Rabshakeh

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?

I really love this record. I even like it's weirdly cozy cover. Every time I play that record my wife asks, without realising it, at the exact same point in track 2: "What is this we're listening to? It's amazing."

I think the Halls are a good example: Desmond Blue - not an album I enjoy. Easy Living - much sparer and a great record. I need to revisit those Mulligans. I've only really listened to Two of A Mind which didn't win me over. Obviously those early Fantasies are great. I'd just been listening to one when I posted the initial question.

Always been a Prestige guy myself, which I think is a minority view. I like how they sound a bit ragged.

Working on a personal theory that the Desmond I like the most is those records where he has the least harmonic support and therefore has to actually play. What are the sparest Desmond records? Are there any where it's just him with a trio or in duo with max one chordal instrument?

Charles Davis - Ingia! (Strata-East, 1974)

interesting to contrast Criss with Sonny Stitt, in the light of the recent Stitt v Gordon thread. Criss is another player who got tarred with the Charlie Parker imitator brush. He ends up putting album after album of fluff tunes in the 70s. But unlike Stitt, you always get the sense that he really feels it.

Robert Dick - Third Stone from the Sun (1993) Just such a great record. I've been mixing up this and some Fathead Newman today, so it's been a flute epic.

Billy Larkin and the Delegates - Blue Lights Red hot organ. Just had this on!

Absolutely. Those are the friends you grow up with. Mine has a Henry and a Gordon for his Brio track. Off brand, I think Absolutely. Those are the friends you grow up with. Mine has a Henry and a Gordon for his Brio track. Off brand, I think There's a great bit in Graham Lock's Forces In Motion when Anthony Braxton suddenly starts getting excited over choo choo trains.