Musicians Mats Gustafsson, Neneh Cherry, Joe McPhee, Thurston Moore, along with music writer Byron Coley have contributed to an illustrated collector’s guide to records NOW JAZZ NOW: 100 Essential Free Jazz & Improvisation Recordings [1960-80] out on December 5, 2025 via Thurston Moore & Eva Prinz’s Ecstatic Peace Library — replete with 277-pages of beatific album art, labels, sleeve notes and collector musings on their life-long obsessions of record collecting, with a distinct focus on the recorded history of Free Jazz and Free Improvisation.
Compiling personal archives with discussions and debates of their selections of recordings which could be contenders within a list defined by a parameter of 100 most essential releases presented in chronologic order, acknowledging the music to be preternaturally non-competitive, non-hierarchical, and of equal value. NOW JAZZ NOW is a book for all adventurous music lovers, whether ravenous record collectors, avant-garde jazz enthusiasts, students of radical culture, or simply curiosity seekers in wonder at this music’s illustrious history and lineage.
The gleanings of Cherry, Coley, Gustafsson, McPhee and Moore will enlighten, delight, amuse, and bemuse all who follow their streams of consciousness, knowledge, perception, and, most importantly, unbridled respect and regard for a genre of music dedicated to the dignity of practicing freedom.
