‘Smalltown Superjazzz was a free-jazz subsidiary label of Smalltown Supersound from 2005-2012. Dormant then till 2019, it is now reborn as the AFJ-Series, named after a recording by Don Cherry & Krystzof Penderecki’s The New Eternal Rhythm Orchestra.
‘AFJ-Series is proud to release this compilation of music from forty releases, spanning almost twenty years of Smalltown Supersound, Superjazzz and AFJ. The idea is to bring the Superjazzz era into the AFJ-Series, but also to leave it behind — and start fresh. A requiem and rebirth combined, inspired by the 1964 ESP Disk sampler (also by its hard editing).
‘Lasse Marhaug spent months ploughing through the entire catalogue. Whilst the main goal was to survey Smalltown’s wide range of releases in the improvised/jazz/free music field, his choices and juxtapositions almost play as a new piece of music.
‘So here it is — forty tracks of total freedom. The universality of improvised music, as Derek Bailey called it.’