The second round of Cylene, Bonnet & O’Malley’s collaboration initiated in 2018 and continued without interruption since then in a slow stream of concerts, installations and recordings. A presentation of tones and resonances where harmonic intersections elevate from the deep and scale up to the far firmament in careful motion, drawing emotions viscerally from the chest, giving rise to the suggestibility of the soul.

The Art Ensemble of Chicago has been at the forefront of creative improvised music since 1969, and has long served as the flagship ensemble of the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM), the august Chicago-based organization that also fostered the careers of members such as Muhal Richard Abrams, Anthony Braxton, Henry Threadgill, and Wadada Leo Smith, among many others. The greatness of the Art Ensemble has always been the shared commitment of its original members – Roscoe Mitchell, Lester Bowie, Joseph Jarman, Malachi Favors, and Famoudou Don Moye – to the total realm of African diasporic music: what they have long-termed “Great Black Music—Ancient to the Future.” Also important are the group’s disparate musical and artistic personalities, comprised of jazz, advanced compositional techniques, theatrical performance, poetry, Pan-African percussion, all tied together with improvisational flair and the exploration of pure sound. Comprised of two discs: a meticulous studio session and the capture of a rousing live set at Edgefest in Ann Arbor, MI, We are on the Edge: A 50th Anniversary Celebration is exactly that, a commemoration of a half-century of magical music making. Not content to rest on their laurels, surviving members Mitchell and Moye have recruited a diverse group of fifteen highly-individual talents who bring their own approaches to the Art Ensemble aesthetic. Together, these virtuoso musicians honor the group’s history and help advance the legacy of Lester Bowie, Malachi Favors, and the recently departed Joseph Jarman. With clear intent towards representation, the group’s engagement of musicians such as Nicole Mitchell, Tomeka Reid, Moor Mother (Camae Ayewa), Christina Wheeler, Silvia Bolognesi and Jean Cook – women who are without peer as improvisers and performers – help bring a new perspective to the music. The sheer breadth of the ensemble’s collective expression is staggering, and it serves as a clarion declaration that Mitchell and Moye are intent on carrying forth the powerful ethos of the Art Ensemble forcefully into its sixth decade. As Moor Mother declares: “We are on the edge!” MUSICIANS Roscoe Mitchell – sopranino, soprano and alto saxophones Famoudou Don Moye – drums, congas, djembe, dundun, gongs, Congo bells, bendir, triangles, Thai bells, shakers Moor Mother (Camae Ayewa) – voice, poetry (Disc One #3, 4, 10) Rodolfo Cordova-Lebron – voice (Disc One #1, 6, 9) Hugh Ragin – trumpets, flugelhorn, Thai bells Fred Berry – trumpet, flugelhorn Nicole Mitchell – piccolo, flute, bass flute Christina Wheeler – voice, Array mbira, autoharp, Q-Chord, Moog Theremini, sampler, electronics Jean Cook – violin Edward Yoon Kwon – viola Tomeka Reid – cello Silvia Bolognesi – bass Jaribu Shahid – bass, tuned brass bowls Junius Paul – bass Dudù Kouaté – djembe, tama/talking drum, calabashes, kanjira, whistles, chimes, bells and small percussions (Disc One only) Enoch Williamson – bongos, congas, djembe, kenkeni, okonkolo, Congo bells, chekeré, shakers, tama/talking drum Titos Sompa – vocals, congas, mbira, Congo bells, cuica, shakers Stephen Rush – conductor

First vinyl re-issue of Evan Parker’s duo with George Lewis. Transferred from the original masters, we discovered that the original Incus LP was cut at the wrong speed - and so, we present the first vinyl issue of the correct masters, or ‘mastas’ as Adam Skeaping, legendary engineer who is also responsible for Six of One and Compatibles, fondly calls them.  Skeaping, always working with the latest in recording technology for the time, has a knack for gaining access to remarkable spaces. Good spaces that were cheap because no one else had discovered them. The Art Workers Guild is a Georgian Hall in Bloomsbury, London, with lofty ceilings and hard wooden floors. It’s the perfect room to exercise an instrument to its full length, to ‘run the full length of the staircase’ in Parker's words. Two bells to ring off the floor and remain in dextrous, airy resonance. Recorded at 30ips on enormous reels, the recording captures all the fine filigree detail so celebrated on Parker’s later ‘Six of One’, though here we are treated to tenor as well as soprano, plus, of course, George Lewis’ trombone. Parker and Lewis first met at Moers festival, Lewis having just played excerpts of Coltrane’s ‘Giant Steps’ with Anthony Braxton. Living in Paris, it wasn’t so hard for a young Parker to invite him for a session on his new imprint, Incus. Though having been part of the AACM, toured with Count Basie and made records for Black Saint, this would be Lewis’ first foray into British improv, excited by the idea the Bailey and Parker were attempting to open up the notion of improvisation to include “the freshness of the immediate encounter”.  Lewis had not long recorded his solo LP, which mixes lively hints of Ellington and tender lyricism with total experimentation in three part overdubbed trombone. From Saxophone to Trombone veers towards his wilder end of technicality, and features some of Lewis’ rarer, starker improv - all avant garde burbles and bubbles, breath control and scalar flights. It’s a recording of two young masters, documented beautifully, and released for the first time on vinyl at its intended speed.  

Chicago-based guitarist / composer Eli Winter’s new self-titled album finds him building on the promise of his recent records—like 2020’s Unbecoming and his 2021 collaboration with Cameron Knowler, Anticipation—with a gem of an album on which he leads an ad-hoc group that delicately balances a range of colors and moods. Winter is an accomplished player with impeccable technique and an unassuming virtuosity, capable of both mesmerizing intricacy and florid romanticism, but on Eli Winter he frequently plays a supporting role, creating ample room for his collaborators. The result is the sound of an artist escaping any lingering shadows of his primary influences and coming into his own; ironically, Winter does this by deemphasizing his role as traditional bandleader. Assisted by a murderer’s row of peers and contemporaries including Cameron Knowler, Yasmin Williams, David Grubbs, Ryley Walker, Tyler Damon, jaimie branch, and others, Eli Winter showcases a compositional depth and authoritative skill only hinted at on Winter’s rightfully acclaimed previous work. “For a Chisos Bluebonnet” begins the album on a perky and playful note, placing Winter in conversation with guitarist Knowler and pedal steel dynamo Sam Wagster, displaying in microcosm the dialectical, sympathetic collaborative language that is a hallmark of the album. The sound, largely captured by engineer Cooper Crain, is light and tight, with a panoramic clarity that renders the music lifesize. “Davening In Threes” continues, at first, the galloping, exuberant feel of its predecessor, as the harmonizing guitars of Wagster, Knowler, and Winter manage to extract beauty from a bluegrass breakdown tempo. Then, suddenly, Williams joins the trio for an interlude of harmonics before the suite concludes with a martial third act in 6/8 time. At this point it’s as if Winter begins to intuitively worry that all this prettiness is making us a tad too comfortable. The antidote arrives in the form of the dark-hued “No Fear,” which sounds like a prelude to a showdown; the slow-burn improvisation blends Wagster’s slingshots of whinnying pedal steel, Jordan Reyes’ rangy synthesizer scramble, and all manner of tube-sizzling, tremolo bar scree by Winter, Knowler, and Walker. The track provides no catharsis but rather hums with a sustained, agitated intensity. Side two begins with the pastoral post-rock of “Brain on Ice,” a soaring piece almost tender in its elegance, punctuated by the telepathic rapport of Damon’s percussion and Knowler’s nimbly ruminative acoustic guitar. “Dayenu” sounds at first as if it were composed on a commission or a dare to convey in sound a twinkle of the eye, before its fake-out ending pivots to a dramatic crescendo of branch’s proclamatory flugelhorn, Knowler’s rabbit-punch guitar interjections, and a shower of cymbals courtesy of Damon. The album saves the best for last, in the form of “Unbecoming,” which features Winter on 12-string guitar alongside Grubbs’ spectral harmonium and the harmonic, birdsong-evoking trills of Whitney Johnson’s viola, before gradually clearing a space for Liz Downing’s bowed banjo and a distant choir, courtesy of Downing and vocalist Giulia Chiappetta, whose lush harmonies provide the welcome and unexpected sound of heavenly human voices just as the song begins to fade, concluding the album with a tacit reminder, perhaps, that when God is busy or silent or absent, angels often pick up the slack.

MOONBOW is an international septet playing freedom music full of pure energy, levitating improvisations, ecstatic grooves, and unforgettable themes. The band consists of seven accomplished, internationally recognized improvisers from five different European countries. It was foundedin early 2015 in Copenhagen, Denmark, where their paths suddenly crossed. The music for MOONBOW was composed by the bass player Tomo Jacobson, but the imperative of working with the bandwas to give the band members freedom to shape the material their own way, fully engaging their unique, strong, and diverse creative intuitions. This way MOONBOW's music always stays alive and forever keeps surprising audiences around the planet Earth. MOONBOW is into, about, and for freedom. It was created and it isexecuted with an intention to express the conviction that we are allfree within, and to inspire earthlings to freedom.

He originates from a parallel universe and is in possession of alien technology that he uses to create self-discovery music for your listening pleasure. After his ultra-low-fi Mini CD single PLAYS (Gotta Let It Out, 2023), TOMO comes back with not one but two stunning EPs released on a single 180g vinyl in a beautiful gatefold cover. Six 80s YAMAHA synths and drum machines, the beloved midi-ribbon, and two Fostex 4-track tape recorders become a space-time ship here, taking us on an idiosyncratic journey into sound and a stylistic blender. In TOMO's own words: "Each of these machines has their own unique sound to them. There's limitations and glitches. There's particulates of tone. There's an illusion of an unbroken conviction in each and every sound they make. There's a stylistic mishmash. There's emotional and cultural contexts these tones inhabit in our collective and subjective psyche. These machines make music on their own if you let them. This is my tribute to them." We gave up on trying to describe this music, but perhaps the way TOMO classifies it could help: lo-fi, Nu-80s, ADHD, ASD, inside-out, ultimate-stoner, proto-dance, naiveté, electro-shamanic, spiritual, toddler-jam, magical realism, space-emo.

IL SOGNO is about storytelling, freedom and intuition. The Polish-Danish-Italian trio uses melodic, minimal compositions as a motor for elevated and focused collective improvisations. With its lyrical uniqueness, their music floats on the borders between genres, landing somewhere between jazz, motion picture soundtrack, experimental and minimalism. Italian opera and the Polish romantic piano heritage, as well as the Danish wise interpretation of the African-American culture play a decisive role in the background, combining a mature, personal sound with deep emotional content.

Setting bookmarks... That's maybe the most effective description to explain Roy Montgomery's trajectory into a guitarsound which is recognizable from thousands. The titletrack features Emma Johnston vocals lifting that distinctive guitarplay into heavenly blossoming maram grass protecting and treasuring your faith in music pur sang. 'Birthday Piece For Varia' breaths closely into his past with Dadamah/Hash Jar Tempo clashing with the 'Scenes From South Island' timecapsule. A kind of surrealistic hypnotic soundtrack situated in medieval times with knights going into a gun duel with victorian lords. Roy Montgomery's discography is a organic evolution into perfection. This 7" is the perfect symbiosis of this.

Senyawa’s vocalist Rully Shabara explores his own vocal territories in so many diverse and extravagant ways, 6 short pieces that widely expose his incredible skills and unique ways of expression. Released on a limited 7inch format.

The first in the Rimarimba series, 1983’s Below The Horizon, features Robert Cox in exploratory mode, figuring out exactly how to make his music. There’s a pleasure in hearing how he feels out the parameters of his aesthetic, here – there’s a boxy minimalism, slightly clunky and charming with it, that reflects the home-spun, improvisatory tenor of the compositions. It’s ambitious music, though, wanting to do the most and the best it can with its limited resources. Cox himself admits to not being “pre-wired” to making this music, but that only makes it more compelling: “Were I to be properly musical, it wouldn’t actually work as well in some ways; it’d be just another album of contemporary clattery music.”

Spectre is the third album by the late West Coast composer, healer, and medium Pauline Anna Strom. First released in 1984, the album finds Strom exploring the darker corridors of human mythology under the influence of vampiric lore, evoking a hushed gothic solitude and showcasing her breathtaking dexterity of sound design. Despite its shadowy hues, Spectre offers generous glimpses of a vivid light that could only have come from a heart wide open to the cosmos. Restored and mixed from the original reels by Marta Salogni, and newly remastered, this is the album’s first ever official reissue, and the definitive edition of a visionary statement. releases November 10, 2023 All music composed, arranged, and performed by Pauline Anna Strom

Plot Zero is the second album by the late West Coast composer, healer, and medium Pauline Anna Strom. First released in 1983, Strom envisioned the album as a “mind trip without chemicals,” utilizing boundless imagination to cover a canvas with brilliant synthesized shapes and tones. The pieces on Plot Zero flow freely and infinitely, evoking a transportative momentum with Strom’s distinctive synthesizers soaring across infinite horizons into vast, colorful nebulas. Restored and mixed from the original reels by Marta Salogni, and newly remastered, this is the album’s first ever official reissue, and the definitive edition of a visionary statement.

Craig Leon revisits the extraterrestrial origins of civilization on Anthology of Interplanetary Folk Music Vol. 2: The Canon. Picking up where the pioneering electronic albums Nommos and Visiting (Anthology of Interplanetary Folk Music Vol. 1) left off, The Canon traces the imparted knowledge of alien visitors as it spread from Africa across the ancient world. Co-produced and featuring vocals by Cassell Webb, the pair engage a sonic pallet familiar from Vol. 1, updated with ecstatic contemporary sound and synthesis, creating a propulsive, exploratory album of cosmic lore and speculative anthropology.

Born in Buffalo, New York in 1956, Pamela Z has spent her time performing and composing towards the singular objective of finding sounds yet unfelt. Beginning as singer-songwriter on the guitar while studying music in Boulder, Colorado, most of Z’s musical ventures centered around covering artists like Joni Mitchell and Malvina Reynolds B-sides. While getting gigs around the Denver metro-area and moonlighting as a radio host for public radio station KGNU playing tunes spanning from “Varèse to the Ramones, to the Roches, to Pauline Oliveros”, she soon realized she should be building towards the sounds she listened to so much. This revelation dovetailed with the rise of home taping, the zenith of synthesizer culture, and the acquisition of a digital delay pedal, the Ibanez-DM1000, to bring her the signature sound she continues to perfect. Echolocation was composed by Pamela Z at a time where her name and presence were only beginning to send shockwaves to the Bay Area New Music scene and later the world. Freedom To Spend re-releases Z’s 1988 limited run, cassette only debut onto the New Music scene; a lush tapestry of deep listening vocal meditations, MIDI explorations, and operatic art rock junctures. Echolocation proves in its runtime to still be searching after over three decades since its deliverance.

Neil S. Kvern’s Doctor Dancing Mask: Pianoisms is a near mythical marker on the map of late 20th century experimentalism transpiring in America’s Pacific Northwest. A sublime, spacious effort of left field DIY minimalism constructed from recurring piano pieces, hypnotic percussion, and a peppering of diverse instrumentation, vocals, and invisible effects, Doctor Dancing Mask illuminates a hidden but remarkable legacy of a young composer at the height of his creativity and consciousness. Originally released in 1983 as a small cassette edition largely distributed to friends and via word of mouth, Neil S. Kvern’s Doctor Dancing Mask: Pianoisms arrives again January 27, 2023 on vinyl and digitally as part of uncommon¢ (“uncommon sense”), an open-ended, serialized endeavor from Freedom to Spend that provides new meaning for rarefied recordings from music’s outermost fringe.

On Rimarimba’s 1985 album In The Woods, Robert Cox has made his music kit, an odd assortment of new and old technologies, lately fixated on the digital delay, and programming technologies, sing his own song at its most articulate clip. The songs seem more developed, fluent, like mini-suites in some sense.  By his third album, it’s clear Cox has recognised just how liberating technology can be – “All these intricate layers of things that I was trying to play, and didn’t have the musical ability to play, I could suddenly program them” – but he also recognises that if you head too far down that road, dull perfection is your bitter reward. Human music intoxicated and lurching through a new forest of machinery.

If there’s one word that describes Eli Winter, it’s precocious. At twenty-three, the Chicago musician and writer (named an artist to watch for 2020 by The Guardian and “generational talent" by NYCTaper) has performed with Ryley Walker and David Grubbs and toured the country by bus and train. His first album, The Time To Come, explored the difficulties of coping with grief and Hurricane Harvey with finely wrought melodic solo instrumentals belying his age. Unbecoming, his virtuosic second album, is bolder, uncompromising yet accessible, showcasing ambitious, spacious compositions and a heightened command of the guitar, and providing measured catharsis during intertwined political crises. The album opens with the nearly twenty-three-minute “Either I Would Become Ash,” a mature, epic solo piece that winds through beautiful, robust passages, dense cacophony and insistent silence, calling to mind inspirations Jack Rose, Daniel Bachman and Pauline Oliveros. The song takes its name from an essay in which the late poet and critic Tory Dent notes her surprise at having lived with AIDS for a decade while remaining "no closer to cured”: “Either I would become ash or I would survive fully, completely, resuming all the dreams and potentials I assumed myself capable of experiencing before I tested.” The song suggests the difficulty of resolving such tensions and a way through them, speaking to the power of vulnerability and the significance of shared struggle. Lead single “Maroon” is a blossoming, joyous song marking Winter’s first time leading a band, featuring Sam Wagster (American Dreams band Mute Duo) on pedal steel guitar, Tyler Damon (Circuit Des Yeux) on drums, and Cameron Knowler on nylon string guitar. “Maroon” is the shortest and most straightforward track on the record - it’s also catchy as all get out, and ripe for repeat listens. Like "Dark Light” - a spare, rich exploration of space and feedback sourced from a concert recording - “Maroon” evinces the importance of fostering communities on scales large and small. Unbecoming showcases Winter as an invigorating, talented presence, and alludes to his bright future as a voice - or perhaps set of well-trained hands - in the constantly evolving guitar music canon. 

Mazen Kerbaj is widely considered as one of the initiators and key players of the Lebanese free improvisation and experimental music scene. He is co-founder and active member of MILL, the cultural music association behind Irtijal, an annual improvisation music festival held in Beirut since 2001 (www.irtijal.org), and co-founder of Al Maslakh, the first label for experimental music in the region operating since 2005 (www.almaslakh.org). 
As a trumpet player, whether in solo performances or with long-lasting groups like “A” Trio, Kerbaj pushes the boundaries of the instrument and continues to develop a personal sound and an innovative language, following in the footsteps of pioneers like Bill Dixon, Axel Dörner and Franz Hautzinger.Playing in solo has always been an important part of Mazen Kerbaj’s musical journey; it is in this bare-bones setup that he can experiments the most with his instrument, pushing it beyond any recognition. His use of various every-day objects (tubes, plastic bowls, balloons, aluminum foil…) to “prepare” the trumpet, and his unique playing techniques allow him to create raw soundscapes that sound sometimes like electronics (he describes himself his trumpet playing as “playing electronic music, acoustically”), especially when he plays several continuous layers of sound at the same time on an instrument that is not designed for that.Be it in his various recordings or in live concerts, in acoustic or in amplified setups, Kerbaj’s trumpet solos never fail to surprise. Sampler/Sampled is an album made of two interdependent parts rather than a double-album.The first part of the project, Sampler, is a trumpet solo album that catalogues the unique sounds and extended techniques that Mazen Kerbaj developed for the instrument in the past 25 years; it consists of 318 pieces ranging from less than a second to forty seconds each, and presenting different sonic materials.This catalogue of sounds works on various levels: first and foremost, it is a trumpet solo that could be played in its original order, or in random mode to create different pieces of music. But it is also a collection of samples that could be used for various applications (ringtones, phone sound effects, cinema…) and, of course, to create new pieces of music based on sampling.
The second part of the project is the composition Sampled for a musician working with loops and/or samples. The composition has one instruction: create a piece of music using solely tracks from Sampler as your sound source (with the possibility to use all kind of effects or treatment). Each interpreter/musician becomes thus a co-composer who appropriates the piece and makes it their own. In this regard, the musicians that were commissioned to play Sampled were chosen from different geographical origins and musical genres to create highly different and personal pieces of music.
One important output of this project is putting in practice the overused idea of music as a universal language. This idea is very present in “free improvised music” where musicians from different origins can meet for the first time and make music together without the need to adapt to different musical traditions.But here, the collective part of creating music in real time is not involved. It is rather the contrary: it starts with one middle-eastern musician creating a new language/vocabulary for his western instrument, to be later used by other musicians from around the globe who will appropriate this vocabulary and use it with their own language/grammar.The final output of this double faceted album that was recorded during the Covid lockdown proved to be a very efficient new way to collaborate from a distance in times of world isolation, and ultimately put in practice the universality of music by breaking the boundaries of genres that are the most difficult to break.
THE LIVE VERSIONSampler/Sampled is also a modular concept for an evening of live performances. It could for example start with an acoustic solo by Kerbaj (Sampler), followed by an improvising turntables duo playing a live version of Sampled, then an electronic musician presenting yet another version of it, to end up with a DJ set mixing all the recorded versions of Sampled (Sampled Re-Sampled). Sampler / SampledMazen Kerbaj Trumpet Solo Vol. 3FEATURING: Deena Abdelwahed, Rabih Beaini, Fari Bradley, Dieb 13, DJ Sniff, Gavsborg (Equiknoxx), Electric Indigo, Donzilla Lion (Nyege Nyege), Marina Rosenfeld, Microhm, Muqata’a, Bob Ostertag, RroseDisc one: Sampler Sampler was performed by Mazen Kerbaj on the trumpet, with or without the addition of various objects (as referenced in the tracks’ titles and the inside catalogue)A / Samples 1-168B / Samples 169-318Disc two: Sampled Sampled is a composition for one musician using solely Sampler as their sound sourceC1 / Blue Malediction – by Deena Abdelwahed and Mazen KerbajC2 / norm hollows function – by Dieb 13 and Mazen KerbajC3 / Pendulum – by Rrose and Mazen KerbajC4 / Untitled – by Marina Rosenfeld and Mazen Kerbaj C5 / Chainsaw – by Rabih Beaini and Mazen KerbajC6 / Time Traveler – Donzilla Lion (Nyege Nyege) and Mazen KerbajD1 / Trumpet Zoo – by DJ Sniff and Mazen KerbajD2 / Mazen's Trumpet – by Electric Indigo and Mazen Kerbaj D3 / Untitled –  by Muqata'a and Mazen KerbajD4 / Dreams of Dust – by Microhm and Mazen KerbajD5 / The sign to Return is in the Earth's Spin – by Fari Bradley and Mazen KerbajD6 / Now Serving #8190 – by Gavsborg (Equiknoxx) and Mazen KerbajD7 / Untitled – by Bob Ostertag and Mazen KerbajSamples 1 to 318 were recorded by Mazen Kerbaj on December 1-3, 2020. They are presented as recorded, with no additional cuts, overdubbing or use of electronicsSampled 1 to 13 were recorded by the respective artists between December 2020 and March 2021. All kind of manipulations and effects were used in various proportions in each pieceMixed by Mazen Kerbaj, and the respective musicians.Mastered by Rashad Becker.Cover Artwork by Lorenzo Mason Studio with Mazen Kerbaj.Liner Notes by Nate Wooley.Produced by Morphine Records and the DAAD Artists-in-Berlin- Program.Supported by Musikfonds.