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Flurin, you listened to Braxton yet?

Nope, but as I said, I listened to his London Jazz Fest 04 concert (or parts of it, 55 or 60 minutes), and I like that well enough to consider getting into Braxton a bit... will spin them soon!

If you decide to start exploring Braxton a few of his Hat's (Basel and Dortmund) are mid-priced now and excellent starting points. The quartet sets on Leo (Coventry, Birmingham, London) are also fantastic.

Dortmund I have, for the Basel I'd be happy for pointers, seems gone...

ubu

I have a spare copy, don't worry.

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As there seems to be no or little interest where I posted this, let me add a link here:

Henri Texier "Strada Sextet" - webcast available on France Musiques website

ubu

You should title the thread : LOST 60S BLUE NOTE SESSION, LONG OOP MOSAIC SUPER-RARE CONOSSEUR ARTIST HENRI TEXIER (DIGIPAK WITH OBI!!!!!!) -ANDREW HILL-INFLUENCED!!!!!!!

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Flurin: :g You're one hilarious cat!

Thanks for the link. I'd listen now but I'm at work and I'm not allowed to download nor stream. Security, don't ya know. To punish my employer, I'm once again spinning the Bailey / Parker Arch Duo set.

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Flurin: :g You're one hilarious cat!

Thanks for the link. I'd listen now but I'm at work and I'm not allowed to download nor stream. Security, don't ya know. To punish my employer, I'm once again spinning the Bailey / Parker Arch Duo set.

:g

hope your boss enjoys hearing some nice music! Couldn't listen at work, either!

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Listened to the quartet Braxton Free America disc, "Donna Lee", and I love it! The title tune, starting the disc off, is at breakneck tempo, so fast it's in fact almost a caricature of bop. Braxton is on fire, the band builds up steam, sounding at times like a noisy mid-sixties free jazz group, but ending smoothly in a final reading of the tune itself.

The second tune is pure beauty, a Braxton composition (No. 23L + some of his strange symbols). This leaves lots of room for the music to breathe, and in a sense may be the least conventional (yup, the rest is actually rather conventional at first sight) track on the disc. Michael Smith (p - I never heard him before), Peter Warren (b - same for him; he seems to have been more at home in "classical" music than jazz), and Oliver Johnson (d - he is known to all of us, I suppose, as one of Lacy's late drummers, together with John Betsch) get to play some, though this is always group music. Not sure how much of it is actually written, and how much is freely improvised (and how free, IF it's improvised), but the results are hauntingly beautiful.

Follows the first of two successive versions of a standard, "You Go To My Head", dedicated to Dinah Washington. Braxton displays his post-bop abilities, yet he sounds like none of the boppers and hardboppers, adding a big vibrato to his full sound.

The second version of "You Go To My Head" is dedicated to one of Braxton's heroes, Lee Konitz, and is a slight bit more on the noisy side again, a bit more powerful, though Braxton plays some stuff that indeed reminds of Konitz' tight clean sound and cliché-free lines.

Braxton's Composition 23K stands as the closer, the shortest of all tracks (a bit more than 5 minutes) and ends the disc on a reflective anti-climax (I don't mean that negative at all). Another quite, restrained composition, much more organised than 23L I think, providing a closer and narrower frame for the musicians to act in.

*****************

So much for my lousy reviewing skills. This is all out of my head AFTER having given the disc ONE (but a concentrated) listen, so don't shoot me if...

ubu

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If you haven't heard any Bailey then I take it you haven't heard early SME, LJCO, Tony Oxley, Iskra 1903, &c (all bands Bailey was in).  Definitely worth remedying the omission!

no to all. Where would you recommend starting with Bailey to someone with open ears?

Lessee... Jon Abbey can probably help here, I recall that his list of favourite albums for instance included Iskra 1903's 3CD set on Emanem, some 1960s SME, plus the first LJCO album Ode. Of that bunch I only have Ode & still don't know quite what to make of it. It's light-years away from the slicker latterday LJCO, & certainly a very interesting album, though like that band it does have shades of Stan Kenton (e.g. the inordinate fondness for brass fanfares) that kinda worry me.

But: you should certainly get hold of Karyobin (Chronoscope), one of the definitive early SME albums. Bailey, E. Parker, Wheeler, Holland, Stevens. There's also a lot of material by different but related lineups on Emanem from this period.

Company 6 & 7: Bailey, Braxton, Lacy, L. Smith, &c &c (Incus). If you like this there's more material from these sessions on Company 5.

I have Oxley's The Baptised Traveller (Columbia)--Bailey, E. Parker, Oxley, J Clyne, K Wheeler. Haven't quite decided what I make of it, but it's certainly interesting. Hard to find now, I'm afraid, what with Columbia's short-term reissue program. It gets a crown in the Penguin Guide as does Ode, FWIW. It has a rare instance of Bailey playing a "jazz" tune: in this case a Charlie Mariano piece.

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ILessee... Jon Abbey can probably help here, I recall that his list of favourite albums for instance included Iskra 1903's 3CD set on Emanem, some 1960s SME, plus the first LJCO album Ode

I already wrote my list of recommended Bailey discs a couple of pages back. I do like Ode, but it's not a place to hear Bailey specifically, as it's a large ensemble.

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ILessee... Jon Abbey can probably help here, I recall that his list of favourite albums for instance included Iskra 1903's 3CD set on Emanem, some 1960s SME, plus the first LJCO album Ode

I already wrote my list of recommended Bailey discs a couple of pages back. I do like Ode, but it's not a place to hear Bailey specifically, as it's a large ensemble.

Jon--yes, but John's question was actually to do with various ensembles like SME, LJCO, &c which he hadn't heard.

I note your list of fave Bailey discs has a strong Japanese slant!

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"I note your list of fave Bailey discs has a strong Japanese slant! "

kind of, I guess, only one of them has Japanese musicians on it, and another has a Japanese dancer. not sure if a solo disc recorded in Japan really counts towards "a strong Japanese slant". maybe part of the reason I like those two (New Sights, Old Sounds and Duo and Trio Improvisations) is that they're better recorded than most of his other records, but I can't say I've ever spent time really checking out this hypothesis. FWIW, Aida's Call (with a lot of overlapping personnel to Duo and Trio Improvisations) is worthless, dreadful sound quality, shouldn't have been released no matter the historic value.

but maybe, much like Keith Rowe a couple of decades later, Bailey's exposure to Japanese musicians and Japan gave him the breath of fresh air he needed to rejuvenate his music, filtering into his solo disc recorded there also. I wonder if Ben Watson's bio addresses this at all (my guess is no), when I get my copy back from Mr. Olewnick, I'll take a look...

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Jon--I was thinking of Aida too (which, let me add for the sake of those who don't know the albums, is an entirely different album from Aida's Call)--though the Japanese connection is more tenuous (the title is in tribute to Aquirax Aida, who lured Bailey to Japan: see http://www.l-m-c.org.uk/texts/bailey.html).

I really want to hear that 2CD solo album New Sights Old Sounds--I should just break down & get it direct from Derek/Karen. Cadence (my usual source) doesn't seem to stock too many Incus albums nowadays. From all accounts it's one of Derek's best solo discs.

I still really like Dart Drug with Jamie Muir, which sounds nothing like anything else of Derek's I've heard.

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I've listened to this one three times and I'm just not getting it. Is it the instrumentation? Truthfuly, I'm not a big fan of the violin in jazz. Is it becuase Léandre tends to tower over her fellow players on this disk? Is it because all too often, the players don't seem to be playing as one? Shouldn't it be enough that when the music is quiet -- and it's often quiet -- all play quietly? And all simultaneously get the idea to perform in a manic manner? Still... can't connect the dots.

Maybe the fourth listen...

Anyone have any experience with either this disk or this grouping?

102.jpg

Madly You (Potlatch)

Daunik Lazro: alto & baritone saxophones

Carlos Alves “Zingaro”: violin

Joëlle Léandre: double bass

Paul Lovens: percussion, musical saw

Liner notes:

Most Americans discover European improvised music using a map dominated by Amsterdam, Berlin, and London, which dwarfs and shoves the rest of the continent to the margins. At some point, however, even they realize the land lies differently. Yet, extensive exploration is required to correct the proportions, label the tributaries, and overlay the trade routes. In this endeavor, recordings become the coordinates that begin to flesh out the map’s heretofore blank spaces.

Madly You is valuable in this regard. Daunik Lazro, Joëlle Léandre, and Carlos Zingaro are all but unknown to the typical American improvised music enthusiast, whose knowledge of Paul Lovens centers on his work with Schlippenbach Trio. Theirs are names seen occasionally in English language magazines, usually in connection with CDs available only through mail order services. Their stature in this supposedly peripheral Europe, and their respective and shared histories, entail few familiar reference points.

For them, Madly You would be a jolt, albeit a welcomed one. Even for the unusually motivated American, who has managed to hear these improvisers in performance, and to snag a good number of their recordings, the album imparts the concentrated sense of discovery so valued in the pursuit of improvised music. Conversely, at a time when improvised music is perceived in some European quarters to be slipping into a comfortable middle aged genre, this music is devoid of the stock gambits giving such prattle its limited sway.

The ensemble’s palette immediately engages the ear. Given the hegemony of the soprano and tenor saxophones in improvised music, Lazro’s use of alto, the once dominant jazz ax scantily represented in improvised music, and the equally seldom heard baritone is refreshing. On the higher horn, he blends well with the frequently soaring Zingaro; on the lower, he and Léandre can produce a fearsome rumble. Completed by Lovens’ small percussion orchestra, it is a palette adaptable to the bold strokes and subtle shadings filling these canvases.

The ensemble further distinguishes itself by how it employs these colors. Instead of machine gunning the listener, letting him or her in on an inside joke, or testing their polemical rigor, the ensemble directly communicates their passions. Additionally, these improvisations exude an impulsive, mercurial quality, the sense that the direction of the music could go almost anywhere at almost anytime. Subsequently, the listener is drawn into the unfolding of the music on its terms, not the ideologues’.

Among the score of reasons, committing improvised music to recordings is a risky proposition because it creates a familiarity, even an intimacy that would otherwise never exist had the tape not been rolling. It is therefore incumbent upon improvisers to issue recordings that prolong the listeners’ initial stage of discovery, that keeps them in a state of wonder long enough that they at least temporarily discard their assumptions, and in the case of Americans, their maps. Daunik Lazro, Joëlle Léandre, Paul Lovens, and Carlos Zingaro do exactly that on Madly You.

Bill Shoemaker

+++++ Or maybe it's because I'm an American? :blink:

Edited by Chaney
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Anyone have any experience with either this disk or this grouping?

Madly You (Potlatch)

Daunik Lazro: alto & baritone saxophones

Carlos Alves “Zingaro”: violin

Joëlle Léandre: double bass

Paul Lovens: percussion, musical saw

I have a disc by this (or very similar - not sure about the drummer) rocking combo on In Situ label (I think it is called "Periferia"). I tired to listen to it once and thought it was very static and sluggish - no development whatsoever. Will give it another listen soon.

On the other hand, the duo of Daunik Lazro - Carlos Zingaro "Hauts Plateaux" (Potlatch) is stunning - one of my favorite releases of ... whichevcr year that was - and quite dynamic and even vilent at times (and hauntingly beatiful at other times). You know what, I'd better re-listen to this one, if you do not mind.

---------------------------------

Tony, surely you are working on some highly-sophisticated statistical analysis at the moment?

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Hmmm... Static. Sluggish. No development whatsoever. That might very well describe Madly You, although it's not overly guilty of any of the three.

Tony, surely you are working on some highly-sophisticated statistical analysis at the moment?

Just drinking my coffee, girding myself for further workday fun!

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