CD

The Ex

2015

"The Ex in 2015 are more rhythmically fluid, but they are still calling out trouble wherever they find it, and the jagged parts aren’t gone, only placed differently. Most importantly, they sound as engaged and vital as ever. —Bill Meyer, Dusted Magazine"

Peter Brötzmann / Mats Gustafsson / Paal Nilssen-Love

2007

"Brötzmann's playing is as dense and as hard as ever, shadowed by a slightly deferential Mats Gustafsson, who strains the upper limits of his baritone and the assaultive, relentless drumming of Paal Nilssen-Love. The players occasionally break the momentum for a series of pops, squeals and general skittering, but the moments of rest only add to the pressurized environment, as you anticipate the next onslaught. -Jeff Stockton, All About Jazz"

DKV Trio + Joe McPhee

2019

"Not Two Records presents, "The Fire Each Time," a 6 CD boxset of recordings from the DKV Trio with Joe McPhee as a guest, and dedicated to James Baldwin. The music was recorded during the quartet's tour in Europe which took place in November of 2017, and at shows in Chicago and Milwaukee from December of that year. These performances are historic in many respects: the DKV Trio (with Hamid Drake [drums], Kent Kessler [bass], and Ken Vandermark [reeds]) has only recorded with other musicians on three occasions in its two decade career (with Joe Morris on "Deep Telling" [Okka Disk, 1999; with Mats Gustafsson, Paal Nilssen-Love and Massimo Pupillo on "Schl8hof" [Trost, 2013], and with The Thing ["Collider," Not Two, 2016]); also, this is the first time all four musicians have worked together as a band; and the material documented over the six concerts included in the collection features performances of Joe McPhee's compositions (like "Nation Time") as well as completely improvised music generated by the participants. "

Original Silence

2007

Frode Gjerstad & Fred Lonberg- Holm

2017

""A live recording from Kongsberg Jazzfestival in 2017 between frequent collaborators, Norwegian improviser Frode Gjerstad on reeds and Chicago improviser Fred Lonberg-Holm on cello and electronics, their second FMR album as a duo, alongside their work in the Cello Quartet and VCDC, showing the progression of their dynamic and fascinating dialog." - Squidco"

Terrie Ex & Han Bennink

2000

"The energy level remains quite high on much of this disc; one has the feeling the recording is meant to be played very LOUD. Even the most bird-like scrabbling between these musicians has a sharp, dissonant edge. The Laughing Owl may be about as "out" as today's free improvisation gets, but it retains enough of a conversational aspect that it bears interest upon repeated listenings. -Nils Jacobson, June 2001"

Ken Vandermark & Paal Nilssen-Love

2015

"They’ve tapped into a sound that is eminently listenable and addictive, and it’s exciting to hear them hone their interplay more and more as time passes. I would highly recommend this album to fans of Ken Vandermark’s and Paal Nilssen-Love’s previous duo work, and to any fan of powerful, melodic, but still adventurous music (Derek Stone, The Free Jazz Collective)"

Evan Parker Electro-Acoustic Ensemble

2009

""A composition that could never be performed the same way twice, its careful construction of sound in real-time and post-production makes for an ambitiously considered experience of great power and unsettling subtlety." - John Kelman, AllAboutJazz"

Tomeka Reid / Filippo Monico

2019

""A wonderful, fully-improvised document of shifting tonal color, empathic interplay and dark, layered feeling - finally capturing on record the freer depth of Ms Reid's evolving art." -Olle Lawson, Free Jazz Blog 4.5 star review"

Udo Schindler, Damon Smith & Jaap Blonk

2021

Joe Morris / Alex Ward / Simon H. Fell

2009

Ben Hall's Racehorse Names

2018

"After listening to the album I was interested to find out that the improvised pieces were actually open compositions, with each piece seemingly providing a sonic structure or context for the players to explore, whilst apparently providing enough ‘instructions’ (however the ‘composed’ element was written) to keep the group sound wedded to a particular idea. -Chris Haines, Free Jazz Blog"

Paul Lytton / Nate Wooley + Ikue Mori & Ken Vandermark

2012

"Quantity is seldom a per se value, but we have here one hundred and nine minutes of pure, passionate, involving high quality music."

Joe McPhee & Dominic Duval

2007

Free Fall

2007

Philipp Wachsmann / Kalle Moberg / Paul Lytton

2021

"The intergenerational trio was brought together at the Blow Out festival in Oslo in 2018, where they generated a lot of excitement. Norwegian music journalist Johan Hauknes wrote: "This was not your average impro-set, this was fresh, new, exciting and riveting!""

Ken Vandermark

2009

Original Silence

2008

"Pristinely recorded at a 2006 Italy performance, this is another outstanding work from Thurston Moore, Jim O'Rourke, and Mats Gustafsson's improvisational noise/jazz/rock ensemble."

Nate Wooley

2009

"“Seven Storey Mountain” involve a sloughing off of conventional technique in favor of esoteric sounds, and a sensation of slow, steady ascent through mysterious terrain toward a distant peak. -Steve Smith, New York Times"

Nate Wooley

2013

"The concept of this cycle is to simulate the ecstatic experience described by Trappist Monk Thomas Merton in his book of the same name. The music is both introspective and noisily rapturous. -Mark Corroto, All About Jazz"