An excellent set that brings together Fats Navarro's recordings for Savoy – late 40s sides that were always poorly packaged and annotated on record, which are compiled here wonderfully, with great notes, and a few unissued tracks! Players include Leo Parker, Kenny Dorham, Sonny Stitt, Ernie Henry, Tadd Dameron, Kenny Clarke, Art Blakey, and Charlie Rouse – and the set's got a huge amount of titles, including "Boppin A Riff", "Fat Boy", "Everything's Cool", "Webb City", "Fracture", "Calling Dr Jazz", "Red Pepper", "Spinal", "Fat Girl", "Ice Freezes Red", "A Bebop Carol", and "The Tadd Walk". LP, Vinyl record album

This King Crimson line-up featured David Cross on violin & keyboards, along with John Wetton, Bill Bruford, and of couse Robert Fripp. Eight tracks in all, including "The Night Watch", "Fracture", "The Great Deceiver", "The Mincer", "Lament", and "Starless & Bible Black". CD

This King Crimson line-up featured David Cross on violin & keyboards, along with John Wetton, Bill Bruford, and of couse Robert Fripp. Eight tracks in all, including "The Night Watch", "Fracture", "The Great Deceiver", "The Mincer", "Lament", and "Starless & Bible Black". LP, Vinyl record album

Maybe our favorite album ever from Traffic – a set that has the group coming back together, after a fracture that took them in separate musical directions – reformed with a sound that's very different than before! The tracks are longer, and have more influences from both folk and jazz – a deeper sound and spirit, and one that also maybe reflects the loss of Dave Mason from the group! The trio really finds this amazing way forward, almost with some echoes of the hipper side of the Island Records underground – with Steve Winwood on vocals throughout, and on some mighty nice organ and piano – and Jim Capaldi on drums and percussion, and Chris Wood on a variety of saxes, flute, and percussion. Titles include "Glad", "Freedom Rider", "Empty Pages", "Stranger To Himself", and "Every Mother's Son". LP, Vinyl record album

Tim Berne on alto saxophone & vocals, Hank Roberts on cello and vocals, Mark Dresser on contrabass, giffus and bungy, Joey Baron on drums, synthesizer and electronics, Herb Robertson on trumpet, cornet and laryngeal crowbar, and Mark Feldman on violin. CD

... LP, Vinyl record album

A legendary bit of noise from the United Dairies label of Stephen Stapleton – a set that combines his own experimental sounds with some contributions from the avant French scene as well – all at a level that shows how that sometimes-overlooked 70s generation ended up having a bit impact on 80s pioneers like Stapleton! Much of the music here is without easy description – not the rawer industrial of some of Stapleton's Nurse With Wound projects, or free jazz, or analog electronics – but a hybrid of so many earlier experiments served up in very personal representations of musical frontiers! The set features four long tracks – "Anatomy Of Aphrodite" by Sema, "Frissons Dans La Cochlee" by Helene Sage, "Tunnel Sous La Manche/Under The Channel" by Un Drame Musical Instante, and "The Strange Play Of The Mouth" by Nurse With Wound. CD

Tim Berne on alto saxophone & vocals, Hank Roberts on cello and vocals, Mark Dresser on contrabass, giffus and bungy, Joey Baron on drums, synthesizer and electronics, Herb Robertson on trumpet, cornet and laryngeal crowbar, and Mark Feldman on violin. CD

... 78 RPM, Vinyl record

... LP, Vinyl record album

... CD

A legendary bit of noise from the United Dairies label of Stephen Stapleton – a set that combines his own experimental sounds with some contributions from the avant French scene as well – all at a level that shows how that sometimes-overlooked 70s generation ended up having a bit impact on 80s pioneers like Stapleton! Much of the music here is without easy description – not the rawer industrial of some of Stapleton's Nurse With Wound projects, or free jazz, or analog electronics – but a hybrid of so many earlier experiments served up in very personal representations of musical frontiers! The set features four long tracks – "Anatomy Of Aphrodite" by Sema, "Frissons Dans La Cochlee" by Helene Sage, "Tunnel Sous La Manche/Under The Channel" by Un Drame Musical Instante, and "The Strange Play Of The Mouth" by Nurse With Wound. LP, Vinyl record album

A seminal "new thing" session from pianist Andrew Hill, and one of the greatest performances ever from a young Bobby Hutcherson! The record features a stunning quartet that includes Hill on piano, Hutcherson on vibes, and Richard Davis and Elvin Jones on rhythm – coming together with the stark, raw energy that made the key Blue Note modern sides from this time so great. Hutcherson hits these amazing tones on the vibes, similar to those that he uses on some of the Jackie McLean albums from the same time – and those tones work perfectly with Hill's fractured piano lines. Titles are all originals by Hill, including "Alfred", "Reconciliation", "Siete Ocho", "Yokada Yokada", and "Flea Flop". CD features a bonus alternate of "Yokada Yokada". CD

A seminal "new thing" session from pianist Andrew Hill, and one of the greatest performances ever from a young Bobby Hutcherson! The record features a stunning quartet that includes Hill on piano, Hutcherson on vibes, and Richard Davis and Elvin Jones on rhythm – coming together with the stark, raw energy that made the key Blue Note modern sides from this time so great. Hutcherson hits these amazing tones on the vibes, similar to those that he uses on some of the Jackie McLean albums from the same time – and those tones work perfectly with Hill's fractured piano lines. Titles are all originals by Hill, including "Alfred", "Reconciliation", "Yokada Yokada", and "Flea Flop". CD

A seminal "new thing" session from pianist Andrew Hill, and one of the greatest performances ever from a young Bobby Hutcherson! The record features a stunning quartet that includes Hill on piano, Hutcherson on vibes, and Richard Davis and Elvin Jones on rhythm – coming together with the stark, raw energy that made the key Blue Note modern sides from this time so great. Hutcherson hits these amazing tones on the vibes, similar to those that he uses on some of the Jackie McLean albums from the same time – and those tones work perfectly with Hill's fractured piano lines. Titles are all originals by Hill, including "Alfred", "Reconciliation", "Yokada Yokada", and "Flea Flop". CD

Aleck Karis plays prepared piano here – handling some key sonatas and interludes by John Cage – all with that wonderfully fractured, fragmented feel you get when you stick odd objects under the strings of the piano! Karis plays for over an hour on CD 1 – and then CD 2 features Cage reading his own work, "Composition In Retrospect". CD

For many folks, this is the first truly great album from Sonic Youth – the first in which the group found any kind of a groove at all! Sonic Youth had been sputtering around the New York art punk scene since the early 80s, but things didn't really come together until this work of aggressively fractured genius hit the streets in '86. New drummer Steve Shelley's arrival brought a solid backdrop to Thurston Moore's and Lee Renaldo's "Sister Ray" worshipping electric squall, and it made a world of difference. The standout is "Expressway To Yr Skull", one of the great underground rock songs of the 80s – one that had the group working what could almost be called a melodic style, albeit one filled with noisy clatter. Arguably the point where Sonic Youth stopped started making some of the most interesting and rewarding indie rock of all time! Other tracks include "Tom Violence", "Shadow Of A Doubt", "Star Power", "Green Light", and "Bubblegum". LP, Vinyl record album

Pianist Paul Giallorenzo has a fantastic flow here – a deeply personal sound that certainly warrants the title – and which is set up beautifully in a trio with Josh Abrams on bass and Mikel Patrick Avery on drums! It's great to hear Abrams working as a sideman in a setting that's a bit more standard than some of his own projects – as his basswork is sublime, and really matches the pacing and energy of Giallorenzo's work on the keys – in a mode that's modern, but never too avant – with almost the freshness of some of the most inventive pianists of the 60s! Paul wrote all the tunes on the album, and they're extremely fresh – not overplayed standards, or easygoing melodies – but instead material that finds its own space and pace, but without ever calling undue attention to itself. Titles include "Flipd Scrip", "Over/Under", "Rolling", "Interstice", "Fractures", "A Way We Go", and "Lightness". CD