Based on more than 200 interviews with Rollins himself, family members, friends, and collaborators, as well as Rollins' extensive personal archive, Saxophone Colossus is the comprehensive portrait of this legendary saxophonist and composer, civil rights activist and environmentalist. A child of the Harlem Renaissance, Rollins' precocious talent landed him on the bandstand and in the recording studio with Bud Powell, Thelonious Monk, Charlie Parker, Miles Davis and Dizzy Gillespie, or playing opposite Billie Holiday. An icon in his own right, he recorded Tenor Madness, featuring John Coltrane; Way Out West; Freedom Suite, the first civil rights-themed album of the hard bop era; A Night at the Village Vanguard; and the 1956 classic Saxophone Colossus.Yet his meteoric rise to fame was not without its challenges. He served two sentences on Rikers Island and won his battle with heroin addiction. In 1959, Rollins took a two-year sabbatical from recording and performing, practicing up to 16 hours a day on the Williamsburg Bridge. In 1968, he left again to study at an ashram in India. He returned to performing from 1971 until his retirement in 2012.?The story of Sonny Rollins-innovative, unpredictable, larger than life-is the story of jazz itself, and Sonny's own narrative is as timeless and timely as the art form he represents. Part jazz oral history told in the musicians' own words, part chronicle of one man's quest for social justice and spiritual enlightenment, this is the definitive biography of one of the most enduring and influential artists in jazz and American history.

Otoroku presents a daedal, multifarious set from artist, Patrick Ward, recorded on a bill alongside Moritz von Oswald at Cafe OTO in September 2024. Ward begins with a deep sub-bass rumble that seems to almost physically rise up out of the floor; a weighty mass that slowly but inexorably draws other sonic fragments into its own gravitational field, quivering and contorting as they orbit around it. The pressure builds, before abruptly the disparate elements coalesce around a single, urgently repeated refrain that snaps and slices in a persistent staccato that appears loaded with meaning but in a language unknown. This sense of warped and fractured vernacular continues, as stilted, stuttering voices spark and falter amidst the sonic debris tumbling around them; speech untethered from language, language severed from meaning. Perhaps it is more accurate to say that these voices are in fact overladen with significance; an abundance of spoken signs and symbols in a complex lexicon whose implications always remain tantalisingly out of reach. The voices shift, from an isolated repeated refrain, to multiple raised shouts that become engulfed by a growing wall of distortion that builds and erupts into a scattered and corrupted breakbeat before it too unravels, leaving behind only the gentle buzzing and intimate whirring of unknown apparatus.

For 60 years, Cecil Taylor’s music marked the farthest boundary of avant-garde jazz. His volcanic piano improvisations, delivered with astonishing technical command and unrelenting power at marathon length, were regarded as the ultimate in free jazz. But Taylor was much more than that: He was one of jazz’s (and America’s) great composers and arrangers, developing a unique and instantly recognizable compositional voice and a radical method of transmitting his ideas that in effect taught the members of his ensembles to speak an entirely new musical language. In the Brewing Luminous is the first full-length biography of Cecil Taylor. In the Brewing Luminous takes the reader from his birth in 1929 to his death in 2018 and beyond. It provides detailed analysis of his extensive body of work, which encompassed solo performance and ensembles of every size from duos to big bands, and included work meant to accompany dancers and theatrical performances. It also explores his poetry and the broader milieu of which he was a part. Taylor was not an island; he was a fixture on the New York cultural scene and welcomed with open arms in Germany, Italy, Japan and elsewhere. And he did not work in isolation — his bands were crucial collaborators, and his music was impossible to imagine without the contributions of players like alto saxophonist Jimmy Lyons, bassist William Parker, and drummer Andrew Cyrille, all of whom and many more are discussed here as well.

Gibraltar is a collaborative project between Joe McKay and Matthias Urban. Jejunum was produced by collecting sound samples from the two artists’ archives. It includes, among other things, a series of recordings from McKay’s body (stomach, intestines) and WebSDR samples collected over time. These samples were then sent to the other half of the duo to be integrated into the production of the final pieces. Known for his exploratory approach to sound, Urban remains true to himself by using various techniques in the production of Jejunum. Some of these techniques are recurrent in his work: chemically treated tape, PD and MaxMSP programming, contact microphones and ASC reel-to-reel machines. The artist also explores new techniques that feature prominently in Jejunum: feedback & standing wave recordings and acoustic instruments using saxophone mouthpieces and found objects built specifically for this project.

Kumio Kurachi is a Japanese singer-songwriter who has been active since the 1980's. This is his 11th solo album and only the second to be released outside of Japan following ‘Sound of Turning Earth’ (2018) on bison.Though his songs are written and performed primarily on guitar, “Open Today” is a return to Kurachi’s full, multi-instrumental recording style - featuring drums, bass, strings, keys and Kurachi’s rich, distinctive vocals in multiple voicings. Incredibly, all instrumental performances and arrangements were performed and recorded by Kurachi himself - marking a brilliant return to the fully fleshed out visionary world we fell in love with on Supermarket Chitose (Enban, 2006).The super fine detail and dense landscapes of ‘Open Today’ should come as no surprise really - Kurachi is an illustrator by trade and it bleeds right through to his music. Even to the non-native speaker Kurachi’s vocals hold centre stage - at times enormous and thundering over urgent guitar and toms, then switching to softly spoken words amongst keys. Frequently Kurachi multiplies, whether multitracking himself or summoning voices for the characters he writes from sightings on train platforms or supermarkets. His lyrics - translated to English for both formats - are more like poetry, and though written about the mundane they quickly become surreal, bringing the quality of dreams into the everyday. The hours spent on buses, trains or walking home towards a cheap flat - familiar to us all - are catalysts for microcosms of detail. Again, we shouldn’t be surprised - Kurachi is well known in Japan for winning the national championship of NHK's "Poetry Boxing" in 2002, which also might explain his amazing Discogs photo.Poet, illustrator, multi-instrumentalist - Kurachi is thought of by many as a genius. He’s worked with Jim O’Rourke, Tori Kudo, Eiko Ishibashi and Taku Unami (who did the mastering on this LP). There are lines to be drawn between Kurachi and Kazuki Tomokawa or Kan Mikami, but also Francis Plagne and Fairport Convention. Ultimately though there is nothing else like it - it’s a brand of strange songcraft that’s totally captivating. 

Recorded live at Wirr, Open Loose Festival , 2015, Vienna --- Katharina Ernst / drums Martin Siewert / guitar ---