ep1str0phy

Note to FR people: Selwyn Lissack is playing DMG on December 12th... too bad I'm in Berkeley. Maybe we'll get that album reissued, sooner or later...

Morbid as it is, talking about death is as much about remembering--so I'll throw Mongezi Feza in here... died in a sort of sanitarium and, if I recall correctly, he was actually suffering from pneumonia (exacerbated by the doctors' poor diagnosis and treatment). F'in tragedy.

I haven't been on the scene long enough to know whether or not the price escalation for stuff like Alabama Feeling and Black Ark preceded or followed the canonizing practices of the free jazz community. I mean, as much as I love Arthur Doyle, I'd have to contend that the gushing superlative of cats like Moore and Rudolph Grey was what got him where is in the 'pantheon,' so to speak.

I can see it now: "2+2=5"

Bruce Wayne George Duke Bix Beiderbecke

Just got a copy of Khan Jamal's Drumdance to the Motherland (I know there was some talk about this one a while ago). It's as spacy and edgy as everyone says (and quite melodic, too). Don't know about Shaw (although I'm also a fan), but Banana is, apparently, not quite the scorcher that Donkey is.

Uhuru Na Umoja is probably my favorite Wright-related session (although the ESP trio grows on me with each listen). Concise, focused, and intense. It's really a Noah Howard album (I was shocked to discover that the final two cuts on Black Ark are actually the same compositions as the first two cuts on Uhuru), but all the musicians are on on that one. Art Taylor, for where he comes from, is really a stunner in a freer context.

Just want to say that the CBS twofer not only looks legit--it also sounds relatively good. I've been enjoying it for ages now (the strings/trio sections call to mind what Skies of America might have been...).

I've seen some of the Bleu Regard albums up and about, though they're always extremely pricey.

Naw, it's not so much the music--which is almost uniformly worthwhile--as it is various aspects of the presentation. Not all of this is Atavistic's fault--we have deteriorating tape, poor recording, etc. At the same time, the UMS hits some high peaks (I've been thrilled by the reissues of Pleasure, the GUO, Brotz, McPhee...) and certainly throws in a few oddballs (e.g., the Tiegel album--good as it is--the excellent, if horrendously recorded Lacy mixes that have been surfacing, and the second Luther Thomas UMS, which was totally unexpected). The UMS tends to oscillate between lost classics and esoterica/zaniness, which is where the opinions of fellow board members can come in handy... Now, rights issues notwithstanding, there are a lot of classic, seldom-heard albums that I'd like to see meet the light of day (again): Babi Music, Black Ark, The Sun is Coming Up, the non-Ogun Blue Notes member albums, the Dixon-Shepp Quartet on Savoy, the Marzette Watts album on Savoy... but those are 'UM' of a different sort. By the way--has anyone noticed just how much of Thurston Moore's 'Free Jazz Underground' list has gotten reissued? Off to rehearse and (probably) buy some Otomo Yoshihide...

This reminds me of that Ornette story about the Town Hall concert--the flyers were posted up saying "free jazz concert"... that is, free jazz concert--and not free jazz concert. The commonfolk were miffed. I enjoyed Bern's CD with Fred Hopkins (can't recall the name right now), and he's easily my favorite of the Ornette guitarists (Ulmer notwithstanding). I'm looking forward to hearing this one.

Yeah that's what I meant. It's interesting to see where he pops up--and to great effect, too (have yet to hear a session of his--leader or sideman, outside of the AEC--that I don't like). Akanalog brought up the Bluiett twofer as an AOW a while back--that one scorches.

By the way, if you google the Shinjuku scene you'll hit a Yahoo Asia article--brief at it is--documenting some thoughts by the survivors and new blood (Yoshihide Otomo's straight in there). Like we'd get that kind of press here... http://asia.news.yahoo.com/060313/kyodo/d8gadgr05.html Weird, wild stuff.

I really don't hear nearly so much about this segment of early free improv--here or anywhere else, and that includes the major 'avant' boards--as I do the Americans and Europeans. Modern Japanese improv is a popular topic, yeah, but this angle in the music is ridiculously obscure granted the historical resonance of it all. I'd be interested in hearing a more detailed history of the Shinjuku scene, any way.

As perhaps the least well-documented AEC member (notwithstanding the players from the formative days--e.g., Phillip Wilson, Charles Clark...), Don Moye really got around in the Loft Days.

(woozy) ugh... hungry again... I think Sunburst is the only Mwandishi family album I'm not too fond of--I was expecting something a little weightier. However acute the ensembles are, there's something unnervingly fluffy about the whole affair. Next to the other albums in the group, it's disarmingly straightforward and, indeed, dated... which isn't to say that Mwandishi isn't at least a little tethered to the times--just that the sensibility of the group had the capacity to transcend the trappings of instrumentation, genre, etc. Sunburst is just that much of a period piece by comparison. Of course, the Mwandishi group doesn't play on the better part of the album, so...

This sorta reminds me of how I don't like Sunburst...

Speaking of Dennis Charles: did anyone pick up the Sirone UMS CD (DC's on that one, right?)? I'm somewhat wary of the UMSs (inconsistent in quality)... but I'm buckling on this one.

I'm getting a copy of "Last Date" in the mail soon. Will report!

Sounds fair. I'd been waiting for something like the Takayanagi--appropriate enough for the thread, interesting enough to the parties here...

Funny Rat has been off this board for way too long (some agreement I wasn't made aware of?)... Upped to say that I'm getting into the Japanese free improvisation thing (spurred on by some stuff that Clifford sent me)... and I just purchased a copy of Masayuki Takayanagi and New Direction Unit's Eclipse. My opinion is still formulating on this one, but it's beautiful, aggressive, exploratory stuff (maybe a little self-indulgent, too... in that early Brotzmann sort of way)--far more of a wash than even a lot of European improvisation sides (reminds me, a bit, of the blowout BYG jams--e.g. Seasons). The cats start at a high level and just keep upping the energy. This music isn't as brutal or heart-rending as, say, Albert Ayler or Brotz, and it doesn't seem to have the same caliber of dynamic intricacy that even the more free-wheeling of the European free improvisers. In fact--given Takayanagi's guitar theatrics--it comes across as a tangential direction on the EAI part of the evolutionary tree... loud and fearless, but not necessarily violent--searching in a manner that has as much to do with the nature and possibilities of the instrumentation as it does with the group dynamic. I'll be looking for more (I've got some Kaoru Abe in the mail).

No doubt. Exactly the feelings I had when I got the album...

Shihab is an underrated master--lots of good stuff to be found (and not the hokey, forced sort of world jazz--this is real deal material... I may name Don Cherry's more 'western' excursions in the same breath). Today: Arcana: The Last Wave Philip Cohran and the Artistic Heritage Ensemble Cecil Taylor Quartet: Looking Ahead! Byard Lancaster: It's Not Up to Us

The Harrison album is great, although don't look for anything above and beyond the rest of the Detroit school (it's par for the course, which is still very good): hard grooves, excellent inside/outside improv, and some of Harrison's best sax work. Caveat: the sound blows (sounds like a mid-quality LP rip).