Chita, the third album proper by Japanese guitar pop trio Usurabi, is their most elegant, stylish confection yet. Over the past four years, Toshimitsu Akiko (vocals, guitar), Kawaguchi Masami (bass) and Morohashi Shigeki (drums) have been recording, playing live, and releasing songs of rare melodic warmth, centring Toshimitsu’s unique musical vision, where melancholy and joy can co-exist, a split-second flick of her wrist switchblading the guitar from languorous sweetness to overloaded rock action. Chita expands on the smartly sculpted pop and rock songs found on their previous albums, Remains Of The Light (2021) and Outside Of The World (2023), while infusing the music with more of the rough-housing energy that also coursed through the live CD, Once In A Red Room, they self-released in January 2024. There’s still a through-line, of course, that connects the music here to Toshimitsu’s earlier groups, Doodles and Animone, ,but Chita feels more deeply like a sussed, sharp take on the crumbling edges of sixties psychedelic folk and rock: the harmonica that blasts through the opener, “Bansho”, is pure Dylan in effect. One of the many smart things about Usurabi, though, is that they never feel beholden to the historical moment. Soon after “Bansho”, we encounter “TurnOff”, a lush pop song that turns on a dime, with Toshimitsu tearing fuzztone notes from six strings that are like a more folk-reverent Kaneko Jutok. And there’s something about the guitar and bass riff that doubles through the thrilling two-and-a-half minutes of “Hakanonaka” that’s a dead ringer for the Only Ones. Flip the record, and things get more expansive, the spindly jangling of the title song spiralling ever inwards, before the sweet, sugary rush of “Kanata” resolves to the martial rhythms that pulse through “Aseranai”, winding the album down to its poetic, becalmed resolution.

Warm Currency—the duo of Australian artists/musicians MP Hopkins and Mary MacDougall—return for their third release on Horn Of Plenty, following up Returns (2022) and Live at the Petersham Bowling Club (2023). On Petals, the pair’s haunting folk music comes into sharper focus while broadening their sonic palette. Spoken word meets chanted incantations, gently fingerpicked acoustic guitar is placed alongside spindly piano melodies, the creak of floorboards in the background mirrors the creak of fingerprints dragged across guitar strings. Woven throughout are bursts of tape-recorded radio static that reveal hardly distinguishable voices while MacDougall sings of equally fleeting phenomena. Winds, breezes, and mists rattle through houses and crumbling cityscapes throughout, with objects in a constant state of flux: growing, burning, drying, rotting, or unfurling. Such cryptic suggestions and surreal imagery evade easy parsing but like a poignant dream linger with the listener.

We Jazz Reworks is an idea that repurposes some of the label’s output 10 albums at a time. That is, we invite producers whose music we love on board, and one by one, they tackle 10 albums worth of source material, of which they are free to use as much or as little as they choose. The series evolves chronologically, so this volume being number two, the source material is pulled from We Jazz LPs numbers 11 through 20. The artist has complete freedom. Volume 2 in the series happens with Carl Stone, a legendary figure in creative music. His career spans decades of unlimited musical innovation. Stone’s recent output on Unseen Worlds, the label who has also been instrumental in issuing some of his remarkable earlier work, ranks among the most original art of our time and renders notions such as ”genre” virtually meaningless. Here, We Jazz originals by Terkel Nørgaard, OK:KO, Jonah Parzen-Johnson and more are met here with a fresh sense of discovery, spun around and delivered ready for the turntable once again. Carl Stone says: ”It was wonderful that We Jazz gave me carte blanche to work with any materials from the set of ten releases in its catalog. This freedom to work with everything could have been a mixed blessing though, as it could be a challenge to try to deal with so much musical information. In the end I did what I almost always do: Let my intuition be my guide and to seize upon any musical items that seemed to fit into an overall approach.” ”To make a new piece I usually start with an extended period of what really is just playing, the way a child plays with toys. Experimentation without necessary expectation, leading to (hopefully) discovery of things of musical interest, then figuring out a way to craft and shape these into a structured piece of music. Each track uses a different approach, which I found along the way during this play period.” This conceptual approach becomes complete with the design, in which album graphics are treated in a similar fashion, reworking what’s there. This time around, the artwork is reinvented by Tuomo Parikka, a great friend of the We Jazz collective and a regular cover collage contributor for the We Jazz Magazine.

200 copies on black vinyl 7" in handmade & written fold-over sleeve. HoP fave Little Skull returns with this small but no less mighty package. Aotearoan expat Dean Brown has been slowly growing the Little Skull catalogue for the last 21 years. His sound belongs to the Aotearoan underground tradition, folding in elements of portastudio rock, folk and noise. As well as HoP his works have appeared on Planam, Elica, Digital Regress and Anomalous. These two tracks find Little Skull staring into space with his toes in the sand as he conjures a tumble-down cosmic blues dusted with tape hiss and distortion. As usual there’s no titles, just a sun or moon to guide us.

A heartfelt thank you to the beautiful audience that came out on the 10th Feb 2022  to Cafe Oto (London) to make this such an enjoyable show. We came as a blank page, one that had been scrunched up for the years of this horrific pandemic. Upon it all we had written was ‘we must play!’. And so to finally seeing the light of day - as we tentatively unfolded this venture into life - in what we (I hope not prematurely) believe was a slow emergence into a new ‘normal’ (sadly to soon be overshadowed by warfare in Europe joining too many conflicts all around the world, and containing the same imbalances in society as the old normal). This was a pure performance circumstance.  A debut performing together in this format, we have played in different projects over the years - but this particular trio is literally being born on this recording. Mark and Neil are internationally known as masters in multiple fields involving improvisation. Their creativity and interactivity here is both incendiary and inspirational.  The album title ‘Towards The Flame’ - came from my studies with Andy Wasserman. His mentioning a quote from McCoy Tyner - that playing with Coltrane was akin to ‘stepping into the flames’ - every night. A place that is pure spirit, complete commitment to totally connect and the disappearance of the self. We love this and hold every wisdom as a vital guide in times that are ever more threatening to pull us apart. In honour of the incredible shoulders upon which we stand and remain inspired - this band is named The Flame. This is the first set of two. We hope you enjoy!

ALL THE MANY PEOPLS Liner notes by Drew Daniel “Who died by stuffing a chicken with snow?” The astute listener has barely had the time to clock this garbled rendition of Sir Francis Bacon’s death, and with it, the grimly poetic ironies that haunt even the most mundane scientific pursuits, when an even more pressing issue is raised: “How do vampires get boners?” I thought you’d never ask. With manic intensity, caustic wit, and an acute ear for the symptomatic points where linguistic clichés crack open to reveal human fears and longings, Jennifer Walshe has found our culture’s search history, and she is singing its network into vibrant being. When queried about the ingredients from which ALL THE MANY PEOPLS is constructed, Jennifer Walshe offers a list whose voracious breadth of polyglot reference constitutes its own cultural argument: “Lojban, a language constructed entirely according to the rules of predicate logic; the cast of Lohengrin; certain sections from Watt by Samuel Beckett constituting the first examples of process composition; The Public Enemy (1931) starring James Cagney; KRS-One; U.S. and British soldiers making cell-phone videos of themselves blowing things up and uploading the videos to You Tewbe; Even Dwarfs Started Small; Amazonkom message boards about vampire physiology; Dashboard Confessional; sferics; conspiracy theorist Francis E. Dec; detritus from video game voice-overs; Jackie Stallone; August Strindberg’s Inferno; Cymbalta Discontinuation Syndrome; a Hibernian version of “The Signifying Monkey” as response to the 19th century practice of describing/depicting the Irish as “simian”/apes; The Typing of the Dead; cult Irish martial arts film Fatal Deviation; the collective unconscious as evidenced by Googull Autocomplete; Couradge Wolf; 4Tchan” Whether this sounds like a crawling, schizophrenic chaos or like a typical day online depends upon how you spend your time. Confronted by the turbulent intensity of the internet as an immersive manifold of mutually competitive media, all users become bricoleurs, scavenging content from film, literature, video games, social media, philosophy, science fiction, pop music, message boards, and search engine ephemera. Far from succumbing to a blur of non-differentiation which levels down distinctions, in the face of this overplus the online self becomes simultaneously more fluid (open to anything) and more selective (you’ll know it when it you find it): customizing, editing down, prioritizing. There’s another word for this process: composition. At a key point in this one-woman roaratoria, Walshe bursts at breakneck speed into an incantation to the “worldwide computer god Frankenstein containment policy brain bank,” a found fragment of schizophrenic speech which in fact articulates rather precisely the constructivist principles that fashioned ALL THE MANY PEOPLS. The global information ecosystem of the internet (the “worldwide computer god”) is broken into morcellated, dead pieces and fragments and reassembled into an organic body (“Frankenstein”), whose sections are selected according to their expressive intensity and mutually animating rightness of fit (the “containment policy” of composition) and this living body is stored and re-performed by a single, thinking, feeling, art-making human being (the “brain bank” of Jennifer Walshe, composer and performer). Tilting beyond post-modern parlor games in which “high” culture and “low” culture rub shoulders (as if there could be a singular, common parameter with which to negotiate this kind of surplus, as if the top down structures of expertise and gatekeeping were still in place), Walshe’s “brain bank” operates at lightning speed and a high temperature, offering us what, to take up the parlance of Henri Lefebvre, one might term a “rhythmanalysis” of our media day. This striking solo performance draws upon all of the intuitive nuances and micro-adjustments of a highly skilled vocalist, mimic and free improviser, but Walshe marshalls these immanent interpretive archives of body memory and gut level directness in the service of a conceptually ambitious and radically democratic agenda: revealing the way that the social multitude—the “many peopls” of Walshe’s title—constitutes the raw material from which the assemblages that we call selves emerge. Against the backdrop of a world of contemporary music which all too often seems trapped in a sterile endgame of funding-driven citations of arts council agendas and formerly “avant garde” gestures stripped of force, we need Walshe’s fearlessness, speedy metabolism, and critical ear more than ever. The progress bar has loaded.

2xLP; DVD, libretto, large 16p Booklet in printed cardboard box A music drama composed by Sven-Åke Johansson and Alexander von Schlippenbach, performed and recorded at Hebbel Theater, Berlin, 12.11.1994 In the programme, Johansson describes his observations of construction workers who "spend a good part of their lives – when it rains or snows, while changing clothes and so on – in these so-called construction wagons, usually set up in the immediate vicinity of the construction sites." The drama thus at the core employs an approach very typical of him: observing everyday activities and reinterpreting them artistically. What makes it unique is the combination of art forms: (absurd) theatre, dance, song and free jazz all are equal parts. Never, one of these becomes a simple accompaniment of the other. They alternate and mix, eventually leading to a Babylonian confusion that becomes meaningful in itself. Despite or maybe even because of its uniqueness, this opera is one of Johansson's key works. "... Über Ursache ..." was performed three times between 1986 and 1994. The audio recording of the premiere at the Stuttgart State Opera was released by FMP as a standard double LP in 1989. The 1994 audio and video recordings from the Hebbel Theatre in Berlin are presented here for the first time, packaged as a lavish box set with two LPs, a DVD, a 16-page booklet with photos and liner notes by Johansson, Konrad Heidkamp and Peter Ablinger, plus 20-page libretto – an edition that this spectacular work has deserved for a long time.  Cello – Tristan Honsinger Harp – Anne Le Baron Percussion, Drums – Paul Lovens Piano – Alexander von Schlippenbach Saxophone, Clarinet – Wolfgang Fuchs Saxophone - Dietmar Diesner Vocals – Shelley Hirsch Vocals, Accordion – Sven Åke Johansson Libretto-text by Sven-Åke Johansson & Shelley Hirsch Design by Teresa Iten Cover and Drawings by Sven-Ake Johansson

Recorded live in Donaueschingen, Germany at the Donaueschinger Musiktage, this performance of drummer Michael Wertmüller's jazz composition ‘Sketches And Ballads’ combines free form blast with the kind of jazz phrasing that Gil Evans introduced into Miles Davis' 1960s LP Sketches of Spain (an album that partly influenced Wertmüller's work here). Fronted by Full Blast, a trio made up of saxophonist Peter Brötzmann, e-bass player Marino Pliakas and Wertmüller on drums, they were joined by Ken Vandermark, Thomas Heberer and Dirk Rothbrust whose playing gave the piece a more elastic musical muscle to flex. With Brötzmann on board one might expect a full on free form blare, but instead ‘Sketches And Ballads’ calls for him to play in a more melancholic style, where he produces a flowing sound from his instrument that acts as the perfect balance to Wertmüller's almost rock driven score.

Pressed on 180-gram vinyl; presented in gatefold sleeve. Cien Fuegos presents a reissue of an untitled LP by Peter Brötzmann, Fred van Hove, and Han Bennink, originally released on FMP in 1973. Peter Brötzmann: clarinet; alto, tenor, baritone, bass saxophones. Fred van Hove: celesta, piano. Han Bennink: drums, khene, rhythm-box, selfmade clarinet, gachi, oe-oe, voice, tins, homemade junk, elong, dhung, kaffir piano, dhung-dkar. Recorded by Dietram Köster on February 25, 1973, Bremen. Photographs by Dagmar Gebers and Krista Brötzmann; design by Peter Brötzmann.

First vinyl reissue of Alarm by the Peter Brötzmann Group, originally released on FMP in 1983. Harry Miller: bass; Louis Moholo: drums; Alexander von Schlippenbach: piano; Peter Brötzmann: saxophone; Frank Wright: saxophone; Willem Breuker: saxophone; Toshinori Kondo: trumpet; Alan Tomlinson: trombone; Hannes Bauer: trombone. Recorded during the 164th NDR Jazzworkshop, November 12, 1981, at the Funkhaus Hamburg. Produced by Peter Brötzmann and Jost Gebers. Cover design by Peter Brötzmann.

Reissue, originally released on FMP in 1979. Personnel: Peter Brötzmann - alto and tenor saxophone, E flat clarinet, A clarinet, bass clarinet; Misha Mengelberg - piano, voice; Han Bennink - drums, tenor saxophone, clarinet etc. Recorded by Jost Gebers on February 26th, 1979 at the Akademie der Künste in Berlin. Produced by Peter Brötzmann and Jost Gebers. Cover design by Peter Brötzmann. Photograph by Roberto Masotti. Remastered by Martin Siewert in 2021. 180 gram vinyl.

Cien Fuegos presents a reissue of Peter Brötzmann's 14 Love Poems, recorded and first released by FMP in 1984. Inspired by a poetry booklet by Kenneth Patchen (from which it takes it‘s title), this album focuses on expression and emotion. "A monument of post-free solo reeds playing and a stunning item in Peter Brötzmann's discography, 14 Love Poems is arguably the German saxophonist and clarinetist's strongest, most compelling solo statement. Recorded and first released by FMP in 1984, this LP showcases the full scope of the man's art and presents it in a form much more enticing than what you'd expect. This album focuses on expression and emotion instead of virility or power (two terms often used to describe Brötzmann's playing). If 14 Love Poems can be dubbed "the softer side of Peter Brötzmann," it is by no mean a collection of watered-down solos. On the contrary, one finds all the energy, ferociousness, and angst the man is rightfully known for, but his palette of feelings is stretched out to also include tenderness, elevation, and beatitude. The opening "NR. 1" (no titles, just numbers) is in fact a tempered, delicate rendition of Ornette Coleman's "Lonely Woman" on baritone sax. All the other pieces are freely improvised. They are all short (nothing over five and a half minutes), and the track list emphasizes mood swings and instrument swapping. In the course of the original album's 50 minutes, Brötzmann plays baritone; tenor and alto saxes; A, E flat, and bass clarinets; and tarogato. The range of instruments, emotions, and techniques (from straightforward melody to sound-breath techniques, circular breathing, split tones, etc.) produces a very rich, diverse, and ultimately endearing album. These pieces were recorded during the original sessions, August 21-23, 1984. Despite the fact that they don't add to the album (in terms of sound palette or techniques), they are just as lovely and striking as the pieces originally released -- not leftovers at all. This album is essential to understand the solo albums later recorded by John Butcher, Alessandro Bosetti, and the like. "Highly recommended. 10/10"  AllMusicGuide --- Peter Brötzmann / alto, tenor & baritone saxophone, a-,e-flat & bass clarinet, tarogato --- Cover by Peter Brötzmann. Producer: Jost Gebers, Peter Brötzmann. Mix: Jost Gebers, Peter Brötzmann.All compositions by Peter Brötzmann, except Lonely Woman by Ornette Coleman. Recorded and first released by FMP in 1984

REVIEWS "The edges of Schlippenbach’s trio/quartet music have gradually feathered over the past dozen years, a process benchmarked by “Anticlockwise”. Evan Parker’s careening tenor prompts a dramatic sweep from the group that echoes Coltrane’s last period, as on Ore; his multiphonic-oriented soprano style elicits a more spiky rapport. The exceptional American bassist Alan Silva makes an intriguing debut with the quartet, his incisive phrasing and nuance-filled arco technique serving as a lynchpin between Schlippenbach’s densities and Loven’s asymmetries." - Bill Shoemaker, CODA Evan Parker: soprano & tenor saxophone Alexander von Schlippenbach: piano Alan Silva: double bass Paul Lovens: drums, percussion

The only LP featuring a band under Peter Kowald's name, Peter Kowald Quintet comes from a vital moment in the German bassist's career. A close colleague of Peter Brötzmann's in their formative years, including the saxophonist's debut For Adolphe Sax and the classic Machine Gun, Kowald had by 1972 broadened his circle of collaborators, eventually working with a who's who of global creative music. Recorded live in Berlin, released on FMP, this date documents a tensile ensemble, with an unusual lineup featuring two trombones – Londoner Paul Rutherford and the German maestro Günter Christmann – together with the less-well-known Dutch alto saxophonist (and sculptor) Peter van de Locht and brilliant German percussionist Paul Lovens. Kowald adds to the low brass when he turns from double-bass to tuba and alphorn. Spacious and fiery, these four tracks are exemplary European free music led by one of the music's foremost originals – Kowald's rough and ready bass, which was anchoring (and de facto leading) the Globe Unity Orchestra of that period, is echoed in the take-no-prisoners music of the fivesome.Mastered from original tapes, this first-ever CD release features a facsimile version of the original cover, which featured artwork by ten non-musician friends and unique hand-additions. Track Times: Platte Talloere (13:08) Wenn Wir Kehlkopfoperier Te Uns Unterhalten (7:09) Pavement Bolognaise (14:01) Guete Luuni (2:38) Peter Kowald, bass, tuba, alphorn Paul Rutherford, trombone Günter Christmann, trombone Peter van de Locht, alto saxophone Paul Lovens, drums

In 1961 Sun Ra took off from Chicago – where he had established the Arkestra, his dedicated ensemble and the vehicle for his mission to better the planet – and with a scaled-down version of the band he landed in NewYork. Their first recording session was in Newark in October of that year. The Futuristic Sounds of Sun Ra, recorded for the Savoy label, is a beautiful document of the material they'd honed during a long residency at the Wonder Inn at the end of the Chicago period. Among tracks left in the vault from that day in the studio were these two great ballads sung by Ricky Murray, both of them redolent of the bright popcraft that had long been part of Ra's repertoire, with classic Afrofuturist themes of navigating outer space and altered destiny cloaked in sweet songs with tart arrangements. This 7-inch vinyl single is limited to 1000 copies, with full-color cover including a rare photo of the band with Ricky Murray. --- Released: Corbett vs Dempsey

Globe Unity is available on vinyl CvsDLP003 and CD CvsDCD091 In 1966, pianist Alexander von Schlippenbach assembled his first large ensemble to play his compositions “Globe Unity” and “Sun.” This 14-piece band, which brought together some of the leading figures in European improvised music, would eventually expand – incorporating not only Europeans but also American and Asian musicians – and assume its rightful name: Globe Unity Orchestra. In its nascent outing, beautifully recorded at Ariola Studio in Cologne, Schlippenbach’s band was already sensational, performing at various festivals and solidifying the reputations of some of its star players. Most notably among these was a 25-year-old saxophonist named Peter Brötzmann, whose whole band – saxophonist Kris Wanders, drummer Mani Neumeier, and bassist Peter Kowald, the latter of whom would for a period assume nominal leadership of Globe Unity – was incorporated into the large Schlippenbach group. Globe Unity was Brötzmann’s first outing on LP. Kowald’s too. And future drum heroes of the krautrock genre, Neumeier (with Guru Guru) and Jaki Liebezeit (with Can) constitute the incredible rhythm section. If you factor in German early-free-music mainstays Gunter Hampel (here on flute and bass clarinet, no vibes), trumpeter Manfred Schoof, bassist Buschi Niebergall, and tenor saxophonist Gerd Dudek, Dutch saxophonist and clarinetist Willem Breuker, French trumpeter Claude Deron, the enormity of the band’s potential becomes apparent. Add Schlippenbach himself, an absolute cyclone on the piano as well as prominent tubular bells and gong, and the global scene is set. Schlippenbach’s unique position at the time, as one of the foremost players in German free music, but also as a rising young composer who’d studied with Bernd Alois Zimmermann, allowed him to serve as exactly the right conduit for several approaches to creative music, from introducing his graphically notated scores to making a perfect context for the debuts of future star improvisors Brötzmann and Kowald.Schlippenbach’s Globe Unity was first issued on SABA in 1967, then MPS a couple of years after that. It has long been out of print and has only ever appeared on CD in a tiny Japanese version published in 1999. Corbett vs. Dempsey is reissuing this classic record in a special, strictly limited edition of 500 vinyl LPs and 1000 CDs, with a faithful facsimile of the original LP’s gatefold cover. The music was remastered from the original tapes and is licensed directly from MPS. Anyone interested in the history of improvised music needs to hear Globe Unity, which retains a sense of urgency 56 years after it was waxed. Track List: 1. Globe Unity 20’122. Sun 20’34 Musicians: Manfred Schoof Claude Deron Willi Lietzmann Peter Brötzmann Gerd Dudek Kris Wanders Willem Breuker Gunter Hampel Karlhanns Berger Buschi Niebergall Peter Kowald Jaki Liebzeit Mani Neumeier Aleaxander von Schlippenbach Produced by: Joachim E. Berendt Recording director: Willi Fruth Engineer: Gert Lemnitz Recorded December 6th and 7th, 1966 at Ariola Studio Cologne Cover painting: “C 12” by Henry Garde Photos: Uwe Oldenberg Cover design and layout: Gigi Berendt Compositions by Alexander von Schlippenbach

Original deadstock copies of 46,000 Fibres’ ‘Reconstructed’, an album released on short-lived South London label Dyscfunctional in 1999. 46,000 Fibres are a UK-based improvisational group, formed in 1993 out of a group called Koven-oe, which included Robin Rimbaud (aka Scanner). When he left, the remaining trio of Richard Clarke, Tonal Davidson (aka Tonal D) and Leon Maurice-Jones decided to switch from structured material to explore electro-acoustic free improvisation. The idea was not to arrange or talk about the music but to rely on the musical telepathy between them and, without resorting to cliches, create ‘something unique’. The results ranged from ethereal delicacy to hard industrial, space rock, gamelan stylings, radical jazz, dark funk and their forte of sonic soundscapes. The line-up for the group was often fluid, though with a core of Tonal D & Leon Maurice-Jones. Musicians who they’ve collaborated with over the many past years include Nik Turner, Lol Coxhill, Scanner and Ashley Wales. In 1999 they put out three live albums as part of their fifth anniversary together. Later that year, they released ‘Reconstructed’, an album where band members and guests were invited to sample moments from their improvisations to make something a bit more coherent and more for the contemporary dance/club scene. Placing this album in their catalogue, it’s certainly their most commercial outing and could be viewed as their nod to the 90s chillout scene. In any case, it doesn’t take much to imagine how chilled an album put together by a bunch of misfit experimental jazz improvisers might be… Some of the tracks are up on YouTube, though a few of the best are not..

Anthony’s post-Slapp Happy output, for years an underrated-to-outright unknown quantity, achieves a new dimensional plane with this third archival release from his personal tape library. Home of the Demo triangulates upon the art-pop qualities found in his previously unreleased 1976 LP OUT, and ‘79’s new wave-adjacent Flying Doesn’t Help, finding Anthony’s early/mid-80s home recordings drifting whimsically in and out of the actual mainstream.