Macie Stewart and drummer Phil Sudderberg.

Originally released in 2013 on CDR, this meeting of sound artists Jeph Jerman and Aaron Dilloway show the skill, subtlety, and disruptive sonic skills of two innovators, using objects, damaged electronics, electronic loops and live acoustic sound to create large tapestries: 4 pieces that defy characterization through diverse approaches to impactful sound.

Sound Artist Jeph Jerman explored his Cottonwood, Arizona environment between 2019-2021 to capture the field recordings, windswept drones and close mic-ed minimal sounds that make up Flapndr, combining them in the studio to form complex and sometimes dense compositions that evolve and mutate in a fascinating hybrid of nature and noise.

A performance in Gothenburg, Sweden as part of the contemporary acoustic and electronic society Geiger in their monthly public recording "Geiger Sessions", by sound artists Tim Barnes, Jeph Jerman, and Joachim Nordwall, in a concert of rich and highly textured noise, referencing the astronomical Öpik-Oort cloud described by Dutch astronomer Jan Oort.

Three muscular and inventive solo improvisations on the acoustic upright bass from North Carolina bassist and composer Phil Venable, a member of Tragic Assembly and The Phil Venable - Paul Swest Duo, recorded in the studio in 2022, the three "Basswork" parts are mostly demonstrating his strong walking and plucking skills, at times applying objects to his strings.

The improvising string duo of stalwart London improvisers, Daniel Thompson on acoustic guitar and Phil Durrant on the octave mandola, are heard in two settings of texturally rich, intricate interactions, first at Cafe OTO in 2022 for an extended improvisation, then at Cable Street Studios two months later for six succint, impressively diverse dialogs.

The 2nd of two studio albums from the quartet of Daniel Carter on saxophone & flute, Matthew Shipp on piano, William Parker on bass and Gerald Cleaver on drums, recordings from the same sessions as the 1st volume with five shorter works, as the long-time collaborators and friends show their nearly telepathic rapport in adventurous and masterful modern jazz.