Leo Records is a prolific British free improvisation / avant-jazz / new music independent label, established in 1979 by a Russian expatriate producer Leo Feigin.
Label Code: LC 5417 / LC 05417
According to Feigin, his label is producing 'highly original, innovative, improvisation-based new music that refuses to be submitted to the market forces, that goes against the grain of current wisdoms; music that asks questions, provokes debate, generates ideas.' While Leo Records has been working with some artists for many decades, all material is released on single-album basis, without ongoing record deals and any contractual obligations. Praised by the critics, and described in The Penguin Guide to Jazz as "one of the most significant independent labels of recent times," Feigin's Leo Records became a significant pillar in the world of radical/innovative music, on par with Emanem.
With over 800 releases in the catalog, Leo Records has published numerous studio and concert recordings, both archival and modern, by Reggie Workman, and many other prominent musicians and composers from all over the world.
In the early eighties, Leo Records played a key role in establishing ECM Records label boss shook his head in disbelief: piano, double bass, basset horn, guitar, flute, saxophone, drums, and various percussions – how could a trio possibly play all these instruments in one set?!
Two years later, after Leo Records already released six LPs, including two albums by The Ways Of Freedom LP was released with a note on the back cover to protect Sergey from any potential complaints by Soviet officials: 'Sergey Kuryokhin does not bear any responsibility for publishing this tape. Leo Records is grateful to all those people who had the courage to preserve and deliver the tape.' On the CD reissue twenty years later, liner notes were updated to a more explicit version, without a faux 'no responsibility' disclaimer: 'Leo Records is grateful to all those people who had the courage to smuggle out the tape from behind the Iron Curtain.'
In addition to the main CD LR 0xx catalog, Leo Records has three sub-labels. Matthew Snell. FeetFirst only produced five albums, with ffr 500x catalog number.
Leo Records released several box-sets in the lieu of documenting and presenting practically uncharted post-Soviet new jazz territories to the international audience: 8xCD Atto – a massive 11xCD+DVD collection of 1984-2004 studio and live recordings.
For the label's 30th anniversary, Yannick Barman.
