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Michael Cosmic Reissue finally here


jcam_44

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First listen to CD 1 and it's apparent that this is a very worthwhile release that's been carried out with care and attention. I look forward to getting to know all the music.

It's already prompted me to order a copy of Musiki reissue on Holidays (more of your persuasive words Clifford appear against its Discogs entry)

Edited by mjazzg
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  • 3 weeks later...

Hey, folks--I disappeared up the crevice for a while and so I'm not sure how much weight this recommendation brings, but this reissue is legit. I say this with full acknowledgment for the fact that Clifford's been a friend and supporter for a long time--I speak purely to musical considerations, since ultimately that's all that matters.

I went on an obsessive box binge over the holidays, and the clear winners were this one and the Joe McPhee Nation Time recording box from a few years back. I think that the music of this vintage arrived at moment when the exigencies of spontaneity and identity affirmation had to confront, by virtue of time and external realities, things like structural innovation and technical achievement. The AACM guys are the deserving, historically acknowledged masters of this era, but it's deeply instructive to peek in on all these regional scenes to see how the same philosophical and conceptual considerations were being dealt with in different, often divergent ways.

I've been listening, too, to Sunny Murray's music in the wake of his passing, and I'm reminded a bit of something the former Marvin Patillo said to me once--that many of the guys from this vintage "could not play" and this was a well-traded truth. The people who could, or whose concepts were coherent enough to survive the era--capital letter people like Ornette or lesser known lights like Noah Howard--found ways to adjust or pivot out of the pure, dispersive free thing of the 60's. The rub against this is the (controversial) reality that people with incomplete technical concepts--like McPhee, who started playing tenor in '68 and recorded Underground Railroad in '68-69 (!)--can and did make substantive contributions to the embodied intellect of the music. 

This speaks a little to Cosmic's music but also, I think, says a lot about some of the reservations I have about both contemporary free jazz and the composite picture of modern day avant-garde composition/improvisation. There's just a lot of flail-y, unrealized free jazz and a lot of overwrought, technically sterile avant-garde stuff traded about. There's also a lot of deeply brilliant regional and "big city" music that goes unheard because of the philosophical dint of modern jazz criticism. I can only imagine my excitement at hearing something as bloody and real as the Cosmic/Musra group or Nation Time in the early 1970's--and take stock in the understanding that there's a lot of similarly exciting music happening everywhere, right now. 

This is all a circular way of saying that things like Peace in the World are absolutely invaluable documents of both the era and the un-dimming spirit of (in the romantic sense) unheard music. I was only peripherally attuned to this music before, and I can hear the debt to things like the early AACM music, the Paris guys, and Center of the World, but it's absolutely it's own thing--played with conviction and energy and its own ragged precision, and not so dissimilar to, say, the wilder experiments of the UGMAA or earlier William Parker. It's big, blustery, loping music, but there's a clear compositional and technical impetus at play, and most important of all, it's as far away from boring as the needle can get. 

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  • 1 month later...

Received and enjoyed it very much while the site was down so only reporting now. Congratulations and thank you very much for allowing us to access to this music in such an informative way. Looking forward to plunging into this again, as it's very new to me, not much to compare to yet. Loving the instrumentation.

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  • 4 weeks later...

Just finished listening to these records. Love the music, great discovery for me. The "liner notes" are extensive and very interesting. I certainly did not expect to find a link between these musicians and KonstruKt. Great piece of research. I particularly liked the pictures of the original flyers, a miracle they survived.

The sound quality exceeds my expectations and is really good. Always afraid of bad pressing quality, I was relieved to find perfectly pressed and quiet vinyl. 

Congrats to all involved in this reissue!

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  • 2 years later...

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