Powerful new trio versions of Peacock classics, interspersed with recent compositions — including work by pianist Marc Copland and drummer Joey Baron — and a reading of Scott La Faro’s Gloria’s Step.
GP — bassist on Spiritual Unity — was eighty this year.

With Donald Byrd and Johnny Coles, Bob Cranshaw, Walter Perkins.

Japanese, with insert: GXK 8146.

It’s a Christmas album but fear ye not. It’s from the same six months as How Insensitive and Now Hear This, with Airto running between these sessions and the recording of Bitches Brew. Try the grooving opener, with DP alternating on piano and celeste.

The first of a fascinating trio of LPs — this for Futura in 1970, by Hungarian saxophonist Yochk’O Seffer, German pianist Siegfried Kessler, French bassist Didier Levallet and Vietnamese drummer Jean-My Truong.
‘Lyrically incandescent free jazz, made up of startling interactions between complex harmonies and disjointed rhythms.’

‘The second LP, from 1971, augmenting the original quartet with numerous guests including Teddy Lasry, Jean-Charles Capon, Kent Carter and Jean-François Jenny-Clark. Siegfried Kessler is largely absent on this recording, temporarily replaced by Manuel Villaroel, a pianist from Chile with a completely different temperament.
‘It all seems to predict the after-life of Perception would subsequently take. One track, by Yochk’O Seffer, who had already been part of Magma two years previously, looks forward to the more structured Neffesh Music, whilst, in the opposite direction, another track, by Didier Levallet, is more evocative of the future arrangements on Swing Strings System. All these different elements, from tightly written pieces to wild improvisation, work so well together: their coherence is one the key attributes of a group free like few others.’

‘By the time Mestari, their third and final album, came out, Perception had four years of questing and originality behind them, developing their own individual language, in which the improvisatory spontaneity did not exclude influences from European folk or classical traditions.
‘Balanced, ethereal and structured, Mestari reinstated the original quartet. It opens infinite perspectives, totally in phase with what was being produced in France at the same time by the Cohelmec Ensemble and the Dharma Quintet.’

A precious, previously unreleased live recording from 1977, when Jacques ‘Jeter La Girafe A La Mer’ Thollot was drummer.

The harpist from Christian Wallumrod’s ensemble, with the Magical Orchestra singer, plus viola and nyckelharpa — performing Purcell, Nick Drake, Leonard Cohen, and a couple of Susanna’s.

‘Brotzmann barely plays saxophone at all, sticking mostly to tarogato and a host of clarinets; Nilssen-Love mostly plays gongs, bells and other metal percussion. With the changes in tools comes a change in approach. Nilssen-Love is sparer and more decorative, providing accentuating commentary that highlights the more solemn and yearning aspects of his partner’s playing, and Brotzmann explores melancholy to devastating effect. This is a career peak for the recently departed reedist’ (Bill Meyer, The Wire).