Almost big-band scale free-jazz conceptions from a group led by these legendary drums/sax shooters and featuring James ‘Chumly' Hunt on trumpet and plastic castanets, Matt Moran on vibes and percussion, Mike Murray on guitar and long-term collaborator Richard Downs on bass. A pretty singular instalment in this on-going saga, with the music existing in some kind of flux between all-valves-exploding high-energy gush and slightly more elaborately conceived big band geometries. A beauty, for sure.

First album in almost 10 years for these old brothers in arms, saxophonist Paul Flaherty and drummer Randall Colbourne. Over the past decade or so Colbourne had virtually given up the drums in order to focus on the clarinet but the beautiful force with which he commands tonal time signatures is immediately recognisable. It’s a studio set, recorded in April 2007, and as such the dynamic is a little more thoughtful and specifically nuanced from track to track, with Flaherty’s alto work touching on the kind of austere muscular style of players like Julius Hemphill or even Ornette as much as the more referenced post-Ayler fire music gambits. It’s probably the most overtly compositional performance of Flaherty’s I’ve heard since his last solo album on the same label and there are some extremely beautiful sections where Colbourne skirts the very edges of Flaherty’s inventions, implying almost orchestral extrapolations and all sorts of phantom melodies. This is a great side from two hard-thinking free musicians and it’s a blast to hear em back locking heads.

Torrential three way free jazz/rock pile-up that tracks all the way back to Thurston’s epochal Barefoot In The Head date with Sauter and Dietrich while instant-visioning the future via minimal, psychedelic interventions, classic Sonic Youth-sounding guitar clank and explosive sax/string bulldozing. Some of the playing here is straight-up gorgeous, with the way the group build luminous form from a bed of hovering guitars and Flaherty’s bold tenor sax form sounding like a classic late-Coltrane take on devotional hymn forms. Bill Nace (Vampire Belt/Northampton Wools et al) and Thurston’s guitars are often indistinguishable, with Nace’s up-close modified guitar style pulling Thurston into gravities of microtonal detail and subtle textural invention while Flaherty takes the lead and just bleeds all over the goddamn room. A fantastic set, way more than a mere jam, and one that feels sourced from deep inside the classic free jazz tradition. Recommended.

New solo album from one of the major contemporary fire music voices, saxophonist Paul Flaherty, who has worked with everyone through Chris Corsano, Joe McPhee, Thurston Moore, Randall Colbourne, Spencer Yeh and Bill Nace. This one presents four long improvisations recorded across 2007. Flaherty is at his most lyrical when playing on his own, carving intricate blues-based speed-of-thought instants straight into the air while bolstering them with enough emotional and melodic muscle to make them really seem to speak. Recordings of single instrument improvisations can often be grueling but there’s a focus and a drama to the bulk of Aria Nativa that makes it an absolute pleasure to revisit. Edition of 500 copies with free MP3 download. Recommended.

First time reissue of this very obscure free music LP, saxophonist Paul Flaherty’s debut recording, originally released privately in 1978. Orange were a garage band that existed between the years 1975 and 1977 and featured Flaherty on bells, alto sax and voice, Bob Laramie on electric bass, Barry Greika on electric guitar, trumpet and fife and a dude called Hobbit (“long red beard and really long red hair in case you’re wondering” sez Paul in the liners). The group’s identity fluxed between a jazz group that played heads and then went on out, a fusion of various electric and acoustic high-energy strategies and all-out totally improvisatory Godhead, all cut by a buncha heads shooting in various mutually-obliterating directions. The recording session for their LP was their most evolved shot at all-out freedom moves and it doesn’t really sound like anything else from the era/ilk other than what you might figure was going on in various basements amongst the kinda Americans that dug rock ‘n’ roll, free jazz, total artistic liberty and probably a buncha drugs too. The CD comes with extensive – great – liners from Paul and also features Dan and Dave Flaherty sitting in on bongos and steel drums respectively on a buncha tracks. Recommended.

Split 7” featuring a single electro-acoustic drone work from Campbell Kneale of Birchville Cat Motel’s new project - the kind of fluffy bell-tone/metal levitation previously the domain of Matthew Bower’s Sunroof! - while the flip features Thurston Moore and Andrew MacGregor (aka Gown) power-thinking their way through heavy feedback/rock moves.

Debut CD from this new guitar duo featuring Thurston Moore and Andrew from Gown. Tracks slowly spool from small sounds generated by the furthest reaches of the instrument - the crackle of jack sockets, strings clipped against pick-ups - through to the kind of slowly modulating chord barbs that launched a bunch of Sonic Youth songs circa Daydream Nation. Cover art by Bill Nace of Vampire Belt et al.

Most manic solo album from Thurston to date, with a grab-bag of assorted fucked-up sonic stratagems including a buncha lost noise B sides, a basement jam with John Moloney of Sunburned Hand Of The Man on drums and Mark Ibold on bass, a demo for an HSBC ad with Steve Shelley on drums, acoustic jammers, wonky percussive guitar instrumentals that sound like a No Wave take on the melodic minimalism of Kraftwerk or Harmonia, hyper-sexed porn video cut-ups and a swanky picture disc that matches a swinging chick with a porky Lou Reed. What more could you ask for? Edition of 500 copies and already completely sold out at source.

Inspired trio jams from the Sonic Youth frontline w/Yoko on vocals: this set is not what you might at first expect and it’s all the better for it. I had kinda imagined a free-form blow-out with Yoko power-screaming over the top ala Junko w/Hijokaidan but there’s a lot more subtlety, atmosphere and feeling to the recording. Kim and Thurston play in a very minimal, textural style, recalling early SY circa Evol or even Bad Moon Rising while Yoko works soft hypnotic poetics over the top. And her vocals are uniquely powerful, balance the blurring of comprehension and the breakdown of language with startling moments of personal confession, nowhere more so than on the stunning “I Never Told You, Did I?” a track that is as unnerving as her take on marriage and responsibility and the impossibilities associated with both on Fly’s “Mrs. Lennon”. A singular entry in all three players’ catalogues and highly recommended.

Edition of only 250 copies trio LP from saxophonist Joe McPhee and guitarists Thurston Moore (Sonic Youth) and Bill Nace (Body/Head): nothing like the noise/blurt fest you might have been led to believe from some of the ‘reviews’ or even a cursory look at the personnel involved, instead this is a beautiful, majestic, darkly atmospheric recording that goes deep into devotional/fire music traditions while using twelve electric strings to generate deep-field drones and eerie off-kilter melodies that are deeply meditative. It has to be said, McPhee sounds amazing on this, with a honey-thick tone that comes straight out of the Coltrane songbook while Nace and Moore’s playing is very subtle and measured, playing clanging Evol-isms and slow atonal/whammy bar ascensions that are as dramatically sustained as your favourite Sonic Youth ‘between song’ jam with an extended avant classical feel that is truly more sophisticated and more minimally crude than anything you might’ve imagined. This is one of these rare improvised sets where it feels like there isn’t a second wasted, not a stray note or tone, with the whole deal mainlining the kinda third-eye quaking atmosphere of Om, say, while simultaneously reformulating notions of avant jazz. Beautifully recorded live at Roulette NYC in 2012, this is a peerless example of avant rock/free jazz synthesis and stands tall alongside classics of the form – Borbetomagus/Blue Humans/Last Exit/Barefoot In The Head – while sounding approximately like none of them. Cover art from Joshua Burkett, immediately sold out at source, very highly recommended!

Edition of only 200 copies hand-numbered LP, the vinyl debut for Bill Nace’s (Body/Head/Northampton Wools/Blood Stereo/Vampire Belt et al) extended solo guitar experiments. Nace uses various preparations and plays the guitar on his lap, building from clanging blues-infected single-string squeal through sanctified feedback and hovering tones before sounding doomy percussive bells and taking off into all-out guitar splurge. Aspects of Too Dead For Dreaming seem too reflect on some of Heather Leigh’s earlier pedal string work, an area ripe for further exploration.

Edition of 150 hand-numbered copies LP that documents a furious duo exchange between US power saxophonist Steve Baczkowski (best loved for his work with Flaherty/Corsano and his duo with Ravi Padmanabha) and Northeast guitar mangler Bill Nace (Northampton Wools, Vampire Belt, Blood Stereo et al). Recorded live in Buffalo this is a wild side, with more in common with the sense-destroying attack of Borbetomagus circa Zurich than anything coming out of the post-Ayler tradition. Baczkowski balances huge sheet metal waves on the tip of his tongue while Nace takes  a grinder to the table-top guitar ala Donald Miller. There are some eerie passages of high-tension silence populated by non-specific electronics, slithering drones, vocals and high lonesome feedback but they don’t last long and it’s the molten peaks that keep you coming back again and again. Industrial strength free jazz from a duo who know. Paste-on sleeves.

Limited edition debut 12” from the duo of Kim Gordon (Sonic Youth) and Bill Nace (Vampire Belt et al) on Nace’s own Open Mouth imprint: four extended tracks, mastered at 45rpm, that sees Kim revisit the kind of spectral guitar-isms of the more amp-damaged early Sonic Youth sound, combining railroading No Wave klang with haunting/distant sing-song vocals and moments of disembodied choral drift that comes over like Rudolph Grey plays the ghost of electricity. Nace is on similarly distended form, working slow, intricate patterns of woozy modal string-think into the kind of beautifully confusing shapes that would cross the more nod-out/zoned moments of the Dead C back catalogue with a Jandek-plays-gamelan vibe that is supremely hypnotic. Hands-down best of the ‘post-Sonic Youth’ projects, another fantastic record from these two, highly recommended!