New 2014 hatOLOGY and hat[now]ART Releases

I’ve been a big fan of HatHut and its offshoots, hatOLOGY and hat[now]ART, for years. I treasure the LPs and CDs from these endeavors of Mr. Uehlinger that I have in my collection, as everything is first rate, from the graphics to the liner notes to the sound quality to, of course, the music. Artists such as Anthony Braxton have done some of their very best work for the label.

I’ve been saddened by the reduced output of the labels over the past few years, brought on in part by their loss of sponsorship from UBS (formerly Swiss Bank). But seemingly out of the blue, eight new releases are now making their way to online retailers:

hatOLOGY 703
Albert Ayler Quintet
Lörrach, Paris 1966

hatOLOGY 712
Polwechsel
Traces Of Wood

hatOLOGY 724
Joe Morris
Mess Hall

hatOLOGY 725
Michel Wintsch, Christian Weber, Christian Wolfarth
Willisau

And the new hat[now]ART releases are:

hat[now]ART 183
Charles Ives
A songbook

hat[now]ART 185
Liza Lim
The Guest
Orchestral Works

hat[now]ART 190
Karlheinz Stockhausen
Mantra
Mark, Knoop, Roderick, Chadwick, Amstrong

hat[now]ART 191
Fritz Hauser
Pieces for percussion
Ensemble XII, Steven Schick

The Ayler is a reissue, but the other hatOLOGYs are new. I’m especially interested in the Joe Morris, as it’s a trio with Steve Lantner, a pianist who has two fine releases of his own on the label. I’m not as up on the classical side of things, so I can’t speak for the hat[now]ARTs. Just to make things interesting, these are not all being released at the same time, but according to their website between now and April.