Coleman's "jazz" was all about articulating musical improvisation as a unified whole. Such a view – so radical for its time in the late 1950s when Coleman began doing his thing – now makes a great deal of sense, particularly when a record label looks to promote music that strays beyond accepted boundaries.

Canberra-based HellosQuare is one such label. It fits the ideal that progressive punk rock thinkers once had in mind, which was to avoid the standard routes and embrace creative freedom as the ultimate goal. HellosQuare is the work of local musician Shoeb Ahmad who has collaborated far and wide with improvising guitar/drums duo Spartak as the mainstay.

The label started out in 2008 with a proper DIY aesthetic, and has since grown a decent roster of artists whose meeting point is a shared desire to take music beyond the comfortably familiar. One recent HelloSquare release is the unsettling genre-crossing music of Melbourne multi-instrumental group Daughter's Fever on their self-titled album. This ensemble's thoughtfully assembled hybrid of haunted pop and improv/sound art was recently performed at The Street Theatre as part of the Capital Jazz Project. Not bad for a label which started out in a bedroom in the leafy Belconnen suburb Scullin.

Ahmad says it all began with CDRs which kept things esoteric, yet manageable, and certainly beyond the reach of the corporate hit machine.

"HellosQuare started around 10 years ago out of my bedroom in a Scullin house, looking to indulge my interests in indie rock and glitch electronics," he says. "I never thought I would move on from making CDRs and go into a full catalogue of vinyl and tapes, but there has always been a project I've wanted to take on and that has inevitably led to other artists to meet and work with."

The catalogue has grown over time and Ahmad is enthusiastic about the musical diversity on offer, which he says, "has helped with creating a singular aesthetic that suitably works with the sounds HellosQuare puts into the world."

Some of that enthusiasm has been reserved for the likes of indie rock band Hoodlum Shouts and also improvising/sound art ensemble Tangents, which suggests that Ahmad is interested in artistic expression across the musical spectrum without all those annoying preconceptions, although this isn't an easy concept to promote.

"Challenges are always financial and trying to figure out how you can break an unknown artist to the general public," he says. "It's also about encouraging people to take a chance on investigating something new as well."

That will always be a worthy goal, and so long as distinctive labels like HellosQuare exist Coleman's ambition to celebrate free creativity is in good hands.