Д.Д.

Very much so, IMO! Together with Walt Dickerson (just why the fuck isn't the man recording anymore?!?! I know that he is still fairly active as performer and musician in Philly (correct, Alan?)) Jamal might be my favorite vibist.

Looking forward to hearing the Braxton standards set. The Braxton/Cyrille sounded OK on a first listen (I have only VOl. I, though), but did not grab me too much. Braxton sounded a bit tired to me. Gotta listen to it more. ----------------------------------------------------------- SOme nice new goodies from Intakt, including: Guy-Crispell-Lytton Trio and Hans Koch / Martin Schütz / Fredy Studer Trio, which our friend ubu raved so much about. I hope INTAKT will consider me deserving receiving these releases (they didn't send me the second volume of Braxton/Cyrille, for example), since I am really looing forwar to hearing both of them, particulalrly after seeing Koch live (see ubu's and my raves somewhere above). Deatils HERE.

Hey you moldy fig! Didn't you know that Brötzelmeister has been accepted as an old-fashioned mainstream jazz musician thirty years ago? Even this Hawkins guy stole a lot of Brötzmann tricks!

When we're listening to recordings, we're all looking in the rearview mirror... Bravo, Hans!

You are right of course, ubu - it's Enja Horst Webser, of course. What surprises me about both Enjas is how stylistically close they remained after the split - this slighly out (well, sometimes a bit more than slightly - Cecil with IIO, for example), slightly ethno-jazzish, some exotic female singers... Winkelmann is definitely more active though. OK, so looks lke Takase is skippable. I have her duo CD with Rudi Mahall reéeased last year on Leo, but don't remmeber it too well.

New release on Enja Winckelmann (the label seems to have woken up finally): Aki Takase Plays Fats Waller Just look at the rocking combo: Aki Takase (p); Eugene Chadbourne - (voc, banjo,git); Rudi Mahall (bcl) Nils Wogram (tb); Thomas Heberer (tp) Paul Lovens - (dr) Should be interesting. http://jazzrecords.com/enja/9152.htm

Tony, I udnerstand where your proposal is coming form, but I think The Rat is serving the purpose just fine. If you refer to The Rat being frequented by a close group of 5-6-7 people, I very much doubt it would have attracted more wide attention has it been called "The Avant-Garde Thread" or whatever. Most of the posters at Organissimo make a conscious choise of not being interested in the music beyond 60s bop too much - nothing bad about that; and having no interest in "avant-garde" (what the fuck does it mean now, anyway?), they don't discuss it - and setting up a special forum will not help much if there is no interest. And actually, I do like having it all in the one thread - there are a lot of circularly recurring subjects (how many times have we brouhgt up Brötzmann by now?!) and a lot of logical links - one thinkg awakes another which in turn leads to some other unexpected turn in discussion - may be at some point coming back to the original subject, may be not - but I don't have any problem following the twisted logics of the thread, and I do beleive it gets overall more informative this way, rather than if it were broken up into more confining and narrow topics. And I just love Funny Rat title.

My only exposure to Dorge, is his beautiful trio disc with Khan Jamal and mighty Johnny Dyani called Three (also on SteepleChase). Joyful tuneful music with a lot of love.

Another recent example of Hans getting "serious" is his wonderful duo with pianist Simon Navatov called Chat Room (on Leo). Nabatov, who started as a pretty voluble post-bop virtuoso type of guy, has developed ini a powerful (and more economical) player with diverse ideas, and Bennink is an excellent partner here - listening attentively, and responding in a supportive but also in a provicative way. Excellent reording quality, so you heare all the univderse of sounds (and SOUNDS and sounds) that Bennink creates. Overall, a pretty mellow and introspective affair. Expanded liner notes form the Leo website:

These are the ones!

He-he, this is my favorite CD of 2004 so far (Fly, Fly, Fly would be second most favorite, perhaps). Electronic manipulations add additional dimension to the music, making it even more surprising and incredibly more rich. I listened to this disc 3-4 times so far, and will need to listen more - there is a lot to digest. As soon as I do, I will post a review here.

Er, really? I have a reissue from that period in the 1990s when a German label put all the ESP catalogue back in print. It sounds better than Machine Gun but that's about all I can say in its favour. Nate, you are referring to ZYX reissues - thjis was the first wave of CD ESP reissues, and they do not sound good. Calibre is (was?) a Dutch company, and their reissues (from late 90s - early 00s) sound excellent. Calibre version of Spiritual Unity sounds really terific.

Actually all recent reissues sound good - SPiritual Unity by Dutch label Calibre sounds great, hatHut did a gret job with the Paris peformance and the Copenhagen tapes relesed on Ayler sond quite good as well. I assume all the bonus tracks imaginable are in the Revenant box. There porbably won't be much left.

Hve been postponing buying this one in hope to identify the best-sounding CD copy. Which one do you have (I asumethere are at least 5 of them around), and how does it sound?

Friends, I've been listening to this disc for a couple of days now, and can wholeheartedly recommend it: Paul Plimley / Lisle Ellis / Donald Robinson "Density of the Lovestruck Demons" (Music & Arts, 1995) My first exposure to Plimley, and what a nice surprise! Piano trio. Plimley has a pretty original style - free for sure, but very warm, bluesy... very jazz. Pretty original style - the closest analog I could think of is von Schlippenbach (also highly percussive style, and a bit of a "paradoxal" appraoch as if he is constantly questioning himself - and then gives answers that even he himself hadn't expected), but I think Plimley has more warmth and melody (but equally virtuosic). Ellis and Robinson are a perfect rythm team - Robinson is an old-time swinger, but a very free one - anything can happen at any time (but it will always sound good) - and very much focused on making his partners sound good. Ellis is absolutely brilliant, with powerful round sound jumping betweeen piano and drums - and also very and sync with other two players. YOu can ghear immidiately that the trio has been playing together for some time - and they like it. Lovely, lovely music. Couple of Ornette's tunes, btw... overall, the whole disc has this early Ornett-ish fill - cheerful, suprising, concise (all compositions are pretty short) and with a bit of a gang-ho attitude. There are some sound RA samples on the M & A website: http://musicandarts.com/CD4906j.html Got my copy for $7 at themusicresource.com - they might still have more. More Plimley recommendations, anyone? EDIT: and btw, I was listening to Plimley right after Cecil's Willisau concert - with initial apprehension that listenig to any pianist after that would be just unfair to the musician - well, Plimles still somehow pulled it off.

What's that?

Incidentally, last Sunday I placed an order at indiejazz.com, including this one. $30! - it's better be good!

And you call Fear Factory album covers scary!?

Don't have all Ayler, so won't be able to list the essential 5. Spiritual Unity is the favorite one of those I have.

No, no, no, it's Doc At The Radar Station which is the best of the three comeback albums! Ah, get them all, they are all good.

There is an excelent Captain Beefheart music project called Fast'N'Bulbous led by Philip Johnston (Webpage) - excellent saxophonist and very skillfull arranger and composer, and featuring master guitarist Gary Lucas (from Captain Beefheart's last band). Thankfully no vocals, but very interesting re-interpretations of Beefheart's compositions with a lot of soloing (I remmeber being blopwn absolutely blown awayby the trombone player). Great and very tight band, they tour a lot - try to catch them live: exilirating experience guaranteed. I checked - their next poerformance is on Frankfurt Jazz Festival in late October: LINK.

Don't have it. I own no Captain Beefheart. (Shiny Beast I borrowed from the library.) (I've never even heard Trout Mask Replica!) As the Rhino is a limited edition, maybe I shouldn't delay? Sometime in the future, I may pick up his pre and post-Mercury recordings. (The Mercs I'll bypass.) Grow Fins looks interesting but from what I've read, meant more for the completist. Oh-la-la, no Captain Beefheart!!!! "I'm Going to Do..." is already OOP, but I have a spare copy. it is pretty essential, I would say. The repertoir mirrors Bat Chain Puller - but you also get the energy of a concert perfromance (and even listener can feel audience's supportive energy). You can probably find 10,000 more eloquant reviewes of it on-line, so I will not go too much into describing the music here - I would just note Beefheart's short soprano solo in "Veteran's Day Puppy". Every reviewer who writes about Beefheart likes to note that he could not really play soprano saxophone, and his "solos" were just copmbination of pretty random notes. I don't care. Beefheart's solo here (not even the whole solo, but the first opening notes) sends chills down my spine every time I listen to it, and transposes the emotion - and I tend to hear a a cry of eternal loneliness here, better than the most virtuosic reed solo of better techicinas. IMO, every sound is exactly where it is supposed to be and sounds the way it is supposed to sound. Probably not for nothing Anthony Braxton refered to him as "master composer and musician". Also, let me note that Bat Chain Puller is porbably the least good of Beefhearts comebacl albums - both Doc At The Radar Station and Ice Cream for Crow are stronger. For me Beefhjeart's masterpiece is Lick My Decalls Off, Baby, but it is extremely difficult to find now. Grow Fins is the only one I don't have yet, and I intend to get it. It is really pricy, but from what I know a large share of proceeds go to the Magic Band musiccins, and they definitely deserve it.

Tropical Hot Dog Night, baby!!!!! Tony, I assume you have Captain Beefheart And The Magic Band - "I’m Going To Do What I Wanna Do: Live at My Father’s Place 1978" on Rhino Handmade. This is a concert from Bat Chain Puller era, and it smokes.

Never heard of those. Will check out. John, if you are still interested in "heavy metal", I would highly recommend Flotsam & Jetsam's "Cuatro". A bit close to Metallica stylisticaly (somewhere between "...And Justice for All" and "Black Album"), but with more interesting melodies (with less relience of catchy riffs), more inventive drumming and absolutely incredible vocal - great range and expressive pallette (but all with good taste, without pink tights bombast of "power" metal). For me "Cuatro" is up there with the classics like "Master of Puppets" or "South of Heaven" - I am surprised it never got as big. Unfortunately, Cuatro is now OOP, but you should be able to get it used very cheap in the US.

INDEED! (You're not surfing the 'net while driving, are you? MENACE!) Today is the first day I can drive legally (my license was returned in a pretty grey envelope yesterday with a message imploring me to ride according to the rules; now can you imagine riding accoridng to Swiss rules with NIPPLES blasting out of the windows - absurd!).