New CD ESP-5001~

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ESP 5001 Various Artists - Fire Music Vol. 1 Two of the things most often associated with ESP-Disk' are free jazz and balls-to-the-wall saxophone improvisations. Go with your strengths, people say, so for our first physical release in our 50th anniversary year, we present producer Michael D. Anderson's compilation Fire Music. The saxophonists on these tracks are Albert Ayler, Charles Tyler, Frank Wright, Arthur Jones, Jack Graham, Byard Lancaster, Joe Phillips, John Tchicai, Marshall Allen (twice), Gato Barbieri, Sonny Simmons, Pat Patrick, and John Gilmore. Obviously we're not just going with the obvious choices, because ESP-Disk' is not that kind of label. Thrill to the sounds of saxophone legends so obscure, they're almost mythical ? alongside, of course, giants such as Ayler, Wright, Barbieri, and Sun Ra's trio of decades-faithful sax masters. Personnel -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Albert Ayler, Donald Ayler, Paul Bley, Don Cherry, Frank Wright, Sunny Murray, Alan Silva, Norman Howard, Roswell Rudd, John Tchicai, Gato Barbieri, Sunny Simmons, Marshall Allen, Sun Ra and more! Track Listing -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1. Albert Ayler - Spirits Rejoice 11:42 2. Frank Wright - The Lady 7:05 3. Sunny Murray - Giblet 8:38 4. Norman Howard - Burn Baby Burn 5:20 5. New York Art Quartet - No. 6 8:17 6. Paul Bley Quintet - Batterie 4:17 7. Don Cherry Quintet - Cocktail Piece 12:42 8. Sonny Simmons - Metamorphosis 11:36 9. Sun Ra Arkestra - Other Worlds 4:33

ESP 5002 Arborea - Fortress of the Sun Among the most artistically successful alchemists of Indie Psychedelic Folk, Maine-based duo Arborea consists of Shanti Curran (vocals, banjo, "banjimer" [a banjo-dulcimer hybrid], harmonium, ukulele, sawing fiddle, and hammered dulcimer) and Buck Curran (guitars, vocals, sawing fiddle, flute, and banjo). Weaving together strands of indie rock, Appalachian folk, psychedelia, and ambient music into what has been called avant-folk, Arborea's songs combine delicate beauty and mystical lyrics with the timelessness of ancient songs (sometimes literally, as they occasionally rework old folk and blues songs into new shapes). Fortress of the Sun is their fifth full-length album, and their first on ESP-Disk'. Personnel -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Shanti Curran: vocals, banjo, guitar, harmonium, ukulele, hammered dulcimer; Buck Curran: vocals, acoustic and electric guitars, flute, Ebow banjo With: Anders Griffen: drums on “Pale Horse Phantasm”; Greg Boardman: upright bass on “Daughters of Man” and “Rider” and viola on “Cherry Tree Carol”; Michael Krapovicky: electric bass on “After the Flood Only Love Remains” Produced, Created, Recorded and Mixed by Buck Curran and Shanti Curran; Mastered by Harris Newman Track Listing -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1. Pale Horse Phantasm 5:37 2. Daughters of Man 4:51 3. After the Flood Only Love Remains 6:42 4. Ghost 3:49 5. Rider 4:30 6. When I Was on Horseback 3:28 7. Rua das Aldas 1:47 8. Cherry Tree Carol 3:52 Press Quotes -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- NPR's Bob Boilen included their SXSW performance on his "Favorite Concerts of 2012" list. Rolling Stone's David Fricke included their previous album, Red Planet, on his list of "The Best Under-the-Radar Albums of 2011" and called their music "trance-folk that, at every turn in the slipstream, seems to hail from another country: the murder ballads of Appalachia; the plucked-string stasis and Om drone of New York minimalism; the iridescent-Middle East imagination of the Incredible String Band." The BBC wrote of their 2009 album House of Sticks, "Sounding like frayed, half-remembered, hand-me-down tunes, shaped and altered with each retelling, the fluidity and the sparse application of instruments wherein Eastern and Western modes gently mingle is the secret of this album's startling beauty."

Vinylnyl

CD Our planet is in serious trouble. One of the most important yet simplest things we can do to improve our lives and promote a healthy world ecosystem is to plant trees. Trees not only provide us with oxygen and shelter from wind and sun... They provide food, beauty, absorb carbon dioxide and other pollutants, reduce heat, and prevent soil erosion. Force a change... Plant a tree ! - BUCK, SHANTI, AND BERNARD STOLLMANｄ。）k

ESP-5003 Tiger Hatchery - Sun Worship Chicago power-jazz trio Tiger Hatchery proudly comes out of the ESP-Disk' free jazz tradition, as saxophonist Mike Forbes's playing makes clear, but there's an added noise-rock edge, especially in Ben Billington's aggressive drumming, that keeps the sound modern. Bassist Andrew Scott Young does much more than lay down the bottom, emerging as a fully equal member of their glorious cacophony. This is one of the most powerful albums in the storied 50-year history of ESP-Disk', and that's saying something! Liner notes by John Olson of Wolf Eyes. ESP 5003 Personnel Mike Forbes, saxophones; Andrew Scott Young, basses; Ben Billington, drums Track Listing 1. Chieftain 8:43 2. Sonic Bloom 7:03 3. Grand Mal 15:30 Press Quotes "One of the best openings in music I’ve heard this year happens on 'Chieftain,' the first of three tracks on Sun Worship, a short and to-the-point CD by the young Chicago free-jazz band Tiger Hatchery. There's no lead-in, no windup: It's as if all members were running as hot as possible, frozen in time, and then unfrozen: Blam, drums and cymbals under attack, tenor saxophone gasping, electric bass on extreme low judder. Sun Worship is released on ESP-Disk, the imprimatur of some of the best New York free jazz in the early- and mid-'60s, but it feels different, especially after the initial onslaught, through its various episodes of velocity and mood. Andrew Scott Young, the bassist, uses the rugged tone you'd associate less with jazz than, say, the Jesus Lizard's David Wm. Sims; the tenor player Mike Forbes and drummer Ben Billington have 50 years of free jazz from around the world, as well as nearly that much of improvised noise, to assimilate. They bring these three pieces home rather elegantly, and begin the other two much more softly. But I’m fine with the record's first five seconds." - Ben Ratliff, The New York Times "Right away, it smacks you. The opening 'Chieftain' attacks with the explosiveness of Albert Ayler, Ornette Coleman's frenzy and John Coltrane's scream, and doesn't let up until the closing 'Grand Mal' fades to silence. Saxophonist Mike Forbes rages like Peter Brötzmann, Evan Parker and John Butcher all morphed into one being, while Ben Billington's drums recall the pace of Rashied Ali and Han Bennink's solid insanity. Andrew Scott Young employs both electric and amplified stand-up bass for a sound that's as much Alan Silva and Peter Kowald as it is Chuck Dukowski and David Wm. Sims. Sun Worship is in-your-face brutality, an all-out assault on your preconceived notions of music." - Chuck Foster, The Big Takeover "Tiger Hatchery, a trio from Chicago, fits in the lineage of free jazz squonk that launched ESP, but their m.o. is born more out of a love of pure noise than the extreme blues and spiritual elements of Albert Ayler, Pharoah Sanders or Marion Brown." - Mike Shanley, Blurt "I thought, these motherfuckers are playing with the violence of European free jazz, but also birthing tuned, full-bodied edifices of sound that encapsulate the audience in the nearly tangible environment of their sustained harmonic interplay. I'm talking repetitive, prolonged interactions that were captivating in the way 60s minimalist performances were experiential." – Critilogues "The classic jazz trio is turned upside down and wrung out for all the noise shred it can muster." – KillingBirds

Vinyl Notable Runoff Text: Welcome to 1979

CD 2013

ESP 5004 Alan Sondheim with Christopher Diasparra & Edward Schneider - Cutting Board Sondheim is the first artist from ESP-Disk's 1964-75 heyday to return, since it was revived in 2005, to issue an album of new material on the fabled label. Sondheim joined the roster with a 1967 session, Ritual-All-7-70, then followed up with 1968's T'Other Little Tune. (Drumming on the latter was Joel Zabor; now known as Rafi Zabor, he reunited with Sondheim at ESP's 50th anniversary concert in November 2013.) Sondheim got his musical start as a guitarist, but soon moved into a much more original sound utilizing a vast array of instruments from around the world. Cutting Board, his eighth album, is his first instrumental group album; his other albums have always either been solo (and there are two solo tracks on Cutting Board as well) or featured female vocalists. Though he's a pure improviser, Sondheim rightly insists that he doesn't play jazz; even playing with two saxophonists, he's outside that tradition's spectrum. The eclecticism of the sounds he's working with sonically can tenuously seem to connect him to world music, but he doesn't play the instruments in traditional ways. And on rare occasions you can hear the blues lurking, but it's not likely that Living Blues will be putting him on the cover. Maybe if somebody starts a music magazine (or website) called Beyond Category, then Sondheim can be a cover subject. Personnel Alan Sondheim: ghichak, cura, chromatic harmonica, Chinese mouth harp, saz, tro so, electric saz, sarangi, sung lisu, ukulele, flute, cura cumbus, classical guitar; Christopher Diasparra: tenor and baritone saxophones; Edward Schneider: alto saxophone Press Quotes Of Ritual-All-7-70: "...if there is a concept here, it’s extremely simple: you never heard such sounds in your life." – Clifford Allen, Bagatellen Of Avatar Woman: "...be prepared to listen to universes growing and collapsing within their sound worlds." – disasteramnesiac.blogspot.ca

ESP 5005 Extremely Serious Business - Headwall Mr. Thomas's band of the 1980s, Serious Business (heard on ESP5006), focused on his fusion and 'free funk' compositions played with an electric sound. Extremely Serious Business marked a turning point, a return to a more acoustic setting while remaining true to the pioneering spirit of "improvisation along the edges." Extremely Serious Business showcases his unique compositional skills and style while carrying on the long lineage of cutting-edge soloing "outside the changes." Headwall combines freedom in composition and conceptualization with a kickass groove to set a new standard in jazz-guitar. This previously unreleased album features mostly a traditional acoustic jazz-guitar sound, but also includes two tracks with guitar synthesizer out front. All tracks were recorded with 'live' musicians with the exception "Song for My Father," done in duo with drummer Tom Garner, with overdubbing. Mr. Thomas says, "Equally noteworthy is the incredible mix present throughout. Unlike previous recordings where the guitar sometimes appears either too far back or the sound too tinny and less full, this album exceeds previous mix attempts in achieving both balance and clarity." Drummer Thomas Garner is originally from North Carolina. Mr. Thomas met Mr. Garner while he lived in the Boston area and was a regular in different bands Thomas put together. Mr. Thomas calls him a "really mellow dude who loves world rhythms." Pianist/keyboardist Greg Burk is a former instructor at New England Conservatory and an accomplished soloist and accompanist with Bob Moses and Dave Liebman. Mr. Burke now lives in Italy and plays solo concerts regularly. Bassist Paul Beaudry is a San Diego native who was very active on the Boston scene before his New York move, where he is now a regular. Mr. Thomas says, "Paul brings that big warm sound and incredible chops to every gig." Guitarist Avi Rothbart is a former student of Mr. Thomas's who is now well established on the New York scene. Personnel John D. Thomas, guitar, guitar synthesizer, keyboards, electric bass Greg Burke, piano, synthesizer Paul Beaudry, contrabass Tom Garner, drums Avi Rothbard, guitar (#7 only) Track Listing 1. Codex 2. Song For Max 3. Playground 4. 3000 Worlds 5. Song For My Father 6. Headwall 7. Yesterdays Press Quotes "[John Thomas has] a unique solo style. John's latest offering gives a superb example of why, in my opinion, he is one of　the all-time great jazz guitarists." – saxophonist Charles Tolliver, December 2014

Was originally scheduled for release in 2004, as things often turn out in life it was not to be - record company backed out. Credits for "Produced By" are valid because I - John D. Thomas - am the only producer. On all compositions I take on at least two roles - Guitar or Guitar Synthesizer, composer, and engineer. On some works I even take on more than three roles "Recorded & Mixed By" is a valid credit attributed to me, John D. Thomas. The "Bandleader" credit is absolutely necessary here because the band name is Extremely Serious Business, and it is neither a co-led or cooperative group. This is my group and we play almost exclusively my compositions.... as I always have on all my records. Publishers: 1 to 4, 6: Extremely Serious Business Music 5: Ecaroh Music 7: T. B. Harris/Welk Music Group, Universal Music Publishing, Warner/Chappel Publishin

ESP 5006 John D. Thomas - Serious Business At age 19, guitarist John D. Thomas was enlisted as a sideman by both Jimmy McGriff and Joe Henderson for recordings and concerts. In the following years he worked with some of the greatest names in jazz, including the AACM Big Band, Stanton Davis, Carter Jefferson, Andrew Cyrille, Kenny Drew, John Lewis, Harold Ousley, and Chet Baker. After his 1977 move to Europe, he toured the Middle East, Africa, and the Far East, performing extensively with Charles Tolliver (1980-90), Joe Henderson, Art Taylor, Dizzy Gillespie, Malachi Thompson, Sonny Stitt, Tony Scott, and many others. He joined the Art Taylor Quartet in 1978 and performed with it until 1984. Birth of the Cool trombonist Mike Zwerin enlisted John for two tours in Africa in 1980 and 81. Mr. Thomas has also toured and performed at festivals, concerts, and clubs throughout Europe and Africa with his own bands: John Thomas and Lifeforce, Serious Business, John Thomas Quartet, and Extremely Serious Business. In 1980 he received the endorsement of the National Endowments' "Arts America" program, on whose active list he remained for ten years. In 1986 his group Extremely Serious Business traveled to sub-Saharan Africa under the auspices of this U.S. State Department program. Since his return to the United States in 1991, he has appeared with his own quartet, trio, and an updated version of Extremely Serious Business that performs his own compositions. It was also at this time that he began a two-year relationship with organist Charles Earland. He moved to Boston in 1994, where he performed regularly with different formations, including Kenwood Dennard’s Real Thing. Mr. Thomas has also enjoyed a 40-year career in higher education, both in Europe and at a famous New England music school. This is the first time that this 1985 album has been released in digital formats. It is a significant album in Mr. Thomas's discography as the first use on record of a prototype pickup system invented by Professor Dr. Ernst Nourney of the Fachhochschule, Nord-Rhein West-Falen in Düsseldorf, Germany. Dr. Nourney's innovative device was comprised of a "hexcentric pickup" – one pickup for each individual string – converting pitch to voltage, and an exciter pickup used to create a magnetic field to induce vibration of each string independently. This means the player could not only hold any note without further electronic manipulation, but even play the instrument with one hand, if desired. Personnel John D. Thomas: all guitars Gerd Breuer: drums Claude Gouiffé: bass (#1-3) Bert Thompson: bass (#4-5) Markus Becker: keyboards Christoph Erbstösser: DX7 (#4-5) Track Listing 1. Boulder Brothers 2.Born To Love 3. Hard Boys (Kiss ass) 4. For Me 5. Hess-Strasse Press Quotes "[John Thomas has] a unique solo style. John's latest offering gives a superb example of why, in my opinion, he is one of　the all-time great jazz guitarists." – saxophonist Charles Tolliver, December 2014

"Serious Business" was originally released in 1987 by Nabel Records - NBL 8626 - in Germany. This new incarnation is a fully remastered re-issue. This album features the innovative "Nourney Infinite Sustain Pickup System". This is the only recording of this prototype which, although presented at the 1982 AES in Los Angeles, never made it to market. The idea was eventually copied by a large manufacturer of guitar effects and was discontinued after only a few years. Nonetheless, Dr. Ernst Nourney's - professor of Acoustics and Electronic Engineering at the Fachhochschule in Düsseldorf is here not wasted. This sustain could be achieved with or without distortion or additional add-ons. It makes it easy for a guitar to sing like a horn. That makes this album quite unique.

ESP 5007 Matthew Shipp & Mat Walerian – The Uppercut: Live At Okuden

with The Uppercut: Live at Okudentthew Shipp, the supreme jazz pianist of his generation, and Mat Walerian, the finest Polish jazz woodwind player of his, have combined their talents in concert on several occasions. This album documents one such event on May 15, 20Shipp hardly needs an introduction at this point thanks to a career of over a quarter century, including not only many acclaimed albums under his own name but artet and a vast array of collaborations with the likes of Spring Heel Jack, Ivo Perelounted among the avant-jazz scene's international stars. Largely self-taught and deeply immersed in Eastern philosophy,

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Tracks 1-7 Feb 25, 2015 at Channel Zero in Ljubljana, Slovenia. Track 8 July 11, 2007 at Domicil in Dortmund, Germany. Cat.# is ESP 5008 on spines; ESP5008 on disc. 6-panel Digipak

Recorded November 19, 2012 at Okuden Music Concert Series

EESP-5010SPMatt Lavelle, Reggie Sylvester – Retrograde

Recorded December 15, 2015 in Brooklyn, NY.

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ESP 5014 Buck Curran – Immortal

Immortal Light is the debut solo album by Psychedelic Folk guitarist-singer-songwriter Buck Curran. Since 2005, Buck has recorded and performed as one half of the Psych-Folk duo Arborea. To date, Arborea has released five albums, including 2013's ESP-Disk' release Fortress of the Sun, and produced two various-artist compilations (Leaves of Life, a benefit for the World Food Program, and We Are All One, In the Sun, a tribute to Robbie Basho). Buck has also produced a second tribute to Robbie Basho, Basket Full of Dragons, released on July 5, 2016 by Obsolete Recordings.
Buck's music is influenced by landscapes of nature and has developed through a decade of playing with Arborea and the experience of playing Blues and Folk throughout the 1990s. He also draws inspiration from the deep well of Folk and Rock of the 1960s (Robbie Basho, Jimi Hendrix, Tim Buckley), American Blues and Folk music of the 1930s, British Folk and Psychedelic Folk/Rock of the '60s and early '70s (Peter Green, Sandy Denny, Pentangle, Davey Graham, Nick Drake, Led Zeppelin, Martin Simpson), Indian Classical music (Pandit Nikhil Banerjee), and Jazz of the '50s and '60s (Ornette Coleman and John Coltrane).

Personnel
Buck Curran: vocals, guitars, harmonium, flute, banjo.
Shanti Deschaine: backup vocals on "New Moontide" and "Bad Moon Rising." Featured lead vocals and harmonium on "Immortal Light."

Track Listing
01. Wayfaring Summer (Reprise) (2:56)
02. New Moontide (5:29)
03. Sea of Polaris (4:59)
04. Seven Gardens to Your Shore (4:41)
05. River unto Sea (7:47)
06. Bad Moon Rising (4:00)
07. Andromeda (5:54)
08. Immortal Light (13:31)

Press Quotes: early reviews of Immortal Light

"Guitar tones linger and reverberate with a mystical translucence." - Dusted

"The wonderful new Buck Curran LP on ESP-Disk', as gorgeous a psychedelic folk record as can be in 2016." - Jeff Conklin, host of The Avant Ghetto on WFMU
Musicians: Buck Curran / Arborea

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ESP 5016 Talibam! – Endgame Of The Anthropocene

Endgame of the Anthropocene

Endgame of the Anthropocene marks Talibam!’s return to ESP-Disk', a partnership begun in 2009 with the highly acclaimed Boogie in the Breeze Blocks album. Talibam! is a 14-year working unit based in New York City that can be described in various ways -- as a classic keyboards/drums expanded-jazz duo, as Dadaist provocateurs with an innate love for the history of music, as a Fluxus-informed theater troupe, as an electronic ensemble inspired by Stockhausen, or as a rhythm section at the cross hair of agility, speed, punctuation, and intention. Since their inception in 2003, Talibam!’s ultimate goal has been to wed disparate ideologies through proficiency, controversy, inquiry, and compassion. Every Talibam! album attacks from a different angle; Endgame continues this tradition of each new release sounding completely different from everything they've done before, as does HARD VIBE (ESP5015), which will be released on the same day.
Talibam! has made a geopsychic prediction: after it expires in 2048, the Antarctic Treaty System will be rejected. As the rest of the planet will have been rendered uninhabitable due to wars rooted in overpopulation, global warming, and the relentless exploitation of diminishing resources, human interference and the failure to ratify will lead to international war over the sovereignty and control of Antarctica’s vast resources. Endgame of the Anthropocene is Talibam!’s first cinematic album of through-composed ecogothic geosonics. It is the soundtrack to 2048’s despotic nationalism and crumbling international infrastructure, underscoring an eco-mercantilistic tragedy and the desperate plundering of the last pristine landscape on Earth. This inevitable destruction of Antarctica’s purity marks the global-environmental endgame of the Anthropocene. Endgame of the Anthropocene is a dystopian sonic pronouncement of failed socio-environmental memes, and features Talibam!’s emergence into hyperkinetic rhythm-based instrumental/ electronic music. Syncopation via polyrhythmic electronic drum and synth pads create corporeal dance floor beats that would make a super computer perturbed. Kevin Shea is a master of cyber swing and ecowar rhythm — on this record, he keeps it android yet anthropoid, like Aphex Twin meeting a hologram Phil Collins. Keyboardist Matt Mottel anchors wide sweeps of analog synthesis — his sonic palette oscillating between the Silver Apples, Sun Ra, and Arca via an Arduino beta bass drop. This music is hallucinatory composition — electronic muzik via an ethnographic sonic landscape influenced by Parmegiani, Don Cherry, Front 242, Hailu Mergia, Vangelis, Suicide, Islam Chipsy, Stockhausen and DJ Shadow.

Personnel: Matthew Mottel: Mini Moog, Midi Synths, Yamaha CS1x, Roland Juno 1, Roland Lucina, Arp Solus ; Kevin Shea: drums, MIDI Marimba Lumina; Preston Spurlock: cover art

Track Listing:(ESP-
01. "Antarctica shall be used for peaceful purposes only" (Article 1) 11:56
02. Human Interference and the Failure to Ratify 4:08
03. Reign of Primordial Tenure on the Ice Shelf 3:01
04. The Telegenic Annexation of Territorial Expanse in the West 2:03
05. Obsequious Resources Duly Exploited De Novo 5:05
06. Breach of Ecology on the Seabed (Biodiversity in Shambles) 1:51
07. Cost-Effective Drilling Enabled by Pioneering Technologies and Warmer Climates in the Southern Ocean 6:10
08. RISE OF THE DEFENDERS OF ANTARCTICA 4:03

Press Quotes: "Talibam! manage to cast themselves as a powerful rhythm section... It's pretty cool to hear the Manhattan abstracters create such a cool free jazz/free rock hybrid" - Byron Coley
"Co-conspirators Matthew Mottel and Kevin Shea have something in common with John Coxon and Ashley Wales of Spring Heel Jack in their application of multiple instruments, electronics and collaborators to create an eclectic musical milieu." - Derek Taylor
"This is wildly new music, fresh in its approach to the collision of melody, harmony and rhythm that makes for quite a soup for the songs to swim in." - Raul d'Gama Rose
"Amid the fun and exuberance a clever brain and a strong heart of integrity beats." - Lisa Thatcher

Musicians: Talibam!

recorded & mixed by James Dellatacoma @ Orange Music Sound Studio mastered by Michael Fossenkemper @ Turtle Tone Cover Art by John Olsen Layout by Paul Costuros recorded for ESP-DISK; produced by Garret H. Morris

ESP 5017 The Delegation – Evergreen (Canceled World)

The Delegation is a project of young phenom Gabriel Zucker that mixes jazz, classical, electronica, rock, and more into a new sound that lives up to ESP-Disk's classic catchphrase, "You never heard such sounds in your life!" This improvising group came together at the 2013 Banff Jazz and Creative Music Workshop and was soon commissioned by the American Composers Forum; the result is the twelve-movement work on this two-disc set, which was premiered at the Jazz Gallery in New York City in 2014 and earned ASCAP's Morton Gould Young Composers Award.

Personnel
Gabriel Zucker - piano, compositions, lyrics, electronics, voice; Adam O'Farrill - trumpet; Eric Trudel - tenor saxophone; Jacob Teichroew - tenor saxophone, clarinet; Bryan Qu - tenor saxophone; Mark Chung - violin; Ron Lawrence - viola; Eric Allen - cello; Artemisz Polonyi - voice; Lorena del Mar - voice; Bam Bam Rodriguez - bass; Gabriel Globus-Hoenich - drums;David Su - additional electronics

Track Listing
CD 1:
01. Always Know / I'll Follow You (Resistible I)
02. Headlight Imprecise (Summaries I)
03. In the Audience (Disregard I)
04. Bare (Evergreen I)
05. Too Resistible / Roof (Resistible II)
06. were alone / Knowledge Clown (Evergreen II)

CD 2:
07. The End
08. Recover (Disregard II)
09. 3.5 Rotations (Evergreen III)
10. Growing Old (Evergreen IV) / Flow Like Wine (Canceled I)
11. Talk in Undertones (Resistible III)
12. Yellow Paint (Summaries II) / End of Time (Canceled II)



Press Quotes re: Evergreen:
★★★★½ “...a fascinating form of sonic installation blending wild improvisation, classical strings, disciplined unison passages and untrammeled solo excursions.” — Carlo Wolff, Downbeat

“In Zucker’s almost confrontational writing I find the vision of one who is hugely expressive. Here is a young man with a profound sense of tone and colour and how it can be wrought from diverse instrumentation to be affectingly ‘cantorial,’ expressive and hugely symphonic too.” — Raul da Gama, World Music Report

★★★★ “Evergreen (Canceled World) totally lives up to its larger-than-life sweep and scope.” — Dave Wayne, All About Jazz

“Evergreen is a rewarding example of what Brooklyn has to offer avant garde jazz-rock and demonstrates that ESP-Disk’ hasn’t lost its adventurous spirit.” — Alex Henderson, New York City Jazz Record

Acclaim for Gabriel Zucker:

"...suavely combined a symphony orchestra and a jazz band, beginning with a haunting orchestral hush and passing a gentle theme through the jazz soloists. It was a nocturne out of early Bernstein or introspective Sinatra." - Zachary Woolfe, The New York Times re:Universal at Midnight's Carnegie Hall premiere

Bach Society Prize of the Yale Music Department for being "a pianist who has excelled in solo, concerto and chamber music genres, a jazz pianist who has sustained a creative and virtuosic activity during his time at Yale, and a composer who has intensified his ambitious endeavor to find a synthesis between his art music and jazz interests."

ESP 5018 Matthew Shipp Quartet featuring Mat Walerian – Sonic Fiction

After a duo album and two trio albums by Shipp and Walerian, all for ESP-Disk', we get a quartet album from them that continues their strategy of working with different musicians each time out. Bisio and Dickey are long-time collaborators with Shipp, but the addition of Walerian's Zen style changes the dynamics of their interactions. Walerian and Dickey, masters of restraint, were a match waiting to be made, and their instant rapport is one of the attractions of this album.

Track List:
01. First Step 3:24
02. Blues Addition 6:23
03. The Station 5:53
04. Lines of Energy 4:02
05. Easy Flow 5:39
06. The Problem of Jazz 5:00
07. The Note 0:17
08. 3 by 4 6:25
09. Cell in the Brain 5:33
10. Sonic Fiction 11:23

Total time 53:59

http://soundcloud.com/esp-disk/04-lines-of-energy

Matthew Shipp, piano
Mat Walerian, alto saxophone, bass clarinet, clarinet
Michael Bisio, bass
Whit Dickey, drums

Press Quotes:
“One would be hard-pressed to find a Matthew Shipp quartet recording as democratically executed as Sonic Fiction… offered as a framework of dialogic expression, a music of ideas communicated, exchanged, and put forth directly and intimately. […] Sonic Fiction marks a new phase for Shipp as its evolves from his previous outings with Walerian (and his numerous dates with saxophonist Ivo Perelman on Leo) toward a shared multivalent lingual space where musical equations are stated, re-examined, and ultimately balanced before they emerge as a new sonic terrain.” – Thom Jurek, AllMusic Guide
“Shipp does not believe in ‘jazz’ per se; the wide-ranging music he plays…will sound like jazz to many, but in keeping with ESP tradition, it subverts definitions and expectations in service of creating magic with sounds. For those unfamiliar with Walerian, the Polish reed player, who has three previous ESP recordings with Shipp, his playing will trigger a sense of wonder.” – Derk Richardson, The Absolute Sound

"Matthew Shipp has become an elder statesman in the jazz world. How that happened can be boiled down to two simple elements. One: he has created a unique sound and language for improvised music and two: Shipp has become a doyen of cutting edge music making and opinion." – Mark Corroto, All About Jazz
"[Walerian] is one of the most talented young jazz musicians on the Polish scene, if not THE most talented." – Maciej Lewenstein, Polish Jazz Recordings and Beyond
"The reed work of Mat Walerian really warms up the piano of Matthew Shipp here – as Mat provides these beautiful lines on alto, bass clarinet, flute, and soprano clarinet – which have a resonant quality that really seems to open up Shipp's music too! We've really moved back towards enjoying Shipp in recent years – and the sense of persona in records like this is a good reason why – almost a renewed soul that we haven't heard in years, unlocked in the right setting like this." – Dusty Groove
"Amazing sympathetic piano-sax interaction. Often somber, sometimes blues-inflected, sometimes explosive." – rotfest.com
"Live in Okuden exemplifies the possibilities of the duo. Shipp is in great form and the album is a nice introduction to Walerian's imaginative playing." – Paul Acquaro, freejazzblog.org

"[D]espite featuring the nimble, expressive, and yes interesting and evocative fingers of pianist Matthew Shipp, Live at Okuden really gets its mood, and thus its mojo, from the bass clarinet, alto sax, soprano clarinet, and flute playing of Mat Walerian." - Paul Semel, CultureCatch.com

Musicians: Matthew Shipp / / Mat Walerian / Michael Bisio /

ESP 5019 Stephen Dydo, Alan Sondheim – Dragon And Phoenix

Dragon and Phoenix refers to the names of the sound holes on the Chinese instrument known as the guqin a.k.a. qin (gu is a prefix meaning "ancient"), which figures prominently on this album of improvised acoustic duos, being heard on thirteen of the sixteen tracks, with two qins on four tracks.
Stephen Dydo, former president of the New York Qin Society, is the more traditional player here, whereas Alan Sondheim has a style heavily based on free improvisation. The two bonded over their instrument collections, sometimes trading or loaning choice items. Dydo, who has also had lengthy careers as classical guitarist and as a twelve-tone composer, once told the author that a good day of composing yielded a measure and a half; this painstaking attention to detail has stood him in good stead during his more recent study of the qin. Sondheim, who has previously had three releases on ESP-Disk' starting in the 1960s and has prolifically spread his recent musical evolution across a variety of other labels, is an impulsive musical adventurer who uses his dizzying array of instruments for what their sounds can contribute to his musical style; he is not unaware of the traditional performance techniques of his instruments, but he never lets his musical expression be limited by or to those techniques.
Except for the use of madal (a hand drum) on one track, all the music here is made with stringed instruments. The music is very often focused on contrasts of timbres and textures. However, there may be as much pure melodic content here as on any Sondheim album. Harmonies are spare but spiced with microtonality. Though it may be more subtle than much of our catalog, attentive listeners will likely find that this meeting of tradition and experimentation lives up to an old ESP-Disk' slogan: "You never heard such sounds in your life."

PERSONNEL:
Stephen Dydo: qin, viola, banjo
Alan Sondheim: qin, viola, banjo, guzheng, rababa, erhu, madal

TRACKS:
01. 天 (Tian/heaven and) 6:56
02. 地 (Di/earth) 5:17
03. 玄 (Xuan/black and) 3:15
04. 黄 (Huang/yellow) 3:52
05. 宇 (Yu/space and) 6:30
06. 宙 (Zhou/time) 5:32
07. 洪 (Hong/vast and) 4:48
08. 荒 (Huang/desolate) 5:45
09. 日 (Ri/sun and) 3:26
10. 月 (Yue/moon) 5:14
11. 盈 (Ying/full and) 3:53
12. 昃 (Ze/setting sun) 3:34
13. 辰 (Chen/stars early) 6:02
14. 宿 (Xiu/interval) 4:51
15. 列 (Lie/ordered and) 5:38
16. 张 (Zhang/spread) 3:35

A note about the track titles: They are based on the first sixteen characters of the Ch'ien Tzu Wen, translated by Ellen Zweig and Alan Sondheim, correlated with other English translations in Ch'ien Tzu Wen, The Thousand Character Classic, A Chinese Primer, edited by Francie W. Paar (Ungar, 1963). The translation is slightly modified for the CD, creating an almost haiku-like poem.
Musicians: Alan Sondheim / Stephen Dydo

Packaged in a six-panel Digipak

ESP 5020 Thollem / DuRoche / Stjames Trio – Live In Our Time

Through the wood, sinew, skins, metal and fingers, one hears the years of experiential exploration, responsive nuances, and overwhelming power in the trio's joyfully intense playing. They cover a lot of territory in this recording, conjuring epochs and eras, terrains and cultures. This is improvised music composed spontaneously out of the breadth of experiences. www.thollem.com/thollem-duroche-stjames
André Stjames was a cornerstone of the rich, thriving Pacific Northwest jazz scene and worked regularly with his own ensemble, Mel Brown, The Kin Trio, Gordon Lee, Renato Caranto, and many others. Over the last three decades, Stjames worked with Sonny Rollins, the Harold Land-Blue Mitchell Quintet, Andrew Hill trio and large bands, Bobby Hutcherson, Charlie Rouse, Pharoah Sanders, James Moody, Alan Shorter, Nancy King, and George Cables. Stjames's strong sense of lyricism, buoyancy, and surging momentum, as well as a deep respect for both tradition and innovation, took him to both ends of the jazz spectrum -- from torch songs and two-beat to bop and beyond. He enjoyed freewheeling, open-ended avant-garde combustion with keepers of the flame including Judy Silvano/Cathi Walkup/Andrea Wolper, Ron Steen, Joe Pass, Kai Winding, Herb Ellis, Greta Matassa, and Houston Person as well as trailblazers such as Julius Hemphill, Marty Ehrlich, Eugene Chadbourne, Michael White, India Cooke, Kash Killion, Mal Waldron, and Sun Ra, to name a handful. André Stjames passed away on May 26, 2018 www.andrestjames.com
Tim DuRoche works regularly with the collective ensemble Battle Hymns & Gardens and The Kin Trio, and has logged extensive time with an array of U.S. and European avant-garde jazz innovators, including Dominic Duval, Burton Greene, Matana Roberts, Paul Plimley, Lisle Ellis, Wally Shoup, Gust Burns, Bert Wilson, Urs Leimgruber, Jon Raskin, Perry Robinson, Jack Wright, Doug Theriault, Marco Eneidi, Didier Petit, and Frank Gratkowski, among others. Tim is the host of "The New Thing," a weekly radio jazz radio show on KMHD 89.1 FM, and is the author of the book Occasional Jazz Conjectures (Durable Goods). www.timduroche.com
Thollem has spent his life skirting and erasing the edges of boundaries musically, culturally, geographically. His work is ever-changing, evolving and responding to the times and his experiences, both as a soloist and in collaboration with hundreds of artists across idioms and disciplines including William Parker, Susie Ibarra, Nels Cline, Amy Denio, Faruq Z. Bey, Michael Wimberly, John Butcher, Gino Robair, Jon Raskin, Henry Kaiser, Scott Amendola, Daniel Carter, Federico Ughi, Pauline Oliveros, Vinny Golia, and Hafez Modirzadeh, among many, many others. "He inhabits a world uniquely his own, rhythmically, harmonically and formally" (Terry Riley). This is Thollem's fourth appearance on ESP-Disk', following The Naked Future's Gigantomachia (ESP4053), TSIGOTI's Private Property Speaks to the People of the Party (ESP4057), and Thollem McDonas & Mad King Edmund's Happening: A Movement in 12 Acts (ESP5012). www.thollem.com

Track Listing:
01. Persisted Resistance 18:59
02. Reparation Apparition 14:26
03. Sunshine Pipeline 11:38

total 47:03
Thollem McDonas, piano
Tim DuRoche, drums
André Stjames, bass

https://soundcloud.com/esp-disk/3-sunshine-pipeline

“While harking to the avant-garde ‘new thing’ of six decades past, these now-spacious, now-dense, now-rambling probes of rhythm and harmony are journeys into wholly new and fertile musical territory.” – Derk Richardson, The Absolute Sound

ESP 5021 Amina Baraka & The Red Microphone – Amina Baraka & The Red Microphone

Amina Baraka speaks truth and spits fire when she reads her poetry. She is a warm and friendly person, but keeps a metal shovel by her front door in case of trespassers. She is a devoted member of the Communist Party USA. She is vast, she contains multitudes. After decades in the shadow of her late husband, poet and playwright Amiri Baraka, Amina is having a career renaissance in the company of The Red Microphone, four musicians who are fellow fighters in the struggle for equality for all. Not that she hasn't been getting her poetry published all those years, but as we have so often seen, poets who add music to the mix can transcend category boundaries and reach more listeners. And this is some powerful music, inside/outside jazz, created in the moment but occasionally building on a composition by group member Rocco John Iacovone, the cadences of Baraka's words intertwining with the rhythms of the music to become more than the sum of its parts.

Personnel:
Amina Baraka: words, lead vocals
with The Red Microphone:
Ras Moshe Burnett: tenor saxophone, flute, percussion
Rocco John Iacovone: curved soprano saxophone, alto saxophone, piano
John Pietaro: musical direction, drums, percussion
Laurie Towers: bass guitar
'amen chorus' on "Talking Drum": Ras, Rocco, John

Track Listing:
1. Time Step 8:41
2. The Spirit of Billy Bang 3:06
3. The Things I Love 7:36
4. Jayne Cortez 8:25
5. Afro American Child 19:33
6. For Margaret Walker Alexander 6:55
7. Real Dreams 4:08
8. Talking Drum 5:45
9. The Fascist 7:32
71:58
All words by Amina Baraka. All music collectively improvised by The Red Microphone except:
music under "Timestep": "Travelin' Thru" by Rocco John Iacovone, with quote of "L'Internationale" by Pierre Degeyter
music under "The Spirit of Billy Bang": by Laurie Towers
music under "The Things I Love": "Blue Nights" by Rocco John Iacovone
music under "Talking Drum": by John Pietaro

ESP 5022 Matthew Shipp – Zer0

In the first part of his career, Matthew Shipp avoided solo recordings, saying he wasn't ready – and the first solo album he made, Symbol Systems, happened by accident when the other player on the session didn't show up. Since then, his style expanded and matured and he recorded prolifically, including a number of solo albums, but they have remained special events, distinct statements of purpose. Zero continues in this tradition; its philosophical basis can be gleaned from the lecture on the bonus CD. But, of course, it is the music itself which speaks most eloquently.
Please note that the tune titled "Zero" is not the same as a previous Shipp composition of the same title.
Only the first edition (first 880 copies) of this album will include the bonus CD containing the talk Mr. Shipp gave at The Stone.

Track List:
01 Zero 5:31
02 Abyss Before Zero 3:48
03 Pole After Zero 3:19
04 Piano Panels 4:13
05 Cosmic Sea 3:43
06 Zero Skip and a Jump 2:11
07 Zero Subtract From Jazz 6:35
08 Blue Equation 5:14
09 Pattern Emerge 2:46
10 Ghost Pattern 1:39
11 After Zero 5:12
Total time 44:11

https://soundcloud.com/esp-disk/04-lines-of-energy
Bonus CD:
01 Zero: A Lecture on Nothingness 62:58

Matthew Shipp: piano (CD 1), voice (bonus CD)
Steve Dalachinsky: liner notes

Press Quotes:
“Zero is a striking and typically uncompromising solo recording. While Shipp plays aggressive and with signature acuity on pieces like ‘Piano Panels,’ ‘Pattern Emerge’ and the title track, his ‘Abyss Before Zero’ and the harmonically rich ‘Cosmic Sea’ display the thoughtful lyricism of Andrew Hill’s ‘70s solo albums…. Shipp has become an elder statesman on the free-jazz scene. His catalog is deep and his influence undeniable, just as Cecil Taylor and Don Pullen—firebrands from another era—had been a generation before.” – Bill Milkowski, DownBeat
“For years pianist Shipp has gone his own unconventional way. Critics have shunted him into the avant garde piano category. That’s not where he belongs. He is the sole occupant of the Matthew Shipp category. The listener with open ears will understand that individuality is the core of Shipp’s approach. The title of his new solo album, Zero, may suggest metaphysical implications. My advice is, don’t worry about metaphysical implications. Simply listen to Shipp’s keyboard mastery and the wide range of emotions in his playing—and leave categories behind.” – Doug Ramsey, Arts Journal

“Like Monk, Shipp has created his own language, what he might call a symbol system. His blues are often fragmented, leading you away from the familiar and into a house with many rooms. He can attack the keyboards as a percussionist, or play some gentle licks that would soothe a kitten. There is a logic to each piece here, and the listener can have confidence in the resolution of ideas.” – Mark Corroto, All About Jazz
"Matthew Shipp has become an elder statesman in the jazz world. How that happened can be boiled down to two simple elements. One: he has created a unique sound and language for improvised music and two: Shipp has become a doyen of cutting edge music making and opinion." – Mark Corroto, All About Jazz
"[A]n aspect of Shipp's character that is always evident, yet seldom discussed: the emotional commitment in his compositional method is equal to the rigorous intellect he applies in the architecture of creation." – Thom Jurek, Allmusic.com, re: solo album Piano Sutras

"The jazz world does not lack for fine pianists, but those who can sustain listener interest through an extended solo set always have been in shorter supply. These days, few pack their soliloquies with more information, drama and free-ranging thought than Matthew Shipp." – Howard Reich, Chicago Tribune
Musicians: Matthew Shipp '

Music recorded at Park West Studios; May 2, 2017 Lecture recorded at The Stone, New York, NY. July 23, 2017

ESP 5023 Megumi Yonezawa, Masa Kamaguchi, Ken Kobayashi – Boundary

All the members of this trio are Japanese. The pianist and drummer live in New York City and often collaborate; the bassist lives in Madrid but comes to N.Y.C. twice a year for a month each time. The producer heard them at Manhattan jazz bar Tomi Jazz and immediately booked a session to capture their magic before Kamaguchi left town. Yonezawa, from Hokkaido, earned multiple awards while studying performance and composition at Berklee, then joined Greg Osby's group on Jason Moran's recommendation and can be heard with him on the Blue Note album Public. Other credits include work with David Liebman, George Garzone, Sam Newsome, and many more. In 2016 the Fresh Sound New Talent label released her debut album, A Result of the Colors. But none of these credits reflect the freedom with which she plays on Boundary. Kamaguchi , also from Hokkaido, has the most recording credits (upwards of 30) in the trio, ranging from Ahmed Abdullah's Actual Proof (CIMP, 1999) to a series of tribute albums with Vinnie Sperrazza and Jacob Sacks (Fresh Sound New Talent). Inspired to play bass after hearing Jaco Pastorius albums, he studied with Gary Peacock student Yoshio Ikeda, then moved to Boston to attend Berklee, followed by a dozen years in New York City performing and recording with ESP star Sonny Simmons, David Murray, Charles Gayle, Paul Motian, Dave Douglas, Frank Kimbrough, and even Toots Thielemans. Kobayashi, who put the trio together, hails from Tokyo, where he earned a Bachelor's degree in art criticism and art history from Tama Art University. After moving to New York, he expanded his knowledge at the Drummer's Collective. He can also be heard on Jan (2014) with bassist Jochem van Dijk and Nine Stories (2016) with Takeshi Asai.

Megumi Yonezawa, piano; Masa Kamaguchi, bass; Ken Kobayashi, drums
All tracks by Megumi Yonezawa/Masa Kamaguchi/Ken Kobayashi (ESP-Disk' Ltd.) except "I’ll Be Seeing You" by Irvin Kahal/Sammy Fain (Fain Music Co./BMG Gold Songs).
Cover art by Kiichiro Adachi
Photos by Eva Kapanadze
Liner notes by Matthew Shipp
Produced by Steve Holtje
Recorded at Park West Studios on June 4, 2017 by Jim Clouse

Track List:
01. Boundary 4:23 https://soundcloud.com/esp-disk/01-boundary
02. Alchemy 6:03
03. Tremor 4:40
04. Meryon 7:18
05. I’ll Be Seeing You 6:39
06. Reef 7:31
07. Veil 8:50
08. Onement 6:08
09. Wavelength 5:15
10. Nostalgio 9:51
Total time 66:37

Press quotes:
“Japanese expats Yonezawa, bassist Kamaguchi, and drummer Kobayashi use space and silence to riveting effect on nine originals and the standard ‘I’ll Be Seeing You.’ But like her country mate Satoko Fujii, Yonezawa can shock, occasionally sending shards and clusters exploding from the keyboard.”– Derk Richardson, The Absolute Sound
“New York-based Japanese pianist Megumi Yonezawa co-leads a sharp new trio with fellow countrymen, bassist Masa Kamaguchi and drummer Ken Kobayashi. Integrity, freedom, and an extraordinary improvisational facility are part of the group’s philosophy, and Boundary proves their individual and collective value in the process of creating spontaneously from predetermined ideas.” – jazztrail.net

Musicians: Megumi Yonezawa Masa Kamaguchi Ken Kobayashi Matthew Shipp

ESP 5024 Robbie Basho – Live In Forlì, Italy 1982

Basho (1940-86), who died young after a stroke, never got his due in the culture at large, but steel-string guitar enthusiasts have known for decades that he was one of the greats of "American Primitive." Technically adept and compositionally imaginative, fusing the music of many cultures into a mesmerizing solo style, he has been an inspiration for many; his music has generated a surge of interest in recent years. This 1982 concert was part of a four-show Italian tour. It took place at the 18th-century Palazzo Gaddi that housed the local music high school and was mostly used for classical concerts, in an intimate space co-organizer Mario Calvitti (whose memories of the events surrounding this concert make up the bulk of the liner notes) says Basho called "one lovely little room where I could play all night." Only previously released incompletely as a download, this show can now be heard in its full glory.

Vinyl Track Listing:
A1. Redwood Ramble 3:50
A2. Song of the Stallion 4:21
A3. The Grail and the Lotus 8:47
A4. German Chocolate Cake 2:36
A5. Interlude 2:05
B1. Cathedral et Fleur de Lis 8:13
B2. Pavan India 7:58
B3. California Raga 7:40
Total 45:30

vinyl includes download code for the entire program

CD/download Track Listing:
01. Redwood Ramble 3:51
02. Song of the Stallion 4:23
03. The Grail and the Lotus 9:31
04. Interlude 1 0:50
05. German Chocolate Cake 2:42
06. Interlude 2 2:52
07. Cathedral et Fleur de Lis 8:09
08. Pavan India 7:57
09. Interlude 3 2:45
10. Clair de Lune (for Twelve-String) 4:43
11. California Raga 8:09
Total 55:52

Personnel: Robbie Basho, acoustic guitar, occasional vocals

Quotes:
“Basho’s manic, hyperkinetic approach to playing, singing, songwriting and living in general have very few peers. …a guitarist in need of a popular resurrection.” – Pitchfork.com
“Whatever bag he was in, he was in all the way. There was no holding back and no wobbliness at all. He just had the ability to take you somewhere else.” Glenn Jones
“Robbie Basho was an angel. I don’t believe he -Disk')was terrestrial. I would watch him play and be transported in a way I’ve never been transported before.” – Will Ackerman

Musicians: Robbie Basho

Recorded live at Sala Gaddi in "Palazzo Gaddi". Comes in a cardboard gatefold sleeve. Different from Live In Forli, Italy 1982 in name of labels and in catalogue numbers. CD

バーコード (on sticker): 825481502412 Matrix / Runout (Side A runout etched): ESP5024LP 110680 - A - 2 Matrix / Runout (Side B runout etched): ESP5024LP 110680 - B - 1 LP

ESP 5025 Fay Victor's SoundNoiseFunk With Joe Morris, Sam Newsome, Reggie Nicholson – Wet Robots

"Few vocalists have the sheer boldness – the outright fearlessness – of Fay Victor as an improviser. The New York native has long been a creative force on the avant-jazz scene, as a singer, bandleader, composer, arranger, and teacher. She has worked on both sides of the Atlantic with the likes of Misha Mengelberg, Roswell Rudd, and Anthony Braxton, along with recording several distinctive albums as a leader. Reviewing her recent disc Absinthe & Vermouth, NPR declared evocatively that Fay’s original songs sound “as if Joni Mitchell wrote lyrics for a lost Betty Carter prog-rock album – and it totally works.” Fay has also recorded edgy blues in a duo with guitarist Anders Nilsson, and she is an inspired re-animator of vintage instrumentals as vocal material, in the spirit of Carmen McRae in Monk; to this end, Fay has performed with her In Praise of Ornette group and with her house-rocking Herbie Nichols Sung band.
"Now we have on record Fay’s SoundNoiseFUNK quartet, featuring Joe Morris, Sam Newsome, and Reggie Nicholson – each an exceptional maker of music in the moment. Although Fay enjoyed a rapport with each of these players in various combinations, this foursome had never played together as a unit before the single summer day last year when Wet Robots was captured in a Brooklyn studio. If jazz is the sound of surprise, this album startles – a sonic funhouse of left turns. The band floats in its own space, untethered by a bass. Morris’s guitar moves like a snake. Newhouse keens, taps, sighs on the straight horn. Nicholson makes his percussion set-up a skittering, rattling thing. Then there is Fay – her voice primal and wild, as attuned to unfettered expression as Albert Ayler’s tenor." - from Bradley Bambarger's liner notes
This is Fay Victor's first album as a leader released on an American label other than her own Greene Street Music, but she is already a star on the New York avant-jazz scene.

Personnel:
Fay Victor, vocals, lyrics
Sam Newsome, soprano saxophone
Joe Morris, electric guitar
Reggie Nicholson, drums

Track List:
01. Funky Dunk 3:55
02. A Witness in the Wilderness 5:24
03. Information Highway 5:16
04. Police Lights and Sirens 7:20
05. Squeeze Bottle 5:01
06. The Blues Are Always Free 5:51
07. Creative Folks! 4:49
08. Textured Pines 10:00
09. Whistling on a Skateboard 7:18
10. I Sing 7:44
11. The Ha-Ha's 1:56
12. Holding Back the Scream 7:03
Total time 66:37

Press Quotes::
“Vocal colossus Fay Victor has been performing otherworldly acrobatics with her pipes since the ’90s…. Wet Robots is her debut record as a leader for ESP-Disk’, and it’s a doozy. The supergroup that the improviser/lyricist calls SoundNoiseFunk—soprano saxophonist Sam Newsome, guitarist Joe Morris, and drummer Reggie Nicholson—is entirely deserving of its name; although the foursome had never played together before stepping into a Brooklyn studio for this project, their red-hot chemistry is evident from the get-go.” Brad Cohen, JazzTimes
“Victor has been singing pretty and singing wild, singing standards and improvising with the heavyweights for years in both Europe and New York.... Wet Robots, however, is her date with a hand-picked band of peers, and it will blow your ears clear out of the water.” – Will Layman, PopMatters

“Victor wields an outsized personality, and however ecstatic her group gets, the ideas she works to impart to listeners refuse to be overwhelmed by the churning backdrop.” – Dave Cantor, DownBeat editor’s pick
Musicians: Fay Victor / Joe Morris / Sam Newsome / Reggie Nicholson

Comes in a 3 panel Digipak

ESP 5026 Whit Dickey – Morph

ESP 5027 Gabriel Zucker – Weightin

Zucker's first ESP-Disk' album, Evergreen (Canceled World) (ESP5017), was made with his big band, The Delegation. His second is a quartet, with Delegation members Adam O'Farrill and Eric Trudel joined by acclaimed drummer Tyshawn Sorey. A suite inspired by Rachel Kushner's novel The Flamethrowers,Weighting is a spacious mix of composition and improvisation, frequently intimate — sometimes consisting of just intertwined sax and trumpet lines —but occasionally punctuated with rowdy outbursts or densely woven passages.

Track Listing:
1. Would It Come Back To You?
2. The Uselessness of Truth / Not To Be Anything More
3. The Stream of New York / and art, of course
4. Missing Our Appointments With Each Other
5. What's left (when we are always honest) / The Future Was A Place
6. a movie, a lover
7. Dissimulation / Not Knowing It At The Time
8. the stones in my pockets

Personnel:
Gabriel Zucker: piano, compositions; Tyshawn Sorey: drums; Adam O'Farrill: trumpet; Eric Trudel: saxophone

Press:
The Vinyl District review grade: A
NYC Jazz Record “Best Debuts of the Year” list

“Zucker's advanced compositional work is knotty, unpredictable, and utterly satisfying. Spinning with freshness and maturity, Weighting is put forward with a sterling avant-garde posture that reflects the artistry and commitment of the musicians involved.” – jazztrail.net

Musicians: Delegation / Gabriel Zucker

Recorded at Oktaven Audio, 6 October 2016 Zucker's first ESP-Disk' album, Evergreen (Canceled World) (ESP5017), was made with his big band, The Delegation. His second is a quartet, with Delegation members Adam O'Farrill and Eric Trudel joined by acclaimed drummer Tyshawn Sorey. A suite inspired by Rachel Kushner's novel The Flamethrowers,Weighting is a spacious mix of composition and improvisation, frequently intimate — sometimes consisting of just intertwined sax and trumpet lines —but occasionally punctuated with rowdy outbursts or densely woven passages www.espdisk.com

ESP 5028 Buck Curran – Morning Haikus, Afternoon Ragas

On his second solo album (both co-released by ESP-Disk' and Curran's Obsolete Recordings), the emphasis switches to acoustic guitar. Side A, all solo acoustic instrumentals, seems to have fallen out of a wormhole emanating from Takoma Records in the 1970s. There's some of that on side B as well, but also vocals and other instruments, sometimes overdubbed, and the dedication of "Taurus" to Peter Green, guitarist extraordinaire of the original lineup of Fleetwood Mac (when it was a blues band), hints at the breadth of Curran's influences. The introduction of other timbres and textures doesn't diminish the intimate, almost meditational mood, though.
CD/downloads available now. Vinyl can be preordered and will be shipped by the end of June, with a free download included sent immediately.

Personnel:
Buck Curran: vocals, guitars, harmonium, flute, banjo. Adele Pappalardo: vocals on "Dirt Floor."

Track list/times
A1. Song for Liam (2:36)
A2. Improvisation 1 (1:52)
A3. River Unto Sea (5:38)
A4. Song for Shylah (3:38)
A5. Summer Street (4:22)
A6. Francesco Joaquin's Morning Haiku (1:59)
B1. Improvisation 2 (0:38)
B2. The Sun Also Rises (5:06)
B3. Taurus (4:28)
B4. Compane Del Sabato Mattina (3:56)
B5. Dirt Floor (2:26)
B6. Sea of Polaris (5:03)

Press Quotes for Immortal Light:
"Guitar tones linger and reverberate with a mystical translucence." - Dusted
"The wonderful new Buck Curran LP on ESP-Disk', as gorgeous a psychedelic folk record as can be in 2016." - Jeff Conklin, host of The Avant Ghetto on WFMU
"Curran's first album under his own name invokes swarming natural forces, looking for the borderline between the real and the sublime and, maybe, the supernatural." - Jesse Jarnow, Relix
"Psych folk masterpiece shines bright." - Sid Smith, Prog

"Curran has successfully tapped into that natural beauty and created a slice of alt-folk that is as engrossing as anything you’re likely to hear." - Folk Radio UK

Musicians: Buck Curran

LP（ Recorded at Via Rovelli, Bergamo (Italy) between June 5th and August 3rd, 2017. Cover artwork by Nicola d'Antonio degli Agli (1480). Includes printed inner sleeve and download code.

CD

ESP 5029 Matthew Shipp Trio – Signature

Recorded at Park West Studio; Brooklyn, NY on July 9, 2018 Digipak with 4-page insert

ESP 5030 Mars Williams – Mars Williams Presents: An Ayler Xmas Volume

A product of the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians who studied with AACM founders Anthony Braxton and Roscoe Mitchell, saxophonist Mars Williams is most famous as a member of The Psychedelic Furs but has proven his jazz bona fides with Peter Brötzmann and Ken Vandermark and while guiding Liquid Soul and Hal Russell's NRG Ensemble, to name just a few. His rock CV is also varied, including many years in Akron New Wave band The Waitresses and work with Billy Idol, Ministry, Massacre, and many more. He also leads the Albert Ayler tribute band Witches & Devils, and out of their holiday concerts grew a unique tradition. One look at this album's track titles and you'll understand the concept here. One listen and you'll hear that, as odd as that concept may seem, it's brilliantly effective, with the disparate melodies working together in their common projection of joy and celebration. And it's worth noting that Williams's worlds collide on track 3 here, featuring The Waitresses' biggest hit, "Christmas Wrapping." Williams played on their original recording. After enjoying An Ayler Xmas vol. 1 last year, ESP invited him to make vol. 2 a co-release of Williams's Soul What Records and ESP-Disk', the top Ayler label. Mars will be supporting the release with both Witches & Devils' annual Xmas show and tours in the U.S. and Europe using renowned local musicians. See the tour press release for specifics.

Track list/times:
1. Xmas Medley
2. O Tannenbaum/Spirits/12 Days of Christmas
3. Love Cry/Christmas Wrapping
4. Carol of the Drum/Bells/O Come Emanuel/Joy to the World
5. Universal Indians/We Wish You a Merry Xmas

Album Credits:
Tracks 1, 3, 4 recorded live at The Hungry Brain, Chicago, U.S.A. with Witches & Devils, consisting of: Mars Williams, saxes, toy instruments; Josh Berman, cornet; Fred Lonberg-Holm, cello; Jim Baker, piano, ARP synthesizer, viola; Kent Kessler, bass; Brian Sandstrom, bass, guitar, trumpet; Steve Hunt, drums, percussion; Jeb Bishop, trombone (track 1 only)
Tracks 2, 5 recorded live at Porgy & Bess, Vienna, Austria with: Mars Williams, saxes, toy instruments; Thomas Berghammer, trumpet; Hermann Stangassinger, bass; Didi Kern, drums, percussion; Christof Kurzmann, lloopp, vocals

Press Quotes:
“There’s mirth in the sequencing of their medleys – one track on this CD veers from a steaming rendition of ‘Love Cry’ into The Waitresses’ ‘Christmas Wrapping’ – but the performances are ferocious. Williams leads the charge, summoning an appositely hyper-emotional range of shrieks and roars from his array of saxophones while Berman’s cornet raises the ghost of Donald Ayler and keyboardist Jim Baker evokes the spacy comping of Cal Cobbs. […] This album is probably a bit too rambunctious for most family gatherings, but its committed performances transcend novelty.” – Bill Meyer, The Wire

for 2017's An Ayler Xmas: "The album captures the band deftly underlining familiar themes from Christmas songs such as 'Jingle Bells' and 'Angels We Have Heard on High' as well as the Hanukkah classic 'Ma’oz Tzur' while melding them with the indelible, keening melodies of Ayler staples like 'Spirits' and 'Truth Is Marching In' in extended medleys. Each one is performed with bruising intensity, feverish interplay, and cathartic, sobbing spirituality as the group chases Ayler’s singular marriage of overloaded joy and gushing release—an approach that transcends any seasonal limitations." - Peter Margasak, Chicago Reader

"Ayler’s themes are as timeless and full of spirit as the holiday classics Williams has chosen and it is great to hear the latter used as vehicles for nor’easter-like improvisations. When the family starts fighting over the last piece of Christmas goose, put on this album and watch a startled peace settle over the relatives." - Andrey Henkin, New York City Jazz Record

"Together, these seven musicians pop through the intertwined compositions with a swirling drive that constantly tumbles back and forth between fiercely played themes and elaborations and variations that are played with the sacred fire of fragments. A few minutes away in 'Ma'oz Tzur (Hanukkah) - Truth Is Marching In - Jingle Bells', the first of three medleys, and you'll already have a party to choose from that combines stateliness and restlessness eagerly on a stirring surface that constantly accelerates and decelerates, and threatens to burst at any moment. Williams tears and whitewashes with a whitewashed, insatiable urgency, Lonberg-Holm makes the cello vultures just as enthusiastically with effects and a passionate scraping bow." - Guy Peters, Enola

"The band’s performance style—which favors high-energy horn solos, spacey keyboard flourishes and rhythms that shift between march time, swing time and no time—nods toward the sound that Ayler projected with the ensembles he toured with during the last five years of his career." - Bill Meyer, Downbeat
Musicians: Mars Williams

www.marswilliams.com A product of the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians who studied with AACM founders Anthony Braxton and Roscoe Mitchell, saxophonist Mars Williams is most famous as a member of The Psychedelic Furs but has proven his jazz bona fides with Peter Brötzmann and Ken Vandermark and while guiding Liquid Soul and Hal Russell's NRG Ensemble, to name just a few. His rock CV is also varied, including many years in Akron New Wave band The Waitresses and work with Billy Idol, Ministry, Massacre, and many more. He also leads the Albert Ayler tribute band Witches & Devils, and out of their holiday concerts grew a unique tradition. One look at this album's track titles and you'll understand the concept here. One listen and you'll hear that, as odd as that concept may seem, it's brilliantly effective, with the disparate melodies working together in their common projection of joy and celebration. And it's worth noting that Williams's worlds collide on track 3 here, featuring The Waitresses' biggest hit, "Christmas Wrapping." Williams played on their original recording. After enjoying An Ayler Xmas vol. 1 last year, ESP invited him to make vol. 2 a co-release of Williams's Soul What Records and ESP-Disk', the top Ayler label.

ESP 5031 Peter Lemer Quintet – Son Of Local Colour

PRE-ORDER! Release date: October 25, 2019

The core of this group – four of the five musicians listed below – recorded an LP for ESP-Disk' in 1966. The plan, conceived the year after the 50th anniversary of the recording session, was to reunite the original quintet, which had existed for six months back in '66, but unfortunately Nisar Ahmad (George) Khan, tenor saxophonist on the original album, came down with something and couldn't appear. Alan Skidmore (Lemer bandmate in SOS) was deputized and, as all familiar with his career would expect and you will hear, came through with flying local colours at the concert on February 20, 2018 at noted London jazz club Pizza Express. Four months later, Jon Hiseman passed away at age 73 after battling a brain tumor. Five of the original album's six compositions are reprised, but with more room to stretch out on them in the concert context. New to Lemer's ESP discography are Lemer's tribute to British saxophonist/frequent Lemer bandmate Dick Heckstall-Smith, "Big Dick"; Surman's "URH"; and a wild interpretation of Coltrane's "Impressions."
Personnel: John Surman, baritone and soprano saxophones; Alan Skidmore, tenor saxophone; Peter Lemer, piano; Tony Reeves, double bass; Jon Hiseman, drums

Track Listing:
01. Ciudad Enahenado 9:50
02. Ictus 8:56
03. Flowville 9:18
04. Carmen 7:08
05. Impressions 9:11
06. Big Dick 9:26
07. URH 6:05
08. In the Out 9:05

Compositions by Peter Lemer, except "Ictus" (Carla Bley), "URH" (John Surman), and "Impressions" (John Coltrane).
Press for the original album: "...another ESP-Disk gem back from the massive archives of one of the finest labels in avant-garde jazz." – Forced Exposure
Press for the reunion: "Reading from demanding scores, Surman and Skidmore welded an inspired, rock-solid brass section alongside the nuanced bass dialogues from Reeves, Hiseman’s structurally intense percussion and Lemer’s keyboard effervescence. ... Spells of tough, tight synchronisation, expressive solos from Surman and Skidmore deep in to their power station delivery, Reeves’ sensitively syncopated bass lines and discreet pummelling by Hiseman complemented Lemer’s brightly illuminated piano flights." - Geoff Winston, London Jazz News https://londonjazznews.com/2018/02/22/review-peter-lemer-quintet-son-of-local-colour-at-pizza-express/

"Peter had conceived his compositions in era before the term jazz-fusion had come into common currency and their success lies in the clever blending of arrangements and definable themes while allowing space for cutting edge improvisation. ... But it was on John Coltrane’s high-flying 'Impressions' that the group moved into top gear with brilliant soprano solos from Surman an[d] ever more heated tenor from Skidmore, not to mention an explosive Hiseman interlude." - Chris Welch http://chriswelchonline.com/peter-lemer-quintet

Housed in a 6-panel Digipak. Recorded in concert on February 20, 2018 at London jazz club Pizza Express.

ESP 5032 Painted Faces – Tales From The Skinny Apartment

Release date November 8, 2019
Painted Faces is the long (strange/trip) running voyage of weirdo David Drucker, began in Florida in 2009 and decamped to NYC in 2011. It has sometimes been a loose band in the past with a revolving lineup of outsiders and interlopers (known as The Freak Band), but is usually a solo endeavor, and the bulk of the recordings have been done as such. PF has always been a home recording solo project, one-man-band style heavy on psychOdelic/outsider folk/noise/experimental vibes. He started self releasing CD-Rs in the early days and quickly jumped to tapes on a variety of labels including Already Dead, Lava Church, J&C, Null Zone, Tall Tapes. A "legendary" CD compilation on Gulcher Records and an LP from Already Dead and Almost Halloween Time in Italy brings us to the here and now. Tales from the Skinny Apartment is somewhere around the 20th or so Painted Faces release...he has long lost count.
Drucker runs/curates gigs (and records at) the Skinny Apartment, his dwelling place in Ridgewood Queens, which some folks have called the "realest DIY zone in NYC." He also rips in Dead River Company, Big Hiatus, Shecky, Canyon River Blues and countless other unknown subterranean improv zoner outfits. "Ripping" involves keeping it freaky and weird and ripping sets wherever/whenever, ie always being down to perform whether in a kitchen or a packed ballroom....no diva bullshit, just plugging in (or going sans electricity) and playing...always giving it your all...Ridgewood Rippers are the crew of artists that populate Ridgewood and the loose "scene" around the Skinny Apartment...much of it is in jest, a self-inflated mythology of nonsense which is pervasive in all rock and roll "scene" histories. As a student of rock/pop history, Drucker is fascinated by the loose associations that connect folks from various zones together...i.e. Miles Davis and The Grateful Dead...it's all the same though, the labels and genre distinctions are completely arbitrary. We're all in this together, now more than ever...to be a "ripper" is simply to "rip"...no nonsense!
Painted Faces has toured all over the USA and Canada numerous times, spreading the ripper gospels, and is gearing up for the second European tour with fellow ripper Anura. He is known for falling apart on "stage," with performances heavy on humor, horror, stoned digressions, and cathartic bouts of therapy, part performance art/part standup comedy, eradicating the lines between performer, performance, and audience one show at a time.

Tracklist
1. Chicks That Are into Beefheart (and Jandek) 3:24
2. Florida Bat Salad 1:05
3. Nightmare on Drucker Street 4:37
4. I Took Too Much Acid in 7th Grade 4:22
5. Island of Tragedy 3:04
6. Follow Me Down on Instagram 1:58
7. Seafood Special 3:59
8. My Mom Was a Hebrew School Teacher 4:14
9. Massachussetts Is a Magical Place 4:21
10. The Ridgewood Ripper 5:18
11. I Don't Want to Listen to Your Tape (Cellar Dweller) 8:23
Total time 44:35

All Music Written & Recorded by David Drucker at The Skinny Apartment in Ridgewood, Queens, 2017
Featuring Mike Green (Mezzanine Swimmers) on guitars on "I Took Too Much Acid in 7th Grade"
Cop Funeral on electronics on "Seafood Special"
Chris “Mr Transylvania” Shields on background vocals on "Massachussetts Is a Magical Place"
Eva “Nighttime” Goodman on violin & backing vocals on "The Ridgewoo

CD-rマ Fold over sleeve with pro duplicated/printed CDR

ESP 5035 Radical Empathy Trio – Reality And Other Imaginary Place

PRE-ORDER! Release date: Oct. 25, 2019 (CD), Dec. 6 (vinyl)

This album was recorded during Thollem's 2017 residency at Brooklyn-based multi-discipline mecca Pioneer Works. It's the second by Radical Empathy, which combines three uncategorizable improvisors. Michael Wimberly has been astonishing folks since his days in Charles Gayle bands and Steve Coleman & Five Elements in the early '90s, and has gone on become a composer and educator of note. Nels Cline has spent decades changing people's ideas about the role of the electric guitar in multiple contexts, ranging from Wilco to Anthony Braxton (think about that!) as well as many projects as a leader; this is his fourth album in trio with Thollem, and a fifth will follow next year, also on ESP. The heavy electronic sound of the first track, with its swathes of distortion, puts it very much in Noise territory, with Wimberly contributing coloristic accents and heavier flurries of rhythmic activity. After the twenty uncompromising minutes of "Collective Tunnels," for "Conscious Tunnels" Cline switches to a guitar tone John Abercrombie wouldn't shy away from and Thollem sits down at an acoustic piano (for a while) -- though their free improvisation is just as uncompromising. The timbres cease pacifying jazzers when blippy 1950s electronic sounds slinkily slither from the speakers. Then the piano comes back, but the guitar's tone gets dirty. Genre boundaries are crushed underfoot as the moods continue to vary wildly as "Conscious Tunnels" covers an amazing breadth of timbres and textures.
Personnel: Thollem McDonas, keyboards; Nels Cline, electric guitars; Michael Wimberly, drums. Recorded by Justin Frye at Pioneer Works, Brooklyn, NY Sept. 13, 2017.

Track Listing:
Side A/track 1: Collective Tunnels 20:06
Side B/track 2: Conscious Tunnels 19:21

Press Quotes:
"Subtle alterations, treatments, processes. Relentless kinetic energy. Above all, an appreciation for how to find and hang on to your place in a narrative unfolding at speed. For the fact that structure is not what is imposed, but what is revealed." - Fred Frith (liner notes for the first Radical Empathy album, released on Relative Pitch in 2015)
"Church jams and death rays, soap operas and noir escapes, psychedelia and electrocutions -- no matter where the conversation turns, ...McDonas and... Cline are right on top of it. The tumbling, rattling drums of Michael Wimberly ...lend this improvising trio the feel of the '60s avant..." - Greg Burk, MetalJazz
"This moody and wonderful album...is an excellent example of three fellow travelers listening deeply to each other and creating an album of mesmerizing depth and texture." - Paul Acquaro, The Free Jazz Collective
"Thollem is a bruising virtuoso who has deconstructed free music, classical, blues, electronic music, prog, noise, and everything in between." - Brad Cohan, Bandcamp
"Thollem might be a musician, or he might be some kind of wizard scientist...the experience might melt your mind." - The Denver Westword
"A true guitar polymath, Nels Cline has tackled everything from gothic country rock with the Geraldine Fibbers to a full remake of John Coletrane's late improvisational masterwork, Interstellar Space." - Rolling Stone, "Top 100 Guitarists"
"With a career starting in the late seventies and over 100 albums under his belt, Nels Cline is one of the most influential guitarists and composers today." - NPR

Musicians: Thollem McDonas / Nels Cline / Michael Wimberly

CD

LP

ESP 5036 Ivo Perelman, Matthew Shipp, William Parker, Bobby Kapp – Ineffable Jo


Release date: October 25, 2019 - available for pre-order
Prolific tenor saxophonist Ivo Perelman wanted to be on ESP, because ESP's 1967 Gato Barbieri album In Search of the Mystery was an important record for Perelman, both being South American tenorists of an avant bent. So it is no coincidence that the drummer on In Search of the Mystery, Bobby Kapp (who's also on Noah Howard's second ESP-Disk', At Judson Hall (1968)), mans the kit for the present album. For that matter, the bassist, William Parker, made his recorded debut on ESP as well, playing on Frank Lowe's Black Beings (1973). And Perelman has a twenty-three-year/thirty-three-and-counting-albums collaboration with pianist Matthew Shipp, who's been associated with ESP since 2015. Kapp and Shipp are on Perelman's 2017 Leo album Tarvos, Parker and Shipp have made multiple albums with Perelman, and this is even the second time out for this quartet, after 2017's Heptagon (Leo). Somehow, though, their interplay remains fresh. Of course each player has particular gestures and general textures that recur from time to time, but like a kaleidoscope, each turn finds familiar elements recombinating into new patterns. Parker, Perelman, and Shipp frequently interweave spontaneous melodies of dazzling complexity. The free-bop of the rhythm section introduction to "Jubilation" is an unexpected delight. Kapp's skittering accents throughout are a lesson in setting a pulse without being obvious about it, with "Bliss" being a prime example. "Exuberance" crowns the album in particularly ecstatic fashion, the four players' unique and distinctive styles coming together in an exultant expression of creative freedom that's communicative and accessible. (from the liner notes)
Personnel: Ivo Perelman, tenor saxophone; Matthew Shipp, piano; William Parker, bass; Bobby Kapp, drums. Recorded April 21, 2018 at Park West Studio. Jim Clouse, engineer.

Track Listing:
1. Ecstasy 6:56
2. Ineffable Joy 3:54
3. Jubilation 7:17
4. Ebullience 3:42
5. Bliss 8:45
6. Elation 4:43
7. Rejoicing 7:33

8. Exuberance 7:21

Press Quotes (re: Heptagon): "Kapp is an excellent choice as Perelman's assessment is on the mark...'he's very sensitive to time and space. He is dancing at the drum kit...' And while the frontline rolls along with the improvisational game-plan, Kapp's buoyant timekeeping faculties add a poetic quality to the rhythmic foundation along with Parker's resonating lines and fluid attack. The artists do what they do best by creating on-the-fly works without following any rigid agendas..." - Glenn Astarita, New York City Jazz Record
"...one of the most finely realized of the albums that Perelman has released this year. It's a gem, and open eared modern jazz fans shouldn't miss it." Tim Niland, jazzandblues.blogspot

"this band feels extremely balanced and dancing. "Part One" finds Kapp and Parker locking into a delightful feeling of free time that is nevertheless in 4/4, and Shipp and Perelman connect above this like old friends." - Will Layman, PopMatters

Musicians: Ivo Perelman / Matthew Shipp / William Parker / Bobby Kapp －

CDここ Recorded April 21, 2018 at Park West Studios, Brooklyn, NY. The artists alone decide...

ESP 5037 Mat Walerian, Matthew Shipp, William Parker, Hamid Drake – Every Dog Has Its Day But It Doesn't Matter Because Fat Cat Is Getting Fatter

CD Recorded May 21, 2018 at Parkwest Studios, Brooklyn, New York. This is Walerian's fourth album as a leader on ESP-Disk.

ESP 5038 Thollem/Parker /Cline – Gowanus Sessions II

CD（ Recorded January 3, 2012 at Peter Karl Studios, Gowanus Arts Bu

LP Recorded January 3, 2012 at Peter Karl Studios, Gowanus Arts Bu

ESP 5039 Matthew Shipp Trio – The Unidentifiable

Recorded October 10, 2019 at Park West Studios in Brooklyn, NY. Issued in a four-panel digipak.

ESP 5040 Flow Trio With Joe McPhee – Winter Garden

Recorded on January 11, 2020 Cover painting: “tree bark & berries (for c.h.) #5,” 2004, by Yuko Otomo Digipak

ESP-5041 Mark Reboul/Roberta Piket/Billy Mintz- SEVEN PIECES/ABOUT AN HOUR/SAXOPHONE, PIANO, DRUMS

ESP 5042 Fay Victor's SoundNoiseFunk – We’ve Had Enough

ESP 5047 Guillermo Gregorio – Two Trios

Tracks 1-6 recorded at Edgefest, Ann Arbor, MI, on October 17, 2018. Tracks 7-11 recorded at Downtown Music Gallery, New York City, on February 9, 2020.

ESP 5048 Attitude! – Pause & Effect

ESP 5049 Silke Eberhard, Nikolaus Neuser And Talibam! – This Week Is in Two Weeks

LP

ESP 5050 Owl Xounds Exploding Galaxy – The Coalescence

Folded glossy cardboard sleeve in plastic slipcase. The Coalescence is an archival release of previously unheard recordings from the same session that yielded the Splintered Visions LP, which was issued on Blackest Rainbow Records (BRR223).

Limited edition of 30 copies (numbered). Recorded FEB 2007 at Urban Spaceman Studio, Brooklyn, NY. The Coalescence is an archival release of previously unheard recordings from the same session that yielded the Splintered Visions LP, which was issued on Blackest Rainbow Records (BRR223).

ESP 5051LP Raymond Byron – Bond Wire Cur

We are deeply saddened by the passing of Ray. Hard to believe we will never hear his gravelly voice on the phone again. He wasn't just an artist, he was a friend. R.I.P.

Over the course of a two-decade career, Raymond Byron Magic Raposa has recorded six albums as Castanets and another as Raymond Byron and the White Freighter and has worked with musicians ranging from Annie Clark (St. Vincent), Matthew Houck (Phosphorescent), and Sufjan Stevens to Liz Janes, Jana Hunter, and John McCauley (Deer Tick). Over the course of that time, his music has been called part of the New Weird America movement, freak-folk, psychedelic folk, and indie folk.

Bond Wire Cur, partly recorded during the pandemic, is as surreal and desolate and haunting as anything he’s done. Collaborators on the album are many (Cory Gray, Erik Clampitt, Pony Domer, Jason Stinson, Lauren K. Newman, Kimba Kuzas, Ron Burns, Paula Barry, Coty Dolores Miranda, Josh Cole), yet the sound of the record is stripped-down and stark. It is a crucial chapter in his career and in ESP-Disk’s Drive to Revive Weird Rock.

PLEASE ORDER THE DOWNLOAD FROM ESP'S BANDCAMP: https://raymondbyronesp.bandcamp.com/album/bond-wire-cur

We are not out of stock, Bandcamp just works better.

Side A

1. How It Ends                 　　 1:12

2. Vaya                               　1:04

3. Paris Trout                     　 1:49

4. Colima                              1:43

5. There in the Loam      　　 　1:53

6. Polly                                 2:41

7. Emma                               2:11

8. Cyclone Fence             　　 1:06

9. No Joke                           1:47

10. I Don't Captain          　　 1:24

11. Gone Rider Spur      　　  2:02

 

Side B

1. Polly 2 (Sparrow)                                         0:42

2. Old Unconscious                                          1:00

3. Benediction Mountain                              　　1:47

4. Bond Wire Cur                                              5:06

5. Before What's Left of Our Minds Go   2:25

6. Yea That I Walk                                            1:43

7. Wings of a Dove                                           3:16

8. Lope                                                            1:11

released June 17, 2022 contributing musicians: Cory Gray, Erik Clampitt, Pony Domer, Jason Stinson, Lauren K. Newman, Kimba Kuzas, Ron Burns, Paula Barry, Coty Dolores Miranda, Josh Cole Produced and engineered by Cory Gray at Old Unconscious Mastered by Rafter Roberts Additional tracking via the Tragedy House and Hollow Ltd. Cover art: #3 by Yuko Otomo (graphite, 2015) "Made in Czech Republic" clear sticker on rear near barcode.

ESP 5052 Ochs – Robinson Duo – A Civil Right

This duo’s second and definitive recording will be released on ESP-Disk' - the legendary free jazz label where Albert Ayler released his breakthrough recording in 1964, the first jazz recording on ESP.  A lot has changed since 1964, but a lot and perhaps too much remains virtually the same. So their "free jazz" music, while influenced by many musical discoveries and sociological developments that have become part of the firmament over the past 50+ years,  still celebrates and revels in the spirit of Sixties free jazz.

Ochs is a founding member of the great ROVA Saxophone Quartet, one of the Bay Area’s avant-garde treasures since 1978. Robinson – “a percussive dervish,” according to Coda – was the drummer of choice for ROVA’s revivification of John Coltrane’s Ascension. The East Bay Express has said of the saxophonist’s sound: “Ochs’ full-bodied tenor is out of the John Coltrane/Albert Ayler ‘free’ tradition: forceful, passionate… talking-in-tongues,” while the Chicago Reader said about the drummer and his relationship with Ochs, “Robinson is neither flashy nor explosive, but his playing has heft and he covers lots of ground – he can maintain a feeling of order while playing meter-less rhythms or transform the pulse of jagged post-bop until it’s almost abstract. He’s a good match for Ochs, and over the decades the two of them have developed a fine-tuned rapport.”

Although Ochs and Robinson have collaborated in various groups for more than 20 years – including in the trio What We Live with bassist Lisle Ellis – their duo is a recent phenomenon, having developed over the past couple of years. Ochs says, “Our playing together has evolved to a really special place, I think. We’re definitely coming out of the tradition of horn-drum duos from John Coltrane & Rashied Ali to Wadada Leo Smith & Billy Higgins, but we’ve found our own space after a long stretch of shows together. Our set will include new, original material, with some high-energy playing and things that are more spatial, as well as some homages to more popular music. In a sparse setting like this, the music hits a listener right away – nothing is obscured, everything is clear.”

  Ochs and Robinson first performed together from 1991 to 1998 in The Glenn Spearman Double Trio. From 1994 to 2002, they worked with bassist Lisle Ellis in the trio What We Live, a band that recorded many CDs and added incredible guests for special concerts/recordings including Dave Douglas, Wadada Leo Smith, Nels Cline, John Zorn, Miya Masaoka, Saadet Turkoz and Chris Brown, among others. From 2000 until 2010 Robinson was part of the Larry Ochs Sax & Drumming Core featuring drummer Scott Amendola, as well as Satoko Fujii and Natsuki Tamura from 2007 to 2010. Throughout all this time, Ochs and Robinson jammed and rehearsed in Robinson’s studio, easily done as they live only 15 minutes apart. Thus it seemed inevitable that they would – eventually – create a special repertoire for this duo.

Track Listing:

1. Arise the Poet                        12:33

2. Yesterday and Tomorrow         8:58

3. A Civil Right                           5:37

4. The Others Dream                13:03

5. Regret                                    5:40

                                                45:51

Personnel: Larry Ochs, saxophones

Donald Robinson, drums

CD

ESP 5053 Michael Bisio / Kirk Knuffke / Fred Lonberg-Holm – The Art Spirit

Recorded 24 September 2018 ... at Lone Pine Road, Kingston NY

ESP 5054 Gulfh Of Berlin – Gulfh Of Berlin

Recorded March, 6th 2018 at Low Swing Studio, Berlin.

ESP 5055 OPTO S – Human Indictive / Live

LP

ESP 5056 Buck Curran – No Love Is Sorrow

（ここをマウスでダブルクリックして、文章を入力してください。） CD

LP （ここをマウスでダブルクリックして、文章を入力してください。）

ESP 5057 Alan Sondheim, Azure Carter – Plaguesong

CD-R

ESP 5058 Painted Faces – Normal Street

LP

ESP 5059 Matthew Shipp Trio – World Construct

CD Recorded by Jim Clouse, April 15 2021 at Park West Studios, Brooklyn, New York

ESP-5060 Bridge Of Flowers – A Soft Day's Night

ESP-Disk's Drive to Revive Weird Rock, begun in 2019 with Painted Faces’ Tales from the Skinny Apartment and continued in 2020 with the OPTO S LP Human Indictive/Live, is furthered with the new studio album by this Massachusetts quartet, recorded in mid-2020. Formed in 2016, it has an LP on the great Feeding Tube imprint and a handful of cassettes and CD-Rs, most self-released. Although, yes, there’s a distinct Velvet Underground influence to be heard, there’s an underground/outsider feel thanks to the unique vision of singer/lyricist/guitarist/visual artist Jeffrey Gallagher (“a visionary and experimental musician”—Boston Hassle), who has a plethora of self-released material under a variety of pseudonyms (and ESP has plans to release some more).

The first single is “Vinegar and Salt”: https://youtu.be/UKXYmwkOvSA. 

Credits:

Jeff Gallagher: guitar, vocals

Jonathan Hanson: guitar, keyboards

Shane Bruno: bass

Chris Wojtkowski: drums

Produced by Barny Lanman & Bridge of Flowers

Recorded at Zen Den Studios in Fitchburg, MA

 Track Listing:

A1. Vinegar and Salt

A2. Empty Room

A3. Aloe Vera

A4. Tour Rider

A5. Year Without a Summer

B1. Poetry in Motion

B2. Tambo

B3. Brittle

B4. Mirage

B5. Never

 Press:

“The guitars have a slow building chime-based focus that pairs with the laconic vocals in a deeply classicist way…it’s a very cool sound, somewhat loose at the edges and unspooling as it progresses. Should we expect greater things of this band as they go along? The smart money says yes. Place your early bet today.  — Byron Coley, 2018

 “First off, these folks can play. Although they claim the music is simple, I would contest it is anything but. There is a difference between “simple” and “familiar” when it comes to songwriting, and although I think this band of performers could not go a song without pushing the boundaries of what we can love about rhythm, they still keep it all in check so that it can remain somewhat accessible to a listener. The live show must be amazing, and keep people coming back for more, because you never know what is going to happen. The guitars stay relatively cleaner, which is a fresh of breath air in this world of distortion chugs many band tend to use.” — Boston Hassle

LP

ESP 5061 Rova – The Circumference Of Reason

Despite the obvious obstacles, this singular San Francisco Bay Area band is staying on mission, moving forward. Over its four-plus decades the quartet has defined itself by applying an array of improvisational strategies to an ever-expanding body of new music. The Circumference of Reason includes six tracks composed or, in the case of “NC17,” designed between 2011 and 2016; then – in typical ROVA fashion - the pieces were worked over and performed  by the quartet in rehearsals and concerts until perceived to be ready for recording. They include an arrangement of a Glenn Spearman piece as well as a piece dedicated to Glenn; the playing on both inspired by late saxophonist’s spirited personality and playing.

As well, this recording features two distinctly different versions of “NC17,” another in the series of ROVA’s structured improvisations, all of which have been culled from an ever-expanding  set of visual and aural cues that the quartet has invented, or borrowed and adapted. On its face, “NC17” is simply a limited set of conceptual options to cue in, in any order, to then explore, populating the series of cued events with immersive music/sounds/energies etc.  All the while – as a group – intending to create a palpable sonic architecture for each new performance of the piece. Even as we write this, we can say that the takes you hear on this CD are unique; no one take of “NC17” can be exactly the same as any other take of “NC17.” 

“ROVA performances can reach the soaring lyrical intensity of bel canto, the rough-and-tumble tumult of a garage rock band, or the insistently patterned matrix of a minimalist chamber work.” So wrote Andrew Gilbert in 2018. The piece from which the CD’s title comes, “The Circumference of Reason,” is a good example of a minimalist piece when penned by a ROVA composer, in this case Steve Adams. Overall, this album offers an excellent cross-section of the multi-faceted ROVA.

Personnel/credits:  

Bruce Ackley – soprano and tenor saxophones; Steve Adams – alto and sopranino saxophones; Larry Ochs – tenor sax; Jon Raskin – baritone sax

Recorded on 6/22/18, 9/23/18 and 7/1/19 at New Improved Recording by John Finkbeiner.

Mixed on 1/16/19, 1/23/19 and 8/2/19 at New Improved Recording by John Finkbeiner and Steve Adams. Mastered by Myles Boisen at Headless Buddha Labs. Produced by Steve Adams.

Track Listing:

1. The Extrapolation of the Inevitable (Glenn Spearman; arrangement: Ochs) 4:56

2. NC 17, Version 1 (ROVA) 10:08

3. The Circumference of Reason (Adams) 9:46

4. Xenophobia (Adams) 6:17

5. NC 17, Version 2 (ROVA) 13:02

6. The Enumeration (Adams; dedicated to Glenn Spearman) 8:06

Press Quotes:

“The polish of this celebrated self-contained unit is matched only by their daring.”—The New Yorker

“After four decades of ascending, Rova’s music has risen beyond the next level into interstellar space.”—Creative Loafing

“ROVA's provocative, resolutely avant-garde music draws on influences as disparate as John Coltrane and Iannis Xenakis, Anthony Braxton and Olivier Messiaen.”—Chamber Music

CD Recorded on June 22 & September 23, 2018 & July 1, 2019 Mixed at New, Improved Recording

ESP 5062 John Blum – Nine Rivers

The most well-informed aficionados of NYC’s jazz avant-garde speak of pianist John Blum with reverential respect, yet his discography is shockingly small for someone with a three-decade career: five albums as a leader, four as a sideman. Blum studied piano with seminal avant-gardist Cecil Taylor and ambidextrous master Borah Bergman, and it shows, yet his style at its most intense is more thickly textured than even theirs, and fully individualistic. Blum’s left hand recalls James P. Johnson: energy, power, rock-solid rhythm driver of the improvisation’s engine. And speaking of engines, some of Jimmy Yancey’s locomotive motion is there as well. Blum is actually a very melodic player, but the melodies are short and fast and may not be repeated more than once, so that’s not the quality that the average listener might take away from the experience. Nonetheless, in a 20-minute solo improvisation, he creates enough catchy motivic material that a dozen or more songs could be woven from it. Another of Blum’s teachers was Milford Graves; they share the sense of music as a journey to a higher understanding and a life-altering and life-enhancing practice. Blum looks more like an athlete than a musician, but then, the way he plays piano is athletic and requires a lot of muscle and stamina. The power of the concert performance on this album (performed collaboratively with video) is a revelation.

Track Listing:

1. First River         4:29

2. Second River   4:00

3. Third River       6:24

4. Fourth River    3:56

5. Fifth River         8:22

6. Sixth River        6:39

7. Seventh River  3:35

8. Eighth River     3:39

9. Ninth River       6:23

                             47:27

Credits: John Blum, piano

Photo by Peter Gannushkin

Recorded live at the Crosscurrent Festival, September 14, 2013

Press Quotes: “Explosive Pianism!”—Nate Chinen, New York Times

“John Blum possesses high control and a vast lexicon…truly a virtuoso.”—Martin Longley,  AllAboutJazz

"The antecedents are apparent: late Romanticism, the second Viennese School, Stride, Boogie Woogie, and, of course, Be-Bop and the voice of “Free” Jazz, but John has absorbed all these styles to find his own voice that defies  classification—Stuart Kremsky, IARJC Journal

CD Recorded live at the Crosscurrent Festival, September 14, 2013

ESP 5064 East Axis – Cool With That

CD Track timings taken from CD player readings.

　ESP 5065 Duck Baker – Confabulations

CD

ESP 5066 THE RED MICROPHONE And I Became of the Dark...

CD-R

ESP 5067 William Parker, Patricia Nicholson – No Joke!

CD digipak with striking art by Bill Mazza

ESP 5068 Eunhye Jeong – Nolda

CD CD in jewel case with slipcase; notes by the artist and Filipe Frietas

ESP 5069 Gabriel Zucker – Leftover Beats From The Edges Of Time

CD 2-CD set in digipak

ESP 5070 Perelman & Shipp – Fruition

CD CD in digipak with cover by Yuko Otomo

ESP 5072 Jones Jones – Just Justice

CD CD in digipak JONES JONES is: LARRY OCHS - tenor and sopranino saxophones VLADIMIR TARASOV - drums, percussion MARK DRESSER - 3 acoustic basses, all with McLagan pickups 8 songs - spontaneous evocations - totaling 49 minutes. (c) 2022 ESP-Disk' Ltd. Further details inside. ESP-DISK' ESP5072 ...the artists alone decide... All songs created collectively by Larry Ochs (Trobar/ASCAP/BMG) Vladimir Tarasov (LATGAA) and Mark Dresser (Del Dresser Music/ASCAP) All artwork by ROBERTO HARRISON from "53 Drawings For Jones Jones." Layout + design by JON BAFUS. The 3 distinct basses used by MARK DRESSER on "Just Justice:" Hawkes Professor, Modern Italian Copy, and Kent McLagan. Recorded January 16, 2020 by ANDREW MUNSEY at Studio B, UC San Diego. Mixdown summer 2020 by Andrew Munsey. Mastered August 2021 by MYLES BOISEN at Headless Buddha Lab, Oakland, CA. Produced by Larry Ochs. Special thanks to STEVE HOLTJE, STEPHEN SCHICK, CAROL DEL SIGNORE, and the UC San Diego Department of Music.

ESP 5073 WEFREESTRINGS Love in the Form of Sacred Outrage

CD CD in digipak with art by Izalia Roncallo

ESP 5074 Michael Marcus – Abstractions In Lime Caverns

CD CD in digipak

ESP 5076 ALAN SONDHEIM Galut: Ballads of Wadi-Sabi

CD CD-r in jacket

ESP 5078 THE RED MICROPHONE A Bleeding in Black Leather

（ここをマウスでダブルクリックして、文章を入力してください。）

ESP 5080 Allen Lowe – In The Dark

• Alto Saxophone – Aaron Johnson
• Baritone Saxophone – Lisa Parrott
• Bass – Alex Tremblay (曲: 1-1, 1-2, 1-7, 1-8, 2-7, 2-11, 3-8, 3-9), Kyle Colina
• Clarinet – Aaron Johnson (曲: 1-6, 1-9, 1-10, 2-4, 2-6, 2-10, 3-6), Ken Peplowski
• Composed By – Allen Lowe
• Drums – Rob Landis (3)
• Piano – Lewis Porter
• Recorded By – Dave Kowalski
• Synth – Lewis Porter
• Tenor Saxophone – Allen Lowe
• Trombone – Brian Simontacchi
• Trumpet – Kellin Hanas
• Recorded April & June 2022 by Dave Kowalski, Teaneck Sound
  
  All track timings are taken from the times on the actual CD and not taken from those on the cover.

CD

ESP 5081 Bára Gísladóttir – SILVA

• Composed By, Performer, Recorded By – Bára Gísladóttir

Bára Gísladóttir is an Icelandic composer and double bassist based in Copenhagen. She is an active performer and regularly plays her own music, mostly solo or with her long-time collaborator Skúli Sverrisson. Additionally, she is the double bassist of Elja Ensemble. Occasionally, she performs as a soloist with ensembles or orchestras, most recently in her own double bass concert, Hringla, with the Copenhagen Philharmonic. Every sound on SILVA is of the double bass, processed to various degrees (with MAX/Live) and layered into a mass of noise.

Gísladóttir describes SILVA as “a work for processed double bass built on the idea of a downward growing forest, living its own secret life of underground raves and meditative cohesiveness.” She continues, “I like to think of different movement and direction in the musical form and was intrigued by the thought of something that would otherwise naturally grow upwards, in reach for light and surrounded by air, rather being drawn in the opposite direction where darkness and solid form serve as the source of gleaming luminosity and breezy surroundings. Both in my compositional and instrumentalist work, in every nook and cranny I’ve been driven to dig as deep as I’ve been able, with SILVA perhaps quite literally so. Although growing up in classical music and predominantly working and living in an environment of classical contemporary/avant garde music, I’ve been very much into other genres as well; alternative, experimental, heavy metal, noise, drone, techno, and electronica, and I believe SILVA is the byproduct of all of that.”

SILVA is a joint release by Sono Luminus and ESP-Disk’. ESP is selling the CD; Sono Luminus is selling downloads here: 

SILVA | Bára Gísladóttir | Sono Luminus (bandcamp.com)

Track Listing:

1. SILVA

Total time: 57:35

Personnel: Bára Gísladóttir: double bass, effects, composition

Press Quotes: "She fully believes in the apocalypse. There's something rock and roll about her. Something Nick Cave-like." – Politiken

"Her performance is both arthouse – a woman sawing away at her instrument with little attention paid to such niceties as accessibility and melody – and thrilling. She does to the double bass what Hendrix did to the electric guitar, using it to coax out thrillingly strange new sounds." – The Guardian

MUSICIANS: BÁRA GÍSLADÓTTIR

CD Sono Luminus – ESP5081

ESP 5082 Allen Lowe – America: The Rough Cut


Allen Lowe, the JazzTimes 2021 Artist of the Year, writes: America: The Rough Cut is my statement not only on American music and American song, but also my commentary on the way American musicians of all styles handle that old-time music and those old song forms. Nearly everything I listen to that is supposed to reflect an alliance with older musical styles sounds denatured, bland, overly worshipful and musically conformist. Everybody loves the blues (just ask Nicholas Payton) but few people, in my opinion, truly feel it at gut level. The old things – not just the blues, but gospel music and pre-blues shouts and language, plus hillbilly/minstrel song and medicine show irony – reflect a disinterest in the polite trappings of (primarily but not only white) society, an implicit rejection of basic tonal, sonic, and harmonic rules. “Noise” has, over a long time, come to be an accepted creative strategy for many musicians, with diminishing results.  What is missing is...funk? Maybe, but not in that slick, drum machine, '80s way (the 1950s and 1960s, not to mention the 1920s, are another matter). What is missing is the funk from Funky Butt Hall of New Orleans, the sweat of the churchgoing gyrations of white and black Holy Rollers and the eccentric movements and sounds of attendants of the Pentecostal Church; not to mention the religious screams of white and black folk in the throes of post-rational bursts of tongues and trembling worship; or the ecstatic eternal protest of the Church of God in Christ. Many people pay great lip service to the “tradition” but don’t know the half of it. I live in a musical world (mostly in my head) in which the sacred and the profane are two sides of the same coin, and in which the blues is more effect than cause. As for most revivalists and folkies, well, they tend to sound (like most but not only jazz musicians) overqualified; there are some very satisfying exceptions to these rules, and I have tried to reflect that in America: The Rough Cut.

• Alto Saxophone – Darius Jones (曲: 13)
• Bass – Alex Tremblay (曲: 1-12), Jessie Hautala (曲: 13)
• Drums – Kresten Osgood (曲: 1-12)
• Electronic Drums – Jake Millett (曲: 13)
• Guitar – Allen Lowe (曲: 4, 10), Ray Suhy
• Piano – Lewis Porter (曲: 13)
• Recorded By – Allen Lowe, Greg DiCrosta
• Tenor Saxophone, Alto Saxophone – Allen Lowe
• Trombone – Ray Anderson (曲: 13), Roswell Rudd (曲: 13)
• Trumpet – Randy Sandke (曲: 13)

Recorded 3/22/22 by Greg DiCrosta, Firehouse 12 and September 2022 by Allen Lowe
Track 13 recorded 2014

ESP 5083

ESP 5083 Paul r. Harding – They Tried To Kill Me Yesterday

CD