Release Type: PMGJazz

Filip Bukrshliev. A name familiar to anyone that has ever had even a marginal glance at our catalog. From leading small group improvisations, to fronting several ensembles – most notably Fighting Windmills and Taxi Consilium, to his first unaccompanied album “Don’t Go Away Mad Because the Duke Is Not Coming Back” (featuring six cuts from Duke Ellington’s repertoire) – there is not much he hasn’t done. Well, apart from this – an unaccompanied album of originals. And in his record breaking 19th appearance on PMGJazz he delivers just that.

Compositions aside, what sets this record apart from his previous solo effort is the sonic presentation – a more immediate sound, and a primarily monodic phrasing give this record the intimacy that sorely lacks in many solo outings. This is not the mandatory modern jazz solo exhibition, with their obligatory extended techniques and/or virtuosic maneuvers. In fact it does very little to enhance the reputation of Bukrshliev as a instrumentalist. Not that his reputation needs enhancing at all – he is and has been for a while […] well, we’ll skip the hyperbole, you can fill in the blanks.

This record is about pure music. A perfectly imperfect emotional release. Even if you don’t press play, it’s out there in the aether – and you are feeling it. Enjoy!

Inspired by “Ineffable,” by Marija Grubor:

some of us carry the ineffable
like others carry children,
like others carry scars,
like others carry gods.

books can’t be written,
songs won’t be sung,
about the days we spent impossibly
empty and vivid,
fulfilled,
alone.

All composed, arranged, recorded, mixed and produced by Filip Bukrshliev
Cover art by Flip Bukrshliev

Lynchian in feel and epic in scope, the first eyeball-to-eyeball meeting of Filip Bukrshliev and Vladan Drobicki leaves little to be desired.
Drobicki’s textural mastery on the trombone has been met by its most suitable partner yet in Bukrshliev’s rawest performance since his unaccompanied debut “Don’t Go Away Mad Because the Duke Is Not Coming Back”. Since then, Bukrshliev has habituated many-a small group improvisational meetings – becoming well comfortable with the inner workings of the format. Drobicki has been more selective – his well received duo with violinist/soundscapist Gligor Kondovski a rare foray.
Both confrontational and reflective, “Above Weather” shows two masters at work. We feel we are releasing a classic in our catalog, and a first collaboration of many to come. Enjoy!

All composed and performed by Vladan Drobicki and Filip Bukrshliev
Recorded in “BARBA Audio” facility by V. Drobicki
Cover photo by V. Drobicki
Cover design by F. Bukrshliev

New, unexpected things are happening in the alternative music scenes around the world as many dislocated musicians collide with fellow artists in the novel contexts where they find themselves. The debut album ‘Mincminc’ by the avantgarde jazz trio Tachube is a product of such a collision, where Ilia Belorukov, an electroacoustic artist and saxophonist from Saint Petersburg and the founder of Intonema label, meets bass player Marko Čurčić and drummer Nemanja Tasić, two established jazz musicians based in Novi Sad, Serbia.

Belorukov is known primarily as an experimental free improviser and noise artist, while Čurčić (The Howlite, Dragon’s Fuel, Power Nap Trio, Echo Pointers) and Tasić (Čičini Čvorci, Petak u Kozmosu, Vukašin Ðelič Group) are from a free jazz and ambient jazz background, as well as psychedelic dub reggae (Dabiška, Dab Kajsije). This combination leads to an improvisational, atmospheric, yet burstling sax-bass-drums trio, where this classic trio setup is augmented with extended techniques on the saxophone, heavy pedal effects on the bass, and experiments on a minimized drumkit. The result is a highly avant-garde, fresh, and vibrant form of free ambient jazz, akin to the musical counterpart of an abstract expressionist painting saturated with bold, hallucinogenic colors.

This release is the third collaboration between Inverted Spectrum Records and PMGJazz.

Ilia Belorukov – alto saxophone, fluteophone
Marko Čurčić – electric bass, effect pedals
Nemanja Tasić – drums, percussion

All music composed, arrangede and performed by Belorukov, Čurčić and Tasić

Recorded on January 21-23, 2025 in Novi Sad.
Mixed by Marko Čurčić (1-5) and Ilia Belorukov (6).
Mastered by Ilia Belorukov.
Recorded on January 21-23, 2025 in Novi Sad.
Mixed by Marko Čurčić (1-5) and Ilia Belorukov (6).
Mastered by Ilia Belorukov
Thanks to Zsolt Polgar.

Published by:
PMGJazz (Skopje, Macedonia).
Executive producers: Vladan Drobicki & Deni Omeragić (info.pmgjazz@gmail.com)
pmgjazz.bandcamp.com
___
Published by:
Inverted Spectrum Records (Budapest, Hungary / Ankara, Turkey / Belgrade, Serbia)
Executive producer: Işık Sarıhan (invertedspectrumrecords@gmail.com)
invertedspectrumrecords.bandcamp.com

PMGJazz presents, with great pride and joy, this spectacular meeting of four fantastic international musicians. Through a collaboration with our friend Christopher Cox – who has become one of our flagship artists this year, we bring (for your enjoyment) this 66 minute masterpiece. The complete story is in the full liner notes reprinted here. Enjoy!


“Change is urgently needed in this world. Sürgős is Hungarian for urgent. What we have been doing isn’t working. The Earth is pissed. There is a seething and justified anger at the global inequality that has infected the human condition. Improvisation, in one form or another, marks the only way forward. In short, we find ourselves living within a moment of urgency.
The Sürgős Quartet paints upon this canvas.

Sürgős features three generations of player. Saxophonist Elliott Levin (Philadelphia, US) and bassist Akira Ando (Berlin, but originally from Japan) have been improvising for more than 50 years. Trombonist Christopher Robin Cox (US/HU) came up through the 1990s free jazz renaissance of the San Francisco Bay Area, but went on to play an array of music, eventually returning to his roots in free improvisation after ditching the US for Budapest in 2019. Czech drummer Jakub Švejnar is the youngest member of the band, whose unique mix of influences has become an anchor for the sound that Sürgős produces.
Cox, Levin, Ando and Švejnar bring an intense East Coast of the US vibe to their live playing. With Levin’s often sudden switch to Beat style poetry, Cox’s use of double reeds and foil paper to create other worldly sounds on the trombone, Ando’s masterful bowing and throat-singing, and Švejnar’s ability to switch between intricate math rock beats to atmospheric swooshes on the cymbals, there are no limitations to where this band can go on a given night. There is clear evidence of the influence of the NYC free jazz scene of the late 1960s, but with distinctly European flourishes added to the mix.
Just like the anti-fascist and leftist ethos of many free jazz artists in the United States and abroad, the Sürgős Quartet follows in the tradition of making music that is intense enough to make you want to kill the machine, but beautiful enough to make you forget about how rotten it is. If you want music you can sip tea to, this is probably not right for your cup. If you want music you can plan the revolution too, you have found the right group.
The quartet did its first tour in April of 2025, playing packed houses in Berlin, Dresden, Prague, Budapest, and ultimately the small village of Kápolnásnyék, where this raw, unfiltered live recording was documented by guitarist and sound engineer Roland Heidrich at the hidden gem of a venue known as Ben Utca. This show was the highlight of their tour, which began in Berlin and ended in Budapest.

About the Venue
At the end of the COVID period, in 2022, three friends (Benjamin Glass, Roland Heidrich, and Melinda Cziráki) began organizing living room concerts once a month in Kápolnásnyék, a small Hungarian village. In this setting, music comes into close, intimate proximity; the spaces—decorated with unique installations, structures, and photographs—also offer the opportunity for informal conversation and encounters. It is an organic, grassroots cultural space that hosts a wide variety of chamber formations, with a primary focus on improvisational genres. Since its beginnings, it has become a thriving entity within the Hungarian underground improvised music culture.

Ben Utca is a unique and intimate living room venue, headed up by inventive artist Ben Glass. It is much more than a simple house concert series, as it has become a kind of institution for creative music outside of the big city. Situated right next to the small, but beautiful Lake Velence, you can actually travel by train from the city to the venue, which makes it even more amazing. The atmosphere is one of inclusion and hospitality, unlike most traditional venues. Add to all of that the wonderful acoustics of the room, and you have a venue that has become a desirable destination. This recording, the outcome of nothing but two well-placed stereo mics, is a testament to the wonder of the Budapest underground music scene.“ 

Elliott Levin [saxophone/flute/poetry]
Christopher Robin Cox [trombone]
Akira Ando [bass]
Jakub Švejnar [drums]

Side A composed by Akira Ando

Side B composed by Elliot Levin / Christopher Robin Cox
Poetry by Elliot Levin & Akira Ando


Recorded live on April 26, 2025 at Ben Utca in Kápolnásnyék,
Hungary, by Roland Heidrich

Cover art by Tracy Lisk
Band photo by Sándor Bergh
Graphic preparation by Deni Omeragić

Executive producers – Vladan Drobicki & Deni Omeragić [for PMGJazz]

Composed and arranged by Skrit
Gligor Kondovski-violin
Filip Metodiev-guitar
Andrea Mirceska-double bass
Dario Cievski-drums

Recorded on 30.11.2025 at BARBA Audio Facility by Vladan Drobicki
Cover art by Gligor Kondovski and Filip Metodiev
Produced for PMGJazz by Vladan Drobicki

𝑨𝒔𝒑𝒊𝒓𝒊𝒏 𝑴𝒐𝒐𝒏 is a realm where the poetry of music meets the music of poetry.

A published poet and national slam poetry champion, Grubor fuses the analytical and the emotional, tracing how words reveal and conceal the self and distilling experience into pattern.
Bukrshliev is a jazz guitarist, composer and improviser active in a constellation of bands and ensembles. Known for his textural approach and precise restraint, he shapes the sound as if sculpting air, minimal yet resonant.

𝑬𝒏𝒕𝒓𝒐𝒑𝒚 is 𝑨𝒔𝒑𝒊𝒓𝒊𝒏 𝑴𝒐𝒐𝒏 first recorded project, taking its name from the condition of all things: slow drift, quiet fractures, and the pull from order into flux. As the poems move through longing, rupture, and reconstruction, the guitar frames and fractures them in intimate and volatile ways.

Welcome to a contemplative experiment in the tension between the spoken and the unsaid. Approach it in quiet and let it unfold. Somewhere between breath and decay, the universe keeps expanding its unfinished poem. This is one imperfect verse of it.

Lyrics and voice – Marija Grubor
Music composed, arranged and performed on guitar- Filip Bukrshliev

Recorded, mixed, mastered and produced – Vladan Drobicki
Cover art – Marko Trpeski

Just over four years after their debut “Nightscape”, Vladan Drobicki and Gligor Kondovski have revealed “Inward” – a cinematic soundscape and a wonderfully emotional record. Kondovski paints with wide strokes, Drobicki digs mazes in the sound, light occasionally peering through. A great piece, made by two masters. One of the most beautiful records in our catalog.
Look inward, and enjoy!

“Six stories that unknowingly lead us gradually into a cinematic perception of sound, woven together with trombone, violin, electronics, and glockenspiel.
There is no absurdity left — we ran over it with our cars across every lane of the street. The dream of the terrible creature “Viy” has been taken away.
That mythological beauty with her large eyes melted into the irony and hypocrisy of her own life.
Unwilling to navigate the unknown, we crashed our own comfort zone into lostness and ignorance. The beauty of the “inward” can become a creation of each person’s reality, shaped from the reality we know in this stereotypical world.
What would remain if only the last fragment of fantasy and human imagination were left in the world?
-Even bad coffee is better than no coffee at all.

composed by Gligor Kondovski

Gligor Kondovski-violin, glockenspiel & electronics
Vladan Drobicki-trombone

mixed and produced by Vladan Drobicki
cover art by Gligor Kondovski

We have been here a while. It’s been a great ride so far. We jumped, and we danced, and we laughed, and we cried. We have lived. And now… to usher in a new era in PMG Jazz’s history, Deni Omeragić and Ninoslav Spirovski bring together an international cast of Budapest-based musicians. Not to laugh or cry. Or even jump. But to reflect. The result: “Addāt Fōyya” – a mantra in three acts.

Omeragić and Spirovski separately or together feature on a quarter of this humble label’s output. They are happy to induct Viktor Kapusi and David Karla into the club. We also welcome back Péter Ajtai, Christopher Robin Cox and Attila Gyárfás, after their masterful trio record “Urgent”.

This album is our second collaboration with our Budapest/Ankara/Belgrade-based comrades Inverted Spectrum Records.

“Following the 2024 release of ‘Everything Was as It Had Been a Minute Ago’, a masterpiece of dark avantgarde jazz by the Macedonian trio Svetlost, the partnership between PMGJazz and Inverted Spectrum Records continues with Addāt Fōyya by Deni Omeragić + Ninoslav Spirovski SZOLIDARITÁS ORCHESTRA, the fruit of a recent attempt at underpinning new collaborations within the regional free jazz and improvisational music scenes. Is Hungary and Macedonia even considered to belong to the same region? We all know that regions are not merely geographical, but political and cultural entities, defined by alliances and shared backgrounds, and SZOLIDARITÁS ORCHESTRA is a performative act, an act of declaration of such a region by laying the groundwork for future pacts and common musical references. By this declaration, the project invites us to see geographical proximity rather than pre-established cultural or industrial connections as a potential source of new artistic partnerships; and that physical proximity matters more and more each day on a planet where reckless globalization has failed sustainability.

Recorded in Budapest on The Ides of March, 2025, in the basement of a cafe at the foot of Erzsébet Bridge, the album features modal compositions by Omeragić and Spirovski, two central figures from the alternative jazz cadres of Macedonia. The solemn, sombre and majestic tones of these musical paintings are familiar to us from Svetlost and Odron Ritual Orchestra, ensembles spearheaded by these two long-time collaborators. But instead of the usual participants of their orchestras, this time the compositions are embellished by five of the most prominent characters from the Budapest scene: Péter Ajtai, Christopher Robin Cox, Attila Gyárfás, Viktor Kapusi, and David Karla, all of whom are known from countless local formations and international collaborations. The performance is masterfully recorded by Dávid Tamás Pap, whose signature can be found in many layers of the Hungarian alternative music realm. Addāt Fōyya marks a new phase for the Skopje-based PMGJazz in emerging as an international institution, and establishes Inverted Spectrum Records further as a regional interventionist label, or, as recently described by Christopher Cox, ‘the conductor of the underground jazz railway between Budapest and the Balkans’.” – Inverted Spectrum Records 

—————-
Ninoslav Spirovski [clarinet / tenor saxophone]

David Karla [bass clarinet / alto saxophone]

Viktor Kapusi [tenor saxophone]

Christopher Cox [trombone]

Attila Gyárfás [drums]

Péter Ajtai [contrabass]

Deni Omeragić [contrabass / electronics]


Composed by Deni Omeragić and Ninoslav Spirovski.
Recorded by Dávid Tamás Pap @ Három Holló, Budapest, 15 March 2025.
Live sound engineer: András Gáspár.
Edited, mixed and mastered by Vladan Drobicki, Skopje, May – October 2025.
Artwork by Deni Omeragić, Porto, November 2025.

We thank Rebeka Módosi for her help in making this happen, our friends, family, and everyone else who made this possible.


Published by:

PMGJazz (Skopje, Macedonia).
Executive producers: Vladan Drobicki & Deni Omeragić
(pmgjazzrec@gmail.com)

Inverted Spectrum Records (Budapest, Hungary / Ankara, Turkey / Belgrade, Serbia)
Executive producer: Işık Sarıhan 
(invertedspectrumrecords@gmail.com)
invertedspectrumrecords.bandcamp.com