Rabshakeh

What were the stories?

What actually is this?

Definitely. Although they were CD jukeboxes rather than the real thing. There's still a place in Clerkenwell that has a working original. The Three Crowns. Great pub.

Strangely nor did 1990s Camden.

That really is amazing...

That's great. What a legend Novotny was. Do you still have those tapes?

Was this a pun on "energy music"? Was the term so commonly used that you could market a sampler with it?

Agharta was the first jazz album to really make an impact on me, and also the first album I ever really listened to on vinyl. A random discovery in a school library audio visual department. The next day I came back and tried out Heliocentric Worlds Vol 2 on a whim. Through the years most of my old favourites have often receded, but I still feel excited just thinking of those two. Pangaea has always been in Agharta's shade though for me, so this was a fairly rare listen. I'm glad to hear that you liked them at the time. I had always understood them to be... contraversial. You've been playing this a lot recently. Looks worth a go.

Thanks. It sounds like Peterson. He was the first name to pop into my head too.

But was there radio play and sales?

Miles Davis - Pangaea

I'm currently listening to Love In Us All. For John has a trumpet player who isn't credited from what I can see. Does anyone know who it was?

I'll think of some examples. It's particularly on the slightly more commercial side of 'modern / avant', where the artspeak press releases seem to be overwhelming the music a bit. Some of it is starting to feel a little institutional and polite. I'm not sure how much of this is rational though. Perhaps it's just me reacting to Twitter hagiography and projecting it onto the artists / releases themselves. Maybe that's all I'm saying. I'm not convinced this isn't just me being a little sated.

I've been growing a little disillusioned with some of the more recent releases by artists or labels that might once have appeared on this thread. I have been annoyed by what I perceive (perhaps wrongly) to be a sense of slick self importance that is creeping in around the edges. If anyone has some really killer recent finds I'd love to hear about them.

I felt like 2021 was overall weaker for new releases than 2020, which I thought was a good year. Perhaps that reflects a rush to release material in 2020 due to the Pandemic with subsequent scarcity in the following year. However, I also found that some of the releases by the 'new wave' that's been making such exciting music out of London / Chicago / Cape Town / NY, felt a little safer and less interesting this year.

I'm a huge fan of Leandre (and have been since discovering No Try No Fail) and so will check this out. Ditto.

Beautiful cover. Is this one recommended?

I went through a similar Jimmy drought, recently. It ended when I discovered his Verve records, like The Cat and Root Down.

It never fails to seem odd to me how many of the classic free jazz records of the earlier waves were released on major labels. A lot of free / avant garde jazz records from the 1960s, particularly Archie Shepp's Impulse!s and Braxton's Aristas, are even sequenced like pop records, with what appears to be the catchy "big single" as the first track, and then a B side with lesser or more difficult material. Was this just an attractive way to sequence an album, or does this reflect actual singles releases? If so, were any of them "hits"? Even if not released as a single, did they get played on the radio or TV? What kind of stations or programmes touched that stuff? The era of free jazz on major labels goes on for am incredibly long time: all the way to the late 1970s / over a decade. Were these labels making money on these things?

Looking forward to this.

First couple of tunes are good. Then it gets more average.

Is this the Tapscott book to get?

Helluva line up. I have a friend who is a very very occasional jazz fan, concentrating more on 'acid jazz' than anything. For some reason this crossed his path and he is obsessed with it. I've grown a bit 'over' the current young London scene this year, and had avoided this record until now, but I do think it's excellent; easily better than Your Queen Is A Reptile, which I liked too at the time.

Thank you, did you know them before?