B. Clugston

John Coltrane, Soultrane + and the Red Garland Trio (Analogue Productions). Great stuff from the Prestige era. Steve Lacy, School Days (QED). All Monk, before it was fashionable, with Roswell Rudd.

Sign me up for a download please.

Kodaly String Quartet, Contemporary Hungarian Chamber Music (Hungaroton).

RIP. He also did a lot to bring Schoenberg's work to a wider audience.

Those albums seem to get forgotten amongst Giuffre's output, but they are great. Kiyoshi Tokunaga and Randy Kaye are an excellent rhythm section for this music. Evan Parker/Derek Bailey/Han Bennink, The Topography of the Lungs (Incus)

Joseph Jarman and Famoudou Don Moye, Egwu-Anwu (Sun Song) (India Navigation). Nice showcase of both talents without the other guys. Jimmy Giuffre 3, Music for People, Birds, Butterflies & Mosquitoes (Choice). Great album from Giuffre's 70s trio. Lots of flute.

Paul Desmond Quartet Live (Horizon). Great quartet date with on Ed Bickert on guitar, Jerry Fuller on drums and Don Thompson on bass (and engineer). Desmond's solo on Jobim's Wave is packed with interesting moments.

Happy Birthday to the guy who knows the difference between Roughriders and Rough Riders!

Ovary Lodge (RCA)

Howard Riley, The Other Side (Spotlite)

? Whenever I come across a clean ESP pressing, I feel like there's something wrong with it. Yes, it doesn't feel right. Listening to New York Art Quartet now which is surprisingly blemish free Globe Unity Orchestra - Jahrmarkt/Local Fair [Po Torch] first listen.Side 2 might just be the maddest piece of music I've heard in a very long time That is wild stuff. Local Fair sounds like a precursor to Sergey Kuryokhin's Pop Mechanics projects in the 1980s and '90s.

? Whenever I come across a clean ESP pressing, I feel like there's something wrong with it.

Great choices. "Flute music" is also well worth getting if you do not have it. I just finished spinning that Hemphill LP myself as your post inspired me to play it again. The music is excellent, but to me it suffers a bit due to that typical Black Saint tinny/trebly production. Right now: Black Unity Trio "al-fatihah" (salaam). Probably one of my favorite free jazz albums ever...if I ever did my own "top ten free jazz list" a la Thurston Moore then this would definitely be on it. Black Unity Trio is a masterpiece--I love that album and thanks to you, I've heard it. I'm spinning the Hemphill again. I agree with you about the sound, but the playing is tremendous.

is this good? What's it like? It's a great one. One of my favourites from Big John.

Cool photo! Have you read that biography? I've been meaning to pick it up.

Julius Hemphill, Raw Materials and Residuals (Black Saint). ?????? Has Abdul Wadud ever been on a bad album? Dudu Pukwana and Spear, In the Townships (Caroline).

Hidehiko Matsumoto, The First by Sleepy (Toshiba). Nice 1977 date by one of Japan's more renowned tenor saxophonists. Liner notes are unintentionally hilarious going into obsessive details over the direct to disc recording process. Billy Harper, Knowledge of Self (Denon). A recent purchase and the first Harper leader date I've picked up. There's a lot of love for Billy Harper on this board and I can see why--a great one.

Julian Priester, Love, Love (ECM, U.S. pressing) Pepper Adams, Encounter (Prestige). Love the lineup on this one: Zoot Sims, Tommy Flanagan, Elvin Jones and Ron Carter.

I used to feel that way, but that band with John Scofield and Al Foster was smokin'. Mileage varies after that.

Schoenberg/Berg/Webern, The String Quartets, LaSalle Quartet (DG)

Bill Dixon, November 1981 (Soul Note) Duke Ellington & John Coltrane (Impulse Japan) Lester Bowie, Numbers 1 & 2 (Nessa)

Isn't that one of the LPs that Paul Buckmaster spun for Miles before the 'On The Corner' sessions? Buckmaster mentioned that "Mixtur" and "Gruppen" were on heavy rotation at Miles' house prior to On the Corner.

Karlheinz Stockhausen, Telemusik/Mixtur (DG). One side of electronics and tape collage and one side of orchestra tripped out through ring modulators. This and Gesang der Jünglinge/Kontakte are the ones I spin most from Stockhausen,

Excellent choice. Many treasures to be found on the Hungaraton label in the 1970s and 1980s, especially by composers of the Budapest New Music Studio (Jeney and Sary were both founding members). I've yet to find a dud on that label. Zsolt Durko is another favourite. Do you have any other recommendations? Hungaraton also did that amazing edition of Bartok's works. Sorry for replying late and I don't have my records here, but I would recommend really almost anything by the New Music Studio composers (I'm particularly fond of Zoltan Jeney). Hungaroton also released a string of excellent electronic/electroacoustic records by Hungarian composers. And there's Kurtág, of course... (I'm not an expert on "straight" classical music, but given the high quality of so much contemporary/avant-garde releases on the label, I would imagine their standards to be pretty high there too. The Bartok edition you mentioned is a case in point.) now listening to Endre Szekely on Hungaroton (this time I spelled it correctly). More great stuff, especially a trio for percussion, piano and cello. Thanks for the Kurtag recommendation--that's one composer I really need to check out. haha the allmusic reviewer had following choice words for the cover (and the album i guess) "If things weren't dismal enough, the album cover, looking as though drawn by a fashion-school dropout, is possibly one of the worst ever". I always liked the album a lot and am listening to it right now Thanks for posting the cover. When I'm playing the record I always display the back cover because the front is so gaudily awful. The music, however, is wonderful. That's a great rendition of "The Hard Blues" and Hemphill's playing on the title cut makes the David Sanborn connection even less surprising.

Julius Hemphill, Georgia Blue (Minor Music). Live recording featuring Alex and Nels Cline, Steubig and Jumma Santos. I think this was Nels' first recording. Features updated versions of "The Hard Blues" and "Dogon A.D." The cover screams 1980s.