Now Jazz Now: 100 Essential Free Jazz And Improvisation Recordings (1960-80)

New York, NY, USA -- musicians Mats Gustafsson, Neneh Cherry, Joe McPhee, and Thurston Moore, along with music writer Byron Coley, have contributed to an illustrated collector's guide to records -- 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 of their selections of recordings which could be contenders within a list defined by a parameter of 100 of the most essential releases presented in chronological order, acknowledging the music to be preternaturally noncompetitive, 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 to 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.

Named by Vanity Fair as one of the ”17 Best Books of 2025 You Need to Read”

“…beautifully assembled, featuring some fabulously engaging two-fisted writing…”
--The Guardian

“…more than a collection of greatest hits, it’s the chronicling of a decades-long obsession with free jazz…”
--Los Angeles Times 

Authors: Byron Coley / Mats Gustafsson / Thurston Moore
Publisher: Ecstatic Peace Library
Pages: 277pp
Size: 7.75 x 10.5 x 2
Notes: paperback
Release Date: December 26, 2025
ISBN: 979-8993404004