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Great to hear we have another Matt Shipp fan. Let me suggest (you may have it) one of his great classic albums, "The Multiplication Table" on Hatology with William Parker and Susie Ibarra. And Matt just being brilliant by himself on "Piano Sutras." I like "The Root of Things" too, as it gives an accurate picture of what his trio with Bisio and Dickey sound like today. Funnily enough The Multiplication Table is one of the Shipp albums that i already have. I might check out Piano Sutras, at this stage i've ordered I've Been to Many Places. The Root of Things man... i've been listening to it pretty much every night since getting it... mileages vary etc, but for whatever reason it's just really resonating with me. I just find it constantly engaging, i'm never checking my watch... i'm familiar enough with the album for it to no longer be a factor but on the first few listens i was always surprised when the album finished... as in, "has it flown by already?"... i'm just enjoying it so much. You know what it's like when you get one of those albums where you just don't feel like listening to anything else? "What should i put on?... looks like it's The Root of Things again..."

Tough call to make! The Mingus is a solid choice, however if you have to ruthlessly eliminate to get it down to one, i'd suggest possibly checking out some of the stuff available from around that period that is available on CD elsewhere before taking the plunge on a full on box. MJQ, obviously heaps of it is available on CD, but there's always that sound quality factor. Maybe check out the Original Album Series release that has five of the albums? http://www.amazon.com/Original-Album-Series-Modern-Quartet/dp/B008MMFBOS/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1413149637&sr=8-2&keywords=modern+jazz+quartet But then, if you already have NONE of the material and as you say love the MJQ then this could be a great opportunity to get it all at once in what i assume is the best sound available. Threadgill... a mix of stuff that is readily available on CD and stuff that has never been released on CD elsewhere (as far as i know)... this was actually my first Mosaic, and i wouldn't be without it, but i'm a diehard Threadgill fan. Dial... not familiar with this set at all... Search your feelings... without getting too wussy is there one that makes your heart leap just that little bit more than the others?

For me a great box set is 'useful' and convenient, usually because it collects out of print, previously not available on CD or hard to find stuff. Hopefully it also provides the best quality versions (see Mosaic). In the case of the Black Saint/Sole Note boxes it collects stuff that is mostly only available new as CDRs otherwise.

What's the difference between a Meme and a running joke? the wikipedia page for a Meme describes it as "an idea, behavior, or style that spreads from person to person within a culture" and goes in to detail along those lines although for all intents and purposes it just seems like running jokes.

Thanks for the recs... got some Bloodcount, Endangered Blood has long been on my 'to check out' list... Joe Morris is a favourite so i'll check that out... there's heaps of Shipp on Spotify, the new solo album I've Been to Many Places is very, very nice.

Okay so this video has got me starting to feel something, on this day... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3OAlRWJsHs4

Okay so i've had the chance to listen to Halvorson's Reverse Blue a few times now. It's a mixed bag for me, of the 'great' and 'not bad'. There are some 5 star songs (in terms of my enjoyment level) on there that really knock me out, and there are some songs that i find a bit dull (these may grow on me in time, may start to sit nicely as interludes in the overall album). Overall, the 5 star songs make it worth the price of admission for me; it's like a lot of Blue Note records in that regard! Chris Speed though! Was mainly familiar with him from the Claudia Quintet. Loving him here, might look to check out some of his stuff as a leader. On a side note, i've added Relative Pitch to the list of labels that i won't hesitate to order directly from. Quality product, quality service. Also, Matthew Shipp's The Root of Things! What a knock out! I've always liked Shipp but never really been an avid follower, only have a handful of his albums as a leader... im going to be picking up a lot more of his stuff.

This article explains a lot regarding their intentions: http://www.popmatters.com/feature/185662-kind-of-kind-of-blue-a-conversation-with-mostly-other-people-do-the-/

He sure is radical! Not sure about where he gets his glass from, honestly can't remember if he was ever shown just ripping it out from the nearest wall to 're-load' as he went along... if they ever sought to explain it they'd probably make it that he was an alien from the planet Glassia. On his home world they use their reality manipulation abilities to form 'Juintoze' which they use during ceremonial combat. These 'Juintoze' just happen to resemble what we on earth know as 'windows'.

This has really grown on me. Earlier in the week our city had a blackout that lasted about 48 hours. No power = no TV, no internet, cell phone coverage was down... anyway, it was a great time to listen to music! In the dark with candles listening to this album... i ended up listening to it a few times from start to finish over the course of two days. It really started to open up for me. It's almost like a form of 'minimalism', how strictly they stick to the score (i believe they stick to it quite strictly?) and on repeated listens you start to hear... it's all the subtle things that start to make it rather than the 'tune' itself. Anyway, it was a great lead in to the arrival of Inevitable Western, which i've really been enjoying. I found out yesterday that Inevitable Western got a 3 star review in Downbeat, and pretty much 3 stars all round in the 'hot box'. It's funny, sometimes a less than glowing review of an album you dig can rain on your parade, but in this case i'm secure in my digging of the album. It's interesting though... not sure how it's been reviewed elsewhere but lets say for arguments sake that according to 'The Narrative' Inevitable Western will go down in history as a not so great TBP album. It's fascinating to be in the position in real time to say "i can confidently say that you've got it wrong." But then, depending on prevailing wisdom i could be seen as that guy that tries to defend 'Weak Album X' = "yeah that's great that you like that album and we'll tolerate your opinion but we all know that The Narrative has got it right." As usual the Reid Anderson compositions are the standouts for me.

Wonder if they'll record an album... i'd like to hear it!

One of the most inflationarily used words in recent human speech (at least in the Anglosaxon world of lingo). Probably because nothing is "held in awe" in the original sense of the word anymore these days. Forgive my usage of it, i was an impressionable kid in the late eighties/early nineties when we were bombarded with Ninja Turtles/Bart Simpson/Bill & Ted style 'bogus duuuuuudes' and i've never been able to shake it. Defenestration! That word entered my consciousness via Garth Ennis' run on Hitman, the DC comic. There was a character called The Defenestrator, and his super power was pushing people through windows, or hitting them over the head with a window pane that he carried around:

I had a bit of a listen to some Anti-House and Paradoxical Frog on Spotify... found nothing wrong with it but it's just not grabbing me. I'm totally a slow learner with certain artists, and i still wouldn't say that i've given Laubrock a decent enough listen yet. I'll come around for another pass at some point and maybe then i'll have my 'click' moment, then again maybe not. It's a hard one though. Just to pick a couple of 'avant garde' artists out of the air, Cecil Taylor and Anthony Braxton didn't make complete sense to me at first, but something about their music grabbed me and kept me listening until i dug it. With Laubrock it's just not grabbing me enough to want to persevere, but i don't know why. Horses, water, the heart wants what it wants and doesn't want what it doesn't want, nothing personal etc.

Bummer... still looking forward to hearing it, will probably benefit from the slightly lowered expectations (although, having said that, i wasn't expecting a mind blower, but still).

FWIW there is a picture of NPR guy's wife where she appears to have a ponytail on one of the other posts on her blog (a post on Louis Armstrong)... would post it here but somehow i feel like things would be getting even weirder.

Cheers. Kind of regretting not including the duo with Rainey when i placed an order with Relative Pitch recently (ordered the new Halvorson and the recent Mat Shipp trio). I'm long overdue to give Laubrock a decent listen but i'm getting there... will look to get the Paradoxical Frog album if/when i do a clean feed order next.

Drinking yourself in to a coma i guess, or "getting coma'ed" as we say here (binge drinking is a problem here).

I've heard her on other people's albums but haven't heard anything by her as a leader/co-leader. Any suggestions? I'm guessing that Anti-House would be most up my alley; Paradoxical Frog and the Rainey Trio don't really appeal based on what they sound like in my head although i should really give them a try.

Touché.

Thanks for posting Lon. Questions still abound but it seems we've now had more than one confirmation that there is an audible difference between the Euro and Japanese versions (for at least some of them anyway). Now i'm mentally scanning the Euro ones that i've purchased and wondering whether there are any that i love enough and sound bad enough for me to purchase the Japanese version. I think i'm okay, overall i've been pretty happy with the Euro versions. I'm thinking about the MJQs though... reasonably happy but my expectations are low for MJQ recordings... is there room for improvement via remastering though or are the original recordings mostly to blame? Maybe i'll order one CD as a test...

I alway felt that Canned Heat's Going Up Country was the creepiest... it just has this serial killer vibe about it. Has it ever been featured in a movie about a serial killer? These guys totally look and sound like they think that it would be 'groovy' to make a suit out of human skin: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2QkEBykUlGU

Thank you for preserving my sanity!

There's so much to address in this thread but i don't know where to begin but what you're saying here is a good nutshell for me to launch from. See, the thing about 'connecting with the tradition' does not exist, for me. It's just an album by Jason Moran, i either like it or i don't. I couldn't care less about Jason Moran or anyone else connecting with the tradition. But essentially what it comes down to is if one is a fan then there's no problem with this album (although i'm sure there will be many fans of Moran who give this one a miss) and if one is not a fan then he looks like an opportunist, riding the coat tails etc etc. But essentially i think what it seems to come down to is whether Jason Moran is the real deal or not. If he is, then all his activities are cool. If not, then he's the jazz Ryan Seacrest FFS. So who says whether he's the real deal or not? Well, apparently he's proven that he's not the real deal by recording this album. With regards to the Rivers, Taylor, Braxton, Threadgill 'incidents', i guess we'd need to ask them how they feel about their associations with him. Do i think he is their equal? No. Does he have to be? No. Not being prolific in terms of releasing albums under your own name does not make you a lesser artist (see Threadgill).

I also think it's a bit rough to single Moran out for doing a tribute album (of sorts) to Fats Waller, saying that he is "latching on to true musical visionaries in an attempt to make up for his own deficit of musical vision". Maybe if he formed a group dedicated to playing the music of Steve Lacy, or a ton of other projects i could cite, it would be cool? In before "yeah but those albums are done tastefully and this is terrible!" That's not the issue here, i believe.