xybert

Just picked this up today and can confirm that it sounds significantly better than the Atlantic Original Sound digipak version from 1998 (not sure if this is the version you're referring to), which i found to be annoyingly hot and harsh. Actually pretty stoked with this; ummed and ahhed in the store but i guess i gambled and won on this one. I'm not usually one for re-buying stuff that i already have for the sake of better sound but i'm starting to see the positive side of it.

I hear what you're saying, 'representative' is a good word. Dialect Fluorescent feels like a keystone album for me, a reference point. It strips away the bells and whistles of the Octet and seems to say "here is an unobstructed view of me." Damion Reid... i have mixed feelings about his drumming. Part of me wonders what Dialect would be like with another drummer with a bit more subtlety and nuance, Tyshawn Sorey being the blindingly obvious candidate. Another part of me feels like although there are moments he seems like a poor fit (SNARE! SNARE! SNARE!), he's just so wrapped up in the sound of the album that it's kind of a 'sum is greater than the parts' thing and taking him out would kill it somehow. I don't know. I'm positive that it's going to be worth the wait.

I hadn't read any Stephen King for a while but picked up his recent crime novel Joyland on a whim while on holiday recently. Really enjoyed it; i read a lot of King in my early teens and there's a bit of a 'revisitng an old friend' factor for me. After that i felt like reading more King so i'm currently re-reading 'The Wind Through the Keyhole'. Background: i read the first three Dark Tower books when i was 13/14 years old, and they were mindblowing at the time. There was so much mystery and so much left up to the imagination about the world that the books largely took place in. Although book 3 ends on a cliffhanger, i pretty much consider them to be a classic trilogy within itself. Book 3, published in 1991 wasn't followed by book 4 until 1997. After that, nothing until the last 3 books were all published in 2003/2004. The last three books are quite controversial among fans of the series for a number of reasons that i won't go in to here, other than to say that for me they just explained too much, made the world they are set in less interesting. I'm at peace with them now but at the time the last three books were a bit of a letdown, probably because i just wasn't 14 years old anymore. And that was the end. Until 2012 when The Wind Through the Keyhole came out. It takes place between books 4 and 5 and is largely made up of an extended flashback, with another folktale taking place within the flashback (a story within a story within a story) At the time i did not have high hopes but i couldn't resist the chance to revisit that world. It turned out to be massively enjoyable and really recaptured the feeling of those first three books for me, while at the same time somehow casting the last three books of the series in a new, slightly warmer light. Anyway, really enjoying re-reading it right now.

Track listing and a bit of a write up are now available on the Pi site: https://www.pirecordings.com/album/pi54 Interestingly, versions of 3 Bud Powell tunes appear on the album, including Parisian Thoroughfare, one of my absolute favourites. I'm getting more and more psyched for this.

I guess we are the only ones. Also Joe Maneri, John Law, Jon Lloyd, Denis Charles, Brotzmann Tentet and Die Like a Dog quartet, John Lindberg's great black saint recordings, Mujician's classic recordings, etc. But I wonder how many people here have even listened to much of the great 90's music. Not many I think. Too busy realistening to the next issue of whatever No Try No Fail, baby For me i picked the 60's and 90's for rock and covered the 90's for Hip Hop... i'm a few years older than colinmce but yeah the 90's were a prime time for me, Rock (i'm pretty much including everything from Pavement to the Dillinger Escape Plan under 'Rock' FWIW) and Hip hop wise. Now while i didn't pick the 90's as my favourite, i do still think it was an excellent decade for jazz. However, i did pick 2003 to 2013 as my favourite. I didn't really start digging in to jazz actively until 2005/2006, and for whatever reason that period of 2000 until today just resonates with me more than the 80's and 90's. Maybe on a practical level it's been more accessible to me; a lot of 80's and 90's releases are in that wierd zone where they are old enough to be out of print but not old enough to be reissued... I think also having been hooked in by that 'generation' of Eisenstadt, Hollenbeck, Wooley, Halvorson, Moran, Lehman etc etc etc my cup runneth over and i'm just really enjoying keeping up with their work in real time... I feel like i've connected to their music more than i have with Hemingway, Berne, Previte etc etc etc (although i have a lot of their records and really rate them highly, don't get it twisted!). Guys like Threadgill, Braxton, Schlippenbach etc etc etc put out brilliant work across all the decades they've been active and continue to do so. Anyway, just noting that there are other passionate fans of stuff beyond the sixties. I dig the 80's and 90's, they're just not my number one favourite!

'Dialect' definitely didn't blow me away like 'Travail' did... i've had the duet album with Crump wish listed for a while, need to get it at some point. Yeah, it'll be interesting to see how the 'electronics' are employed... from memory there were reasonably tasteful electronics used on Demian as Posthuman, but it felt like more of a feature of that music. My gut tells me they'll be employed fairly subtley and seamlessly in to the Octet. Hopefully! Really glad to hear this. When i was younger i was extremely unambitious in a "as long as i have enough to get by and buy the occasional CD i'll be fine" kind of way. As i've gotten older i really wish that i had the means to be a philanthropist.

It's funny that you mention that Lehman has never specifically mentioned Steve Coleman as being an influence; the same thought actually occured to me just as i was posting... i always thought that it was a given but i now wonder if he actually has been directly influenced by Coleman. The more that i think about it, quite possibly not! It's interesting food for thought. I'd completely forgotten about the Jackie McLean connection... I remember there was a Destination: Out post where he mentioned the influence of McLean and Grachan Moncur's Evolution album... found a link: http://destination-out.com/?p=249 (funny, that's actually my comment under Chris "Thank you so much for posting this!" etc. That takes me back to an exciting time). For some reason Lehman reminds me of Lee Konitz a bit... not sure that i could draw a direct comparison, but i got in to Konitz after Lehman and there was something indefinable there... maybe a similar tension or urgency in their playing? I don't know. Interesting... the earliest leader date i have of Lehman's is Demian as Posthuman from 2005... now that you mention it, it would be fascinating to hear the earlier recordings on CIMP. Dialect Fluorescent is an excellent album!

Bump. Big Steve Lehman fan here. FWIW although he's played with Braxton i feel like his own music comes more from Steve Coleman than Braxton. Also worth noting that i hear a bit of Lehman in some of the Coleman Pi albums... bit of a reciprocal thing going on there, maybe. Release date for the new Octet recording on Pi has been announced as June 24th. It's been roughly five years since Travail, Transformation and Flow came out, an album i've listened to and enjoyed so much it's kind of surreal that there's going to be 'more' soon. Here's a link to a promo video: http://vimeo.com/92415903 The ''Steve Lehman is important" tone of the video is a bit cringey but thankfully i know his music well enough to not be put off by that stuff... can't wait to hear this new album.

FWIW i ended up cancelling my pre-order as i needed the money for other things (Dexter Gordon obsession) at the time, hence why i haven't posted. I've been following the posts and would really like to get this set at some point.

I hope they are recording again, loved the last Paloma Recio record and would dig another (with or without the augmented personnel).

I'n not familiar with J.D. Allen, but an album with Orrin Evans on it is always worth checking out! It personally think the album art itself isn't that bad, but the typography (and unfortunately you see it too often) kind of ruins it for me, by using such a cheap and uninspiring looking font. Yeah i think i overreacted to the cover art a bit... not that bad, but i just don't think it suits Allen's vibe. It makes me think of B-grade nineties Prog, or The Crash Test Dummies, or Sting, but not JD Allen. I'm really looking forward to hearing Orrin Evans here; have heard tracks here and there but this will be my first time listening to a full album.

New album is nearly here (edit: 22nd April), i've been driving myself crazy trying to find out who's going to be playing on it (Amazon blurb made it sound like it was going to be a duet album Orrin Evans but was kind of ambiguous), turns out it's Orrin Evans on piano, Alexander Claffy on bass and Jonathan Barber on drums. Jonathan Barber is the only returnee from Grace, which is slightly disappointing to me but one out of three ain't bad and hey ya never know it might turn out for the better. A track has been posted on Soundcloud, and while i don't know how representative of the album it is it's definitely more straight ahead/four four swinging than the free bop of Grace. The first half which Allen sits out reminds me a lot of Ethan Iverson's Costumes Are Mandatory, strangely. https://soundcloud.com/highnote-savant-records/car-car-the-blues-from-jd While the track doesn't exactly make me evacuate my bowels in anticipation of hearing the full album i do like it and i am pretty excited to hear the full album. After enjoying Grace so much i just can't not check out what Allen does next. The cover art totally sucks though, in my opinion; i guess Savant is trying to be in that tradition of labels with incongruous cover art: kind of endearing, in a way.

Good luck man, hope you reach your goal. Glad to hear you'll have friends there.

The Complete Bud Powell on Verve... the last couple of nights i've really been enjoying the first couple of discs. Like, "can't believe i've slept on this for so long" enjoying.

Jazz = 2003 - 2013, other than that it's changing all the time... previously probably would have said the sixties, but increasingly there's stuff from the fifties and forties and earlier that i can't live without... Hip Hop = 1985 - 2005 Rock = sixties, nineties

I know of at least a couple of local punk/crust/doom/whatever bands that only release their music (physically, at least) on cassette in limited runs... haven't read the article but i'm guessing it's a wider thing.

Oh, hell yes, forgot about this some how, definitely a favourite. I will never forget - I was at a drunken campus party circa 1962 and spotted the lp on the floor, out of the jacket and the crowd was dancing on it. In my stupor, I rescued the badly scuffed record and went on a search for the jacket. After about 15 minutes I found it and ran home with my treasure. Never felt good or bad about my actions, but loved having some version of the music no matter how battered. Great story. For me, Mingus Presents Mingus was the album that really opened my ears to Mingus and made me go crazy for him, whereas before hearing MPM i pretty much just dug Mingus Ah Um and paid him shelf-service with a handful of other albums.

Oh, hell yes, forgot about this some how, definitely a favourite.

Wow - I've seen so many negative reviews of this but when I see this appear in Larry's list my curiosity to hear it increases enormously. If ever a session attracted diverse opinions it is this one ! It's an AWESOME record...can't imagine anyone being equivocal about it! Worth noting that it's recently been reissued as part of the Warner Japanese/Euro 1000 Yen series. http://www.amazon.co.uk/Roach-Trio-Featuring-Legendary-Hasaan/dp/B00DRE800I/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1397514035&sr=8-1&keywords=hasaan

One of my favourite Braxton albums, so good. I was lucky enough to be there that night...one of the single most inspirational musical experiences I've ever had! Blew my 23-year old brain... Me too but my mind was considerably older..... Always blows my mind thinking about what it must have been like to actually have been at shows like this, and to have said show on CD.

Chick Corea - Now He Sings, Now He Sobs John McLaughlin - Extrapolation Miles Davis - Sorceror

I went through a period where when i acquired a second hand CD i'd rip the CD to my computer, throw out the jewel case (but keep the cover insert) and store the CD on spindle. Kind of regret doing this now, especially with some of the rarer stuff. One of these days i'll get round to purchasing something better to store them in... hopefully being stored on the spindles is not doing too much damage in the meantime (they sit there untouched, not too many discs per spindle and have put a few blank discs at the bottom of each spindle). It has saved me heaps of space.

I'm really happy for her.

I love what i've seen of Pekar's appearances on Letterman. It's just beautiful humanity from so many different angles.

Currently listening to the Coleman Hawkins box, Disc 1. The sound quality really is amazing. I compared the sound on some of the tracks that also appear on a Naxos compilation that i have. For me, noticeable noise reduction by whatever means, while less than ideal, has never really bothered me that much, but man, my eyes have been opened with this set. It's like night and day.