ep1str0phy

I saw that band several years ago. Serious business. I had no idea that this group had been gigging. The promise of a Burrell-Moholo matchup (and I dig the other guys) just kicks my ass.

Holy shit! The lineup from avant music news: 9:00 Louis Moholo and Friends Kidd Jordan tenor saxophone / Dave Burrell piano William Parker bass / Louis Moholo drums

Is the listing up anywhere?

I saw the ICP Orchestra at Yoshi's yesterday (discussed in Funny Rat). Just a note not to sleep on this tour--they're blowing bad...

Yeah, I remember that line standing out when I first read the interview. I love Prince Lasha.

Whoa, interesting seeing Lasha in that mix. Thanks, Late. As for the Hillcrest stuff--an early shot at part of "Focus On Sanity"? "Ruby, My Dear"? Sheeeeiiiit...

Doing some listening, CT, I think S-A is closer to Murray than Milford, though there's little doubt in my mind that Milford has a lot more in common with a lot of the European school than the American, post-Elvin crowd. Maybe the small-group Brotzmann stuff just drives the Murray/S-A thing home, but I think Murray is much, much more insistent in those clench, explosive spots (ala the Ayler Quartet on Vibrations). I wouldn't say that S-A doesn't have Murray's focus, but he certainly lacks Murray's obsessive psychology (that "nailing something to the wall" thing on the snare)--maybe that's why S-A is more "dense". To illustrate--I was listening It Is In the Brewing Luminous on headphones sometime last week--in the dark, so the focus was dead-set (maybe I've just picked up a habit of listening to music right before bedtime). That one has both Jerome Cooper and Murray on percussion, and if you listen really close--I mean, just hone in on the drummers--you could swear Murray's almost fucking with Cooper. The divide between the two is extreme--Cooper is percussion as "color waves", playing all over the kit in slight, but seldom sparse, bursts... Murray spends entire durations of the improvisation on single parts of his kit (like, ten minutes on just the snare, ten minutes on just the cymbals)--that's not quite the Murray of the Ayler quartet, but it's surely the model for the more mature musician who ranks among his primary concerns acoustic theory and kit economy. I won't call it crazy, but there are few guys who would dive into a Cecil Taylor unit like that. On ICP--it was great fun--celebratory (40th Anniversary of the ensemble), and there's a certain sense that the group has really come out of the patricidal, very dramatic "Emancipation" years with a total, focused vision...I guess refined would be the word, but only to the extent that the group is and has been very much what it is for decades now. This felt like a celebration of that. There's nothing formulaic, just a lot of focus... Two things really stick in my mind about this incarnation of the group--(1) it's all-star (the website lists the personnel--which is baaaad, so don't miss it if it comes by your area), (2) the repertoire for this one felt a lot more recognizable than w/some of the other versions of the orchestra--there's still a lot of "generic" (if you can use that term) theatricalism, but some of it is surprisingly straightforward (I recognized some stuff off of Who's Bridge and a series of Ellington tunes, for two). Finally, for those among us who think that Bennink has gotten too farcical--when was the last time y'all saw him play with just a kit (i.e., no blocks of cheese...). A lot of drummers can do one thing well, but--even taken as a jazz drummer (and he's easily much more)--Bennink can and does do everything well. I don't think I've ever seen another drummer with such an adaptable musical personality. Also--Wolter Wierbos continues to kick ass.

Haven't heard How Many Clouds, but it's obviously a hardcore band. I can definitely hear the Graves in Bennink and Oxley (a lot of the other Europeans, like sven-ake Johansson, too)--though I do get the feeling that a lot of the similarity might just be "cosmetic", if you catch my drift (in other words, it could very well be that Graves was just a freer evolution of the American thing, versus Messrs. Bennink, Oxley, etc. taking after Graves directly). I'm going to see the ICP Orchestra in an hour and a half. I have a rehearsal or a talk or a gig or a music-related meeting basically every day these next two weeks, so it will be nice hearing someone else make sounds for a change...

Solo Graves is a good thing, what I've heard from the Tzadik sides included. That material is not quite so "wild" and "out" as a listener to Graves's 60's work might think, but it's very thoughtful, very deep (in its "beauty and complexity in simplicity" aesthetic I see some similarities to Gunter Sommer). Have you guys heard the Graves/David Murray stuff? How is it?

I've found that the better CIMP performances have stood up to the recording quality. The Frank Lowes and Joe McPhees for example. I mean, circumstances could have been better, but it's hard to cover a really great session in shit.

Fun, engaging album, but very much on the odd end of the "ancient to the future spectrum". I like the AEC as "session group" to a chanteuse--there are some wacky, but strangely accessible, colors in there.

Funny Rat turns into an improv thread, the Flaherty thread derails into a Brotzmann thread (O! The irony!). Like I (think I) said somewhere else--the collective understanding of Brotz is really handicapped by the virtual erasure of the better part of the FMP catalog. Fortunately, UMS and the listening community are rectifying that--but there are "all kinds" of Brotzmann on some of those albums that really don't come out anywhere else (I'm thinking, for example, for the Brotz/Miller/Moholo sides--very unique for all three of those guys).

I've (slowly) been accumulating all the Roots and Folklore albums (thankfully, they're in decent supply out here in CA--the only one I haven't seen, in any form, is the second album). I've found it more difficult to get into the Gramavision sides than the other Bradford/Carter albums--maybe because textural wackiness is the norm, and (perhaps) a little sonic nuance is lost in the production. I can, however, "get" the technique of the compositions and improvisation, and there are fine spots for all... Still, I've had no problem getting with Comin' On, which is just a reduced ensemble featuring Roots and Folklore players. To this moment, though, I have trouble seeing why (if not how) Don Preston--an impressive player in his own right--is at all necessary in this music. Preston's knack for electronics can work some interesting magic in the proper context, but it's difficult not to hear how a piano might sound redundant in the obviously successful Bradford/Carter group dynamic. (Also because players like Bradford, Carter, Richard Davis, and Andrew Cyrille have never had problem filling up space).

Bjork's done quite a bit of work with the various modern improv crowds. Oliver Lake and Threadgill are on a few of her sessions, right? Re: Flaherty v. Brotzmann. This isn't to say that Brotzmann lacks compassion--although a lot of his music veers toward the theatrical and, in its most farcical moments, sounds a little detached (there's emotional resonance, no doubt, but I don't think I've ever heard Brotz sound pitiful)--only that I get an emphatic sense from Flaherty that isn't really a piece with many of his hard-blowing counterparts. But yeah, although the comparison might be valid, they're best not in the same boat. For that matter, although Brotzmann's programmatic material and instrumentation has often suggested Ayler--and he certainly sounds the part in sparser, "lower energy" situations--some of his best work sounds much more like early Pharoah to me. There's the same sort of committed passion in both cases, although I'm not sure that either musician invites the sort of emotional understanding I hear in Ayler or Flaherty.

I picked up a copy of Whirl of Nothingness (one of Flaherty's recent solo disk)--and there aren't enough HTML tags for that type of exclamation (whew!). It's enough to make even a seasoned free listener fall of his/her seat. I swear I finished the first spin in a state of physical and emotional exhaustion. I don't want to lapse into too much superlative here, but something tells me that Flaherty approaches what Ayler might have sounded like in a solo context... ...as for Brotzmann v. Flaherty--the latter very much has a sense of American "spiritualism" about it, although he can hardly be considered religious. In relief with the Wuppertalian salad days (or even, for a closer comparison, Brotzmann's solo discs), Flaherty's work is marked by an air of compassion--to the level that empathy and emotional effect trump whatever revolutionary sentiments fringe the music. In his best moments, again, Flaherty approaches Ayler-caliber pathos. Oh, and--having recently spun Cecil Taylor's Alms/Tiergarten (Spree), I'm more than ever impressed by Brotzmann's alto work. I think Brtoz's potency as a multi-reedman tends to get overshadowed by his status as minister of skronk, but I challenge anyone to argue against his very unique place in the free music cosmos.

Nice. The BYGs are, of course, favorites, although there's far too little "readily available" New Phonic Art for me to have really dug in. Those tapes are circulating, though.

Late to the party, but they were just playing this in my (very) local shop. It's good. Very good. Good on y'all for picking up on this one. I'm a little strapped, but I picked up a copy of Who Is This America? on reasonable discount. Will spin.

Oh, and if I haven't mentioned it--I got in with that program I was talking about for the next couple of years, so it looks like my work in this area may pan out. Time will tell...

At the very least, I've always thought that Kent put in consistently good work with Lacy.

The group is listed on the Vision Festival website as "Louis Moholo Quartet", so we might be looking at a small group. So--an American/SA ensemble? Will some of the British crew (Evan Parker, Beresford) make the trip? Zim Ngqawana? I can't wait to see the lineup...

I think Humphrey adds some pretty crucial color to Lee's last date (also w/Harper), but I'd venture--with no offense intended--that she was the weak link (like JS said, "improvisation"-wise) in that group.

Consider it an achievement that you shelled out for it. I have no doubt that quite a bit of what's included on those records is very good--but talk about steep. I find it ironic that the box is still the cheapest way to hear a lot of those albums. One of my favorite LA record shops was carrying an Ictus for $50 (unfortunately for me, it was the last one--the shop owner said a "couple of Japanese guys came in and bought up all the weird jazz--dropped about $300.").

It's a good 'ne. The one I'm dying to here, though, is Procession, which regularly commands far-above-my-price-range figures on e-bay. I love the light, punchy arrangement of "Sonia" that pops up w/Pukwana and Feza, but the Brotherhood version is a thing of beauty, no doubt--a masterful example of that group's affinity to staggered line constructions and cyclicism (listen to the version on In the Townships and compare it to Bremen to Bridgwater--now that's a killer (re?)-working).

He's scheduled to close this year's Vision Fest on Sunday, June 24. http://www.brownpapertickets.com/event/10482 I AM THERE.

Thanks for sharing the news, clifford. Hope it gets together... Re: brownie--good band. I'm a big fan of Thollot in more open-ended contexts--what's the flavor of this one?