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Recorded circa 1995/96, mostly in John Fahey’s room at a Salem, Oregon boardinghouse, the performances on Proofs and Refutations prefigure the ornery turn of the page that marked Fahey’s final years, drawing another enigmatic rabbit from his seemingly bottomless musical hat, making confoundingly delightful demands upon your listening (and thinking) ears.
Niandra LaDes And Usually Just A T-Shirt is the first solo record by John Frusciante. Between 1990 and 1992 the guitarist made a series of 4-track recordings, which at the time were not intended for commercial release. After leaving the band Red Hot Chili Peppers in 1992, Frusciante was encouraged by friends to release the material that he wrote in his spare time during the Blood Sugar Sex Magik sessions.
Originally released on Rick Rubin's American Recordings label in 1994, Niandra LaDes is a mystifying work of tortured beauty. Frusciante plays various acoustic and electric guitars, experimenting with layers of vocals, piano and reverse tape effects. Channeling the ghosts of Syd Barrett and Skip Spence, his lyrics are at once utterly personal and willfully opaque.
Frusciante's rapidfire, angular playing shows how key he was in the Chili Peppers' evolution away from their funk-rock roots. His cover of "Big Takeover" perfectly deconstructs the Bad Brains original with laid-back tempo, twelve-string guitar and a fierce handle on melody.
The album's second part – thirteen untitled tracks that Frusciante defines as one complete piece, Usually Just A T-Shirt – contains several instrumentals featuring his signature guitar style. Sparse phrasing, delicate counterpoint and ethereal textures recall Neu/Harmonia's Michael Rother or The Durutti Column's Vini Reilly.
On the front cover, Frusciante appears in 1920s drag – a nod to Marcel Duchamp's alter-ego Rrose Sélavy – which comes from Toni Oswald's film Desert in the Shape.
This first-time vinyl release has been carefully remastered and approved by the artist. The double LP set is packaged with gatefold jacket and printed inner sleeves.

The soundtrack to Jim Jarmusch's 1986 film Down By Law is composed and performed by John Lurie, who also plays the pimp Jack in the movie. His world-weary avant-jazz pieces like "Please Come to My House," "What Do You Know About Music, You're Not a Lawyer," "Strangers in the Day," and "Fork in the Road" convey the film's seedy but humorous crime story.</p><iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/cL5J0kRwGQc?si=Lr_tt6C9OrxfJKu5" title="YouTube video player" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" referrerpolicy="strict-origin-when-cross-origin" allowfullscreen></iframe>

Recorded 'live in-studio' in London, July 1970. Previously unreleased. Stereophonic sound. This is one of those occasions when we ‘labellers of music’ get stuck in our own glue. Consider the complication: A group called Indo Jazz Fusions containing Indian and British musicians, an American-born guest, and the result, a uniquely beautiful music which is patently not quite Indian, not quite jazz, not quite contemporary-American. I think the most accurate thing you can say is that it can only be played the way it is by men in contact with the jazz tradition. The group is led, and all the compositions save one were written, by John Mayer. Born in Calcutta, trained first in Indian music, then in classical European music, he came to England about twenty years ago to pursue an orchestral career as a violinist. More recently he has devoted his time entirely to composition and to his Indo Jazz Fusions unit, an idea dating from four or five years ago. As a group it’s been through a number of changes so that now it’s a very fiery, jazzy unit indeed, which doesn’t mean that it’s no longer Indian, as can be heard in the first piece - Raga Malika, based on the rules of the classical Indian raga, a set scale of notes - a kit of parts almost - from which all the resulting solos are built. The rhythm in that case, twelve beats. Not to a bar so much as twelve beats in a recurring cycle. In Serenade you’ll notice the pastoral nature of the sound of Larry Adler’s harmonica against Stan Sulzmann’s flute. In John Mayer’s composition Romance, from which guitar, sitar and tabla are absent, it reaches a degree of intensity seldom heard outside the music of Vaughan Williams, and the piece has one of the most sinuous, unpredictable melodies I’ve ever heard. Larry Adler is the first man as far as I know to have made the harmonica a concert instrument, a feat he achieved in the 1930s, and it’s from the late Thirties that George Gershwin’s Summertime comes. It’s the first time that John Mayer has ever arranged a standard number for this group, and the results are very beautiful indeed. Sarabande by John Mayer is a little more Indian in flavour, though it has a familiar title. In this, John Mayer himself plays violin. The final piece is a return to the raga form, in this case built on a rhythm of eighteen beats. Among the things you’ll hear is a kind of duetting between Jim Moyes on guitar and Clem Alford on sitar. A technique known as the Raga Mehga. I think that Britain is the only place where so many elements could be brought together so successfully. Peter Clayton - July 1970



"This revelatory album positions John Tchicai’s large ensemble, Cadentia Nova Danica (CND), in the broad context of international new music activity. All previous releases by the group presented them as a free jazz unit. There were only three—their self-titled release on Polydor (1968); “Afrodisiaca” (MPS, 1969); and “Live at Jazzhus Montmartre” (Storyville), recorded in 1967 but not released until 2016. They are all on jazz labels, so the bias is perhaps understandable.
CND was a great free jazz group, to be sure. But the band and its leader were willing to experiment with a wide range of musical developments outside of jazz and incorporate them into their music. This LP encompasses a collaboration with classical composer Svend Erik Werner, an experiment with taped sound collage, and a remarkable sui generis composition by Tchicai. With the addition of this album to CND’s discography, a broader and deeper portrait of the band’s courageous spirit begins to emerge.
Tchicai formed the group just after returning to his native Denmark in 1966 after four highly productive years in New York. Upon his return to Copenhagen he immediately sought out musicians with whom he could form a band. He was soon working with an ensemble that included trumpeter Hugh Steinmetz and altoist Karsten Vogel. By late 1966 they became Cadentia Nova Danica (New Danish Cadence). They made their Danish debut at Café Montmartre and quickly developed a reputation as one of the most creative bands in Europe. They remained together until 1971, when Tchicai entered the ashram of Swami Narayanananda for an extended period of meditation during which he didn’t publicly perform.
Tchicai was absorbing new ideas from all directions. Even in New York, he drew inspiration from other art forms. Ayler’s “New York Eye and Ear Control”, in which he took part, was improvised to a film by Michael Snow. Some concerts had a theatrical aspect with Tchicai appearing in face paint or costume. He also composed and performed “Scandinavian Discoveries”, an extended composition for jazz quartet and string quartet that used both standard and graphic notation. The return to Europe gave him access to influences from classical and non-Western musics that would have been unavailable to him in the US. In Denmark, Tchicai crossed paths with other musicians, photographers, filmmakers, and artists willing to exchange ideas and work together. As a result, performances by CND began to reflect influences from other media and other cultures. Tchicai for example absorbed African influences directly from the African musicians living in Europe and made them a permanent part of CND.
To a greater extent than in the U.S., classical composers and improvising musicians in Europe took an interest in each other’s work, and CND sometimes collaborated with classical composers who were looking for experimental settings to explore. One situation found them performing in a subway station where the chimes that signaled the train doors were closing were used as cues to play a line of the composition. They once performed on a spinning carousel at a fairground, where the music was captured getting louder and softer as the musicians passed by fixed mics. There was also a noteworthy collaboration with the improvising composers of Musica Electronica Viva.
The cryptically, if absurdly, titled “Mc Gub Gub, (I–VIII)” is a stunning example of the creative ways Tchicai used ostinatos to structure his compositions and provide a supporting trellis for improvisation. Recorded during a Danish Avantgarde Jazz concert that also included the Contemporary Jazz Quintet, the piece opens with the band loosely repeating a phrase. There’s a constant interchange between composition and improvisation. The written passages also function as transitions between improvised sections, in one case setting up a piano solo whose fluidity contrasts starkly with the angular writing. Many of the transitions are abrupt jump cuts. But in one case the written phrase gradually dissolves as more and more players abandon it to begin improvising. Tchicai and his ensemble explore many relationships between written and improvised on a piece that’s both urgent and playful.
Danish composer Svend Erik Werner, the producer of CND broadcasts during the band’s extended residency at the Danish Broadcasting Corporation in 1969 and 1970, was among those who took an interest in writing for the group. “Ode to St. John” is contemporary in form and outlook but based on methods taken from Gregorian music. It also makes room for improvisation from members of Cadentia Nova Danica. Although vividly contrasting, the two modes of musicmaking speak to one another. The alto saxophone and trumpet duet has a songlike, vocal quality in keeping with the spirit, if not the form, of Gregorian music. It’s a rewarding meeting—and sometimes clash—between ancient and modern.
“Pladepip,” Tchicai’s foray into musique concréte, another modern classical genre, is unlike anything else in Tchicai’s recorded canon. Two full-band improvisations bookend a remarkable audio tape created by Tchicai. At the time, he was a collector of 78s and he took several of them and gouged their surfaces so they would skip and create repeated phrases, much like the ostinatos in his improvising and composing. He then assembled the patterns into a sound collage. The tape is jittery and discontinuous, all hard angles and abrupt phrases. The group improvisations, on the other hand, are soft-edged clouds of sound that develop with a slow pulsing flow. The extreme contrast between sections creates the piece’s surreal drama.
The wide-open borders between musics, the band’s palpable joy in exploration, and their bon homie make this an important addition to Cadentia Nova Danica’s recorded legacy. "

Alga Marghen/Formalibera present the first of a series of released documenting the work of Danish composer and multi-instrumentalist John Tchicai. This new LP features two previously unpublished recordings, "Beautiful United Harmony Happening" with Don Cherry and "Education Of An Amphibian" with Sahib Shihab. Tchicai returned to his native Denmark in July 1966 after spending a remarkable four years in New York City. In that short span, he helped redefine and expand the relationship between soloing, collective improvisation, and composition in small free jazz ensembles such as the New York Art Quartet, the New York Contemporary Five, and on albums such as New York Eye and Ear Control with Albert Ayler and John Coltrane's Ascension. It certainly counts as one of the most fertile periods in any artist's career. Yet when he returned to Europe, Tchicai turned his attention primarily (although not exclusively) to large ensemble music. The breakthroughs made in New York were not lost, but transferred to a large group context, opening up further avenues of exploration. "The Education of an Amphibian" by the John Tchicai Octet represents a first try at "Komponist Udøver Ensemble," or "Composing Improvisers Orchestra," an approach that further blurred boundaries between improvisation and composition. Recorded in October 1966, the piece presents Tchicai as composer and guiding presence; an organizer of sounds; and an explorer of a widening musical vocabulary drawn from contemporary classical and African influences. "Beautiful United Harmony Happening" is something different -- an opportunity to embrace new modes of interdisciplinary performance. From the beginning of his return to Denmark, Tchicai sought out not only musicians, but artists in all artforms and began to organize happenings. Although rarely noted, ideas linked to Fluxus, performance art, and happenings were a large influence of Tchicai's thinking at this time. All these related movements sought to blur or erase boundaries between media and set up juxtapositions between styles and artforms that disrupted received ideas of "high" and "low" art. Participation by non-artists introduced elements that challenged ideas about virtuosity and legitimate expression. Random elements were embraced, and non-Western music and concepts were welcome. This performance, heard here in an excerpt from the full two-hour performance, is very much in this vein. It is one of the last performances involving members of Cadentia Nova Danica, but they are only one component (and hardly the focus) of an ensemble that included a five-member chorus of disciples of the Swami Narayanananda (Tchicai lived at the yogi's ashram and had organized the choir himself), the Diane Black Dance Theatre, and trumpeter Don Cherry. Includes insert.
THE COMPOSERS NOTES ON THE WORKS
The Machines, which date from the period 1967-1972 represent a departure from the more traditionally “narrative” nature of the rest of my pieces. I use the word Machine to define a consistent process governing a series of musical actions within a particular sound world and, by extension, the listener’s perception thereof. One might thus regard the Welsh Rarebit as a Machine in which a process is applied to the conditioning and perception of the world of bread and cheese.
Autumn Countdown Machine presents the guaranteed dis-simultaneity of six pairs of bass melody instruments, each conducted by a percussionist playing in time with, and making minor adjustments to the setting of a bell-metronome.
Son of Gothic Chord presents four keyboard players’ mobilisation of a sequential chord progression rising through the span of an octave.
Jews Harp Machine presents various permutations of the articulations “Ging, Gang, Gong,Gung, Ho!”
Drinking and Hooting Machine presents some observations on the world of bottles and their non-percussive musical potential. The effect of this piece has been compared to that of a large aviary full of owls all practising very slow descending scales.
John White, March 1976
THE SQUIRREL AND THE RICKETTY RACKETTY BRIDGE
The piece, for one player of two guitars, was written at the request of Derek Bailey, the jazz guitarist, in 1971. I had worked closely with Bailey from 1963-6 in and around Sheffield as a member of a group which included Tony Oxley on drums and myself on double-bass. Since that time, I have lost all interest in jazz, and in improvisation, and since Bailey was involved in both I wrote a piece which uses a technique which Bailey would be unlikely to have evolved in his playing. The two guitars are played simultaneously, each one lying flat on its back, and they are arranged side by side so that the two fingerboards can be played with the fingers hammering down on them, like two keyboards. In addition, the score contains a number of ironic references to jazz and to its critical literature - short texts added to the ‘musical’ notations, somewhat in the spirit of Erik Satie, involving the performer in a hypothetical dialogue with the composer using fragments culled from particularly banal pieces of jazz criticism e.g. “ ‘there is an area up here’, holding his hand above his head, palm down,’ where musical categories do not exist.’ ”. The left hand of the player moves at an even pulse, like the walking jazz bass, at a tempo “between Lady is a Tramp” as a medium bounce, and Cherokee as an embarrassment to lesser, and more intrepid, musicians”, while the right hand punctuates this with short notes, like a highly selective, or extremely lazy, trumpet soloist. The title involves an oblique pun to do with the nut of the guitar, the guitar’s bridge, the faint noise of the music in between – that each attack gives two pitches rather than one – and an English children’s song about Billy Goat Gruff.
Derek Bailey recorded the piece on Incus Records in 1971, and this new version is a multiple one, four players on eight guitars, in which each player uses a pair of guitars which are characteristically different from those used by the others.
Gavin Bryars (1971)



Johnny Sais Quoi makes his entrance to Music From Memory with the 7-track EP entitled ‘Love On Ice.’ Channeling the spirit of Italo-pop and New Wave, ‘Love On Ice’ was crafted in the whirlwind of spontaneity and energy that changing circumstances often bring. Born from transition and exploring themes of leaving, arriving, coming together, and breaking up, ‘Love On Ice’ serves as an outlet to process, escape, and celebrate the challenges of a new life.
Johnny crafts exquisite dancefloor-focused pop—familiar yet unique, imbued with his own touch, a distinctive sensibility, and a knack for infectious hooks. The opener, ‘No Guilty Pleasures,’ sets the tone immediately as Johnny works his magic with a palette of synths, drum machines, picked guitar, and processed vocals. The title track, ‘Love On Ice,’ delivers a classic Italo-infused dancefloor bomb, featuring a driving synth bass line overlaid by hypnotic arpeggios. There is much here for the dancer, but ‘Love On Ice’ also ventures beyond the dance floor; the closing tracks ‘Ref 23’ and ‘Let's Find A Home’ are prime examples, both showcasing Johnny’s depth and range with their melancholic, mellow atmosphere.
‘Love On Ice’ will be released on September 18th on vinyl LP and digitally.
For our 100th Eccentric Soul 45, Numero returns to our Ohio roots with three replica 45s from the Capsoul universe. Marion Black's timeless two-sider "Who Knows" b/w "Go On Fool" made a few blips upon its 1970 release, but has taken on a life of its own soundtracking prestige TV and car commercials around the globe and finally going gold after 65 years. We discovered Ron Harrington's "Because You're Mine" demo amongst the Capsoul tapes, a demo cut for founder Bill Moss that never escaped greater Columbus. The mid-tempo harmony joint "It Happened To Me Again" adorns the flip, with a lo-fi funk backbeat tossed in for good measure. Capsoul's crown jewel group harmony quartet Johnson, Hawkins, Tatum & Durr cut just two records in their short time together, but the quartet's "You Can't Blame Me" has endured as a classic example of the raw and unhinged soul sound that Numero is known for. Eccentric Soul from the heart of it all.
オリジナルは10万円以上で取引される事もある骨董的な希少盤!Wolfgang Daunerの某作に負けず劣らず凄いジャケをしています。Eberhard WeberやWolfgang Daunerといった実に豪華な面々を起用したJoki Freund Sextetが1964年に〈CBS〉に残した欧州コンテンポラリー・ジャズ/ポスト・バップの幻の名盤『Yogi Jazz』が〈Tiger Bay〉よりアナログ・リイシュー。Eberhard WeberとKarl Theodor Geierをベースに、Peter Baumeisterをドラムに、Wolfgang Daunerをピアノに迎え、1963年11月20日にフランクフルトで録音された、欧州ジャズ作品でも人気の高い一枚にして長く失われていた金字塔的名作!
Since the mid-1960s, Jon Gibson has played a key role in the development of American avant-garde music. As a versatile reed player, he has performed with everyone from Steve Reich and Philip Glass to Terry Riley and La Monte Young. In the 1970s, Gibson would emerge as a minimalist composer in his own right and release two exceptional albums, Visitations and Two Solo Pieces, on Glass' Chatham Square imprint.
Songs & Melodies brings together recordings from 1973 to 1977 (mostly previously unreleased), featuring prominent figures in New York's scene including Arthur Russell, Barbara Benary and Julius Eastman. This double LP collection showcases the breadth of Gibson's expressive range – from introspective piano meditations to cerebral ensemble works – and the subtlety of his radical compositional techniques.
The front cover artwork, a hand-drawn diagram by Gibson, originally appeared in the program for a March 1974 concert at Washington Square Church in Greenwich Village. While this concert was not the first to feature the composer exclusively, it would be a pivotal event in Gibson's early career as a composer.
Superior Viaduct is honored to present this long overdue archival release that not only documents Gibson's important work, but also a crucial period in NYC musical history.
