David Ayers

I'm with you on this one. Glass Bead Games is of interest but IMO over-rated (like the novel!). And that is supposedly the stand-out album of this set. I sold all my Strata Easts which were in poor transfers. It's always nice to have a quality edition of something but I think this was a quirky choice.

The two main albums on this set are Glass Bead Games and Izipho Zam. Those two, Payne and Brackeen were around for years on CD. All four are on Youtube, as is the other Jordan.

Well, we were basically told 'buy now before we shut up shop', so none of these wobbles are that surprising. Maybe surprising they still mess around making that stupid 'Gazette' instead of answering the mail, but hey ho...

Further joy. Searching for"keith jarrett" today yielded only 22 albums, some the same as yesterday. Yesterday the same search consistently yielded the same 38. This is just nuts.

Yes a good tip and I stumbled on that myself - but that view is also not complete, although it looks like it might/should be, yet it is a different list...

It's not just me then! It seems bizarre they can't get this right...

When I search for Keith Jarrett on the UK version of the store, I get 38 albums. But there are many more than this, which I can find by searching for the missing title by name. That seems like a problem to me. Any pointers?

Although remember the era of the euromosaic - the sets licensed with Warner for European distribution. That came and went, but was the closest to mainstream distribution Mosaic ever got. There was a time too when amazon searches threw up Mosaic sponsored ads. All in the past anyway. You can stream the Mosaic Jamal now so buyers now are a minority.

Well, the amount amazon charge is still pretty reasonable compared to a normal retail markup. Distribution costs money. If Mosaic used a proper distributor they would have saved on running that operation themselves and maybe reached more people. All too late now I suppose but - maybe there were other ways to go - ?

Some very different geographies at work here. Lots of excellent music and musicians near to me and always a keen and usually hip crowd. That says nothing about the recorded music market though, especially the archive, which is a different question. Conversely there are folks here who seem not that much interested in contemporary music - but that's another topic.

One thing I am thinking about is the approach to the individual voice. From the moment in the 60s that some people set the goal of getting away (a bit) from the soloist-and-accompaniment model, that goal is always part of the mix in larger ensembles as well. Yet hard to realise or work through consistently. The Brötzmann Tenntet started out with scores but gave them up (as McPhee told me, it's "much better"). When you hear them play though, brilliant as they are at scoreless improv, all sorts of traditional shapins emerge - not least around the Big Noise Boy himself who only ever plays lead, really, while others just fit in. Or take Evan Parker's Electroacoustic Ensemble. In that set-up, the acoustic instruments are electronically processed live and those results in turn processed (with up to four people on stage doing the processing). That clearly can lead away from the solo-accompaniment model, so for example many passages in The Moment's Energy are very collective and anonymous, but at the same time the group is basically led by the acoustic instrumental virtuosos and some passages have a lead voice which does not disappear in the mix and which the other voices, quite spontaneously but following established protocols, punctuate and accompany. Still thinking about it.

That spiffy email is gonna turn things around for Mosaic! Go nerds!

Is there appetite for discussion about this? I'm thinking less of the classics (Free Jazz; Ascension) and more about everything after that. These larger ensembles are only sometimes wholly free, otherwise adopt elements of composition, non-standard scoring, various forms of direction, conduction, etc. Busy day here so only time to set down a marker and ask for thoughts and experiences in this area...

There has been and will be nothing new in 2017, IIRC. Maybe two last year. So 2-3 sets a year sounds unlikely.

Schlippenbach Trio, Physics (FMP, 1993) Is this the most interesting group ever?

Well, I don't read it and only heard about it recently on this board, when I noted that direct postal mailings dried up years ago. I was just pointing out that someone is paying for all that nerdiness and it isn't the folks who don't buy the box sets.

Well my reservation, lets put it that way...

So...when you buy from Mosaic you are funding staff to mess about compiling a weekly email containing links to youtube and blogspot - ?

My first and still the best - the only Mosaic I really care about, still.

Very fond of Light Blue, though I probably won't be replacing my vinyl copy.

Forgetting for a moment the pharonic approach to doing everything by pyramidal hoards of recordings, I suggest the lesson here is go and hear these interesting folks while they are around. Last week I went to hear Blomstedt, 90 next month and looking genuinely sprightly. Oh and on fine form. FWIW, some of the main stuff Belohlavek did in London with the BBCSO is easily findable on the streaming services - Martinu symphonies, Smetana operas, Suk, and Janacek's Broucek.

Well Chandos have offered to test the disc that recently went wrong, so if I ever get round to sending it I'll let you know what they find.