Thurston Moore made a name for himself both as a songwriter/guitarist/singer with rock experimentalists Sonic Youth and a solo artist, and is now coming up with a book about free jazz. Titled NOW JAZZ NOW: 100 Essential Free Jazz & Improvisation Recordings [1960-80], the book will be published via his Ecstatic Peace Library imprint. The book is set to be published on December 5, 2025 and is available to pre-order here.
It is actually a collaborative effort between Moore fellow musicians Mats Gustafsson, Neneh Cherry, Joe McPhee and music writer Byron Coley. The book spans 277 pages of album art, labels, sleeve notes and collector musings on their life-long obsessions of record collecting, with a focus on the recorded history of Free Jazz and Free Improvisation.
The book features images of albums, singles, and cassettes direct from the authors’ personal archives in all their loving wear and tear, along with Philippe Gras’s exquisite photos of free music legends. The three authors share a lifelong mutual obsession with record collecting, with a distinct focus on the recorded history of free music.
Compiling their personal archives with discussion and debate over which recordings to include among a list of more than 100 releases, they have decided on presenting the works in chronological order, realizing the music to be preternaturally noncompetitive, non-hierarchical and of equal value.
