From 1977.
‘Music of extreme sophistication yet perfect lucidity… A Zen-like tranquillity pervades this album of duets’ (Richard Williams in Melody Maker).
‘Quite an achievement, balancing fantasy and friction with grace as a fulcrum… calm, lucid, colourful, and captivating’ (Art Lange in Coda).
The late seventies Hat Hut LP — Ware’s debut as leader, when he was with Cecil Taylor — unavailable for decades; plus a full disc of material from the same sessions, never released before.
A protege of Sonny Rollins, with Ayleresque fervour; very warmly recommended.
Three live scorchers with William Parker and Warren Smith, from 2010 — plus four treasurable out-takes from the Onecept album sessions.
With different lineups in 1966, including pianists Ran Blake, Burton Greene and Dave Burrell; and Giuseppi Logan.
The first recording in twenty years by this path-breaking vocalist — introduced to ESP by Albert Ayler — is a 2018 concert with Burton Greene (from her 1966 debut) and bassist Mario Pavone and percussionist Barry Altschul, from the group of musicians around Paul Bley.
‘Dedicated to Cecil Taylor, who had passed away moments before she took the stage, Live preserves the mournful tension that was in the air that night. Side A comprises a set of desolate ballads, including Waters’ own classic Moon, Don’t Come Up Tonight. Fifty years after her unforgettable recording of Black Is The Color Of My True Love’s Hair — one of the 20th century’s most harrowing, deeply political expressions of madness and grief — the B-side is a stark reminder that the fight for civil rights is far from over. Beginning with Strange Fruit, the suite’s form-bending contortions also feature Waters’ take on Ornette’s Lonely Woman.’
‘First vinyl release of the breathtaking songs Patty Waters recorded in 1970 at the Coast Recordings studio, together with the unreleased single My One And Only Love, and a live session recorded at Lone Mountain College in 1974.
‘Here is the missing link between the two groundbreaking ESP LPs from the end of the 60s and the late-90s releases. Whereas PW’s debut album Sings concerned itself with themes of heartbreak, loneliness, and yearning, You Loved Me is abundant with love, joy, and togetherness. Whilst Patti’s songs cross spiritual jazz and US folk revivalism, Touched By Rodin is a brilliant extended showcase for the uneasy Cageian minimalism of her piano playing.’
Patty Waters… admired by Albert Ayler, Miles, Patti Smith, Yoko Ono…
The duo of Bill Orcutt — on four-string guitar — and drummer Tim Koffley.
‘Taking leads from James Blood Ulmer and Fred Frith’s Massacre, here is the link between the contemporaneous Thunders-esque punk of Orcutt’s Trash Monkeys and the mayhem of Harry Pussy…
‘Consider the closer Wattstock, where Koffley forms the bedrock for an extended Orcutt hotbox of instantly-composed harmolodics. And also God Are You There, It’s Me, Watt, where we can hear the spontaneous vocal bursts (the only vocals on the album) that would re-emerge on Orcutt’s early solo records…
‘An early, major piece of the unfolding and complex puzzle of Orcutt’s music. A foundation.’
The Alabama-born saxophonist and clarinettist in 1966, with Sonny Sharrock, Byard Lancaster, Clifford Thornton, Karl Berger, Henry Grimes and co.
Customised five-string electric double bass, mostly in his own keyboard settings and treatments, but also with the saxophones and overtone flute of Jan Garbarek, and the percussion of Michael DiPasqua.
A companion volume to Résumé, from 2011, retrieving EW’s bass solos with the Jan Garbarek Group, 1990-2007, and reworking them with the addition of his own keyboard parts and contributions from veteran Dutch flugelhorn player Ack van Rooyen (who played on The Colours of Chloë, more than forty years ago). New Music with old things, EW calls it.
With Lee Konitz, Bill Frisell, and Dave Holland.
With John Abercrombie, John Taylor, Dave Holland, Pete Erskine.
The last recording by the late Canadian trumpeter — such a mainstay of contemporary UK jazz — stamped with his trademark melancholy… lyrical, sly, sinuous. ‘As a graceful coda to a wonderful career, not to be missed by anyone who ever fell under Kenny’s spell, however belatedly’ (Richard Williams).
A ‘Luminessence’ audiophile pressing, handsomely sleeved.
Inspired, free, luminous music-making. An outernational holy grail and a stiff tonic for all citizens of nowhere.
Already the great French jazz saxophonist had made monumental records alongside all-time legends like Monk, Blakey, Bud Powell and Miles — that’s Wilen on Lift To The Scaffold — before cutting loose at the end of the sixties on a two-year journey through Morocco, Algeria, Niger, Mali, Upper Volta (now Burkina Faso) and Senegal, with a team of film-makers, technicians and musicians.
Moshi means trance utterance — the moshi is a demon invoked by the Fulani Borogi of Niger, to chase away angst and depression — and this is a shamanistic bricolage of smoky musical spells and scraps of intimate, outdoors ambience, full of love, good vibes and gritty musical wonder, drawn from more than fifty tape reels recorded en route: desert blues, space-jazz, street-funk, acid rock, polyphonic rhythms and new-thing influences like Shepp and Sanders; buzzing, extended ensemble sessions, like alternative Bitches Brews, crossed with diverse snippets of magic grabbed on the wing, like Algerian gnawa, or solo mbira, or just people laughing together, or a Bamako griot…
Beautifully presented, with a twenty-page booklet, and the DVD of Caroline de Bendern’s vivid, freewheeling film A L’Intention De Mlle Issoufou A Bilma, about the trip.
Fervently recommended.
The Nordan Project, combining Swedish folk and jazz improvisation. With Palle Danielsson on bass, from various Charles Lloyd, Keth Jarrett and Jan Garbarek lineups.