ECSTATIC JAZZ s/d [RIYL Borbetomagus, Brotzmann, Flower/Corsano]

Looking for more free-jazz as a violent, uplifting, non-stop barrage of noise/sound.

The totemic records in this alley are obv
Borbetomagus's Sauter, Dietrich, Miller, Doherty and Peter Brotzmann's Machine Gun. Obviously I've been feeling Flower/Corsano Duo for a while.

And this tape by Burning Tree is maybe the best thing I heard all year

http://www.tapeworm.org.uk/images/ttw34.gif

\(^o^)/

I said this on the jazz poll thread, but if there is a single definitive "energy music" record, it's this one:
https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-0uX6CNZSWFM/TYuhrYZesuI/AAAAAAAAAYI/XHfk4TDZfDk/Milford+graves.jpg

http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_FewLWMpfsqk/Sn3NudLXiOI/AAAAAAAACe8/12G1MkL3eZU/s400/John+Zorn+-+Spy+VS+Spy+-+Play+The+Music+Of+Ornette+Coleman+(1999).jpg

Oh yeah, Spy Vs Spy is a good one!

Nels Cline hasn't done much really noisy powerful stuff on the improv/jazz side of his output in recent years, but a few months ago a new group of his called bb&c (with Tim Berne and Jim Black) released an album called The Veil that is just full on balls to the wall guitar/sax/drums jamming, really fits the bill for this thread.

Hal Russell NRG Ensemble

i have one or two Cline did with Corsano too but they weren't especially good or ecstatic iirc (xpost)

there's also a semi-recent recording -- i think it might have been released as cd-r or download only? I think the title is American Free, and has Weasel Walter on drums, and Mike Forbes on sax, and some other guy whose name i forget.

and there's always Topography of the Lungs

i always preferred cline / bendian

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7fXasQidkN0

yeah

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FfAm8NeguFs

Search: Ken Vandermark/Barrage Double Trio, Utility Hitter - more aggressive than the Vandermark 5 imo, though there are quiet passages as well. And of course the Brotzmann Chicago Tentet with Vandermark et al.

Gregg Bendian's Interzone: Requiem for Jack Kirby

Nels Cline/Gregg Bendian: Interstellar Space Revisited

neckbeard chicago jazz

also, most anything by these guys: Cecil Taylor, Albert Ayler, Kaoru Abe

Yeah, I like Taylor and Ayler, obv., but that's def just on some extra-spiritual free-jazz. I'm really looking for stuff that's monolithic, like a brick of sound unless there's some crazy Ayler thing I haven't heard

yeah i want to bring up things like marzette watts "backdrop for urban revolution" but the sense i get is that that's too jazzy for you

Check out the Weasel Walter/Marc Edwards group; Blood of the Earth and Mysteries Beneath the Planet are both crushing.

Yeah, Blood Of The Earth is a good one

i got onto these guys researching kaoru abe who after some years distance turns out not be nearly as abrasive as i recall, certainly not so much more than ayler

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8i_-ZdXmy9M&feature=related

search:
clear to higher time - blue humans
five titles - ascension
the recent 'bells' and 'lonely woman' cover albs by otomo yoshihide's new jazz trio
the seasons - alan silva/celestial communication orchestra
'stained angel morning' - ray russell
duo exchange - rashied ali & frank lowe
the black ark - noah howard
alabama feeling - arthur doyle plus four (the doyle/mizutani recs are p fine too)

duo exchange seconded

i wanted to post "the seasons" but amazingly it's not on youtube ... in fact i had trouble finding any cool alan silva on youtube.

hüseyin ertunç trio - musiki
cecil taylor - dark to themselves
last exit - iron path

I like that self-titled last exit alb

this is from 2009

http://freemusicarchive.org/music/Seth_Paynter_and_Kevin_Patton/

Love or hate Bill Laswell, Arcana's The Last Wave is the brick to the face you're looking for I think. (Derek Bailey/Laswell/Tony Williams)

I saw Lean Left (Vandermark, Paal Nilssen-Love and the two guitarists from The Ex) on Tuesday and it was very good

had high hopes from their first CD (came out early last year I think?) whic they delivered on but it was more... monolithic!

I made plans to go back to the merch and buy shit but got drunk and was also flyering and forgot :(

great thread!

is Tamio Shiraishi too sparse for this thread?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G0-Q7tTLLMg

Masayuki Takayanagi New Direction Unit's April Is The Cruellest Month is a swinging good time.

Said this before but borbetomagus was the most intense live show I've ever seen

Brötzmann's duo CD with Nilssen-Love Woodcuts is very good as are PNL's two duo CDs with Vandermark.

The British are not big on this style but I am very partial to a bit of Hession/Wilkinson/Fell and Ascension (with Stefan Jaworzyn on gtr)

I'll second the Dual Pleasure Vandermark/Nilssen-Love albums (both of them) and also recommend anything recorded by Dave Rempis and/or Rempis Percussion Quartet.

None of these people have neckbeards last time I checked.

xpost

i'm not sure how much i agree with that. i guess the brit approach is a bit quieter, a bit more sound sensitive? also, smaller groups too? derek bailey influence... maybe. had a great chat w p hession at a friend's wedding about bailey and different approaches to playing, don't really want to misquote him tho, i was drunk and young, this was about 5 years ago. but it was interesting to hear his take on things. spent another evening going through his hip hop collection, listening to the pharcyde 'shit that hi hat is impossible' haha

i think the type of venues these guys tend to play shapes how they sound a fair bit. can't imagine stuff like this on the boat at boat-ting or in the corner of some locals-only type pub in leeds which is where this stuff seems to live unless it's a festival type thing

at the moment im not really sure how the free jazz/free noise/noise things all fit together. did anyone see any of the free noise tour? evan parker, john wiese, yellow swans etc that was sick, did anything get released? they definitely recorded it.

some of bailey's later electric recs are far from quiet, tho' - i'm thinking of things like the Mirakle disc, or those collabs w ruins. i wld say it's more that european free musicians, esp. those of non-african american heritage, have a complicated - ironic, distanced, whatevs - relationship/attitude to free jazz, especially the 'spiritual' blues-derived side of things. that's not to say that american jazz musicians can't be 'ironic' (hello sonny rollins) just that in general it's possible for them to see themselves as part of a lineage/history that isn't really available to european players. and of course bailey would've spit in yr eye if you'd told him he played 'jazz', ecstatic or o/wise.

Best Borbs: Snuff Jazz

Best Blue Humans: Incadescence

Best 'ecstatic' Takayanagi/Abe is their collab Mass Projection

Harry Pussy/Bill Orcutt - solo, etc etc

Once you've tried ascension also try descension

Also click search on ilx as there is prob a few more hidden...

Mass Projection is awesome! ot fucking m!

brotzmann's "nipples" is worth hearing imo

yeah, nipples and more nipples.

Mass Projection is pretty great; there's a second half, though, Gradually Projection, that I found kinda disappointing.

The go-to Cecil record for this kind of thing for me is The Great Paris Concert, aka, Fondation Maight Nights vols 1-3.

Also, this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=366UNuK7lko
"You're in, you're out, hello, goodbye, and that's all there is to it."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fwIzd0Q3OSc&feature=related

that's ridiculous

Yikes.

Just thinking listening to Ground Zero that it isn't that much of step from some of this stuff to grindcore. Similar kind of catharsis whatnots.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pUuHl-on2gk

my favourite leeds jazz dudes do this, yesssssss

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nwv1QKl8JyQ

^ Aufgehoben

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jJUbdc8rRO8

^ Paul Flaherty, Randall Colbourne & Daniel Carter

New Flaherty & Bill Nace duo LP reviewed in the current Wire sounds good.

Mats Gustafsson has good form on these high energy blow-outs. The recent The Thing albums with Otomo Yoshihide and Jim O'Rourke are the mutt's nuts. Not all out noise by any means - much more subtle use of space and dynamics. Fantastic.
The recent MG, O'Rourke and Akita (aka Merzbow) LP on Mego is great too - again, a lot more space and detail than you might expect, although it's pretty hellacious when it needs to be. Really engaging and inventive. Not jazz, but informed by it, certainly.

Brotzmann Full Blast with Keiji Haino - Crumbling Brain is a monster. KH only turns up in the second half, but there's so much good stuff going on. The drummer is absolutely nuts on the opening track, hammering away at his snare like a demented woodpecker. One track is called Death Bop, which is an apt description of what's going on.

i feel like electric guitar on "energy music" is kind of cheating

i'd say the die like a dog "little birds have fast hearts" records but they might qualify as too funky here.

Maybe tangential, but Voice Crack have two great collabs with Borbetomagus, and their albums Earflash and Infra-Red really deliver in the squall department. Their tortured electronics remind me of high-end reed abuse.

Mass Projection is pretty great; there's a second half, though, Gradually Projection, that I found kinda disappointing.

― that's not funny. (unperson), Sunday, 18 September 2011 18:59 (Yesterday)

Find listening to both back-to-back a real lesson. I think a lot of blowhards get by on punishing volume when the actual skill is to listen and gets to grips with what other ppl are doing at high volume and speed.

Its what I love so much about Snuff Jazz (esp the 2nd side): all-as-one and three separate enitities at the same time -- pretty exhilirating.

i think the type of venues these guys tend to play shapes how they sound a fair bit. can't imagine stuff like this on the boat at boat-ting or in the corner of some locals-only type pub in leeds which is where this stuff seems to live unless it's a festival type thing

Saw Ascension play in a small-ish venue nr Angel and below a nice bar in Islington a few years ago. My faint recollection is the Angel show was a lot louder so you need to be somewhat sensitive to yr surroundings. Seen some electric gtr player before Ascension and it didn't work, no thought to the barbarism.

Hey Tarfumes thanks for making your top recommendation a record that sells for $400, lol

Came here to post Dave Burrell's Echo, I see someone else already has, so consider it seconded.

if it's any consolation, whiney, I second Tarfumes' recommendation of the $400 record, though i y'know, found it on a blog and d/l-ed it.

does your version have terrible skipping noise in it like mine does? or should i just save money by practicing really had and making my own milford graves record?

*hard

nope, no skipping noise.

link?

google.com

sorry -- it was months ago -- i could try and dig it up.

speaking of tarfumes, you know who belongs on this thread? tarfumes. cuz i'm drunk and i love embarrassing him. and he's so friggin' amazing.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zcFt__NpuJ0

oh wow, is Tarfumes who I now think he is (I am on a mobile right now, and can't view that youtube)? Neat.

Does 'Babi' really go for $400 now?! Think I got my copy for a little over $100 -- still a princely sum, no doubt -- I guess this was probably 8 yrs ago or so, back when I wanted to collect Thurston's "Free Jazz Top Ten" (still can't really remember a thing abt that Ric Colbeck record, but fuck yeah 'Babi' is awesome!)

Awww, thanks Scott!

I don't know who you think I am, Stormy, but probably not and/or maybe.

Babi has gone for as little as $88 and as much as $515, according to popsike. I've never owned a copy myself, but a kind soul allowed me to make a DAT recording of his vinyl years ago. This same person also has an original hand-painted Live At Yale University (Graves' 1966 duo with Don Pullen), which I had never seen before or since.

All of Milford Graves' stuff is worth a listen, and Babi is one of the best. There is a thread somewhere.

cecil taylor quartet - nailed

That's a good one. For a while in the early '00s FMP was suddenly putting out a lot of early-90s Cecil stuff, all of which was brilliant (Melancholy can't be fucked with).

Alan Silva's records on ESP and Actual are so so so so so good.
New York Eye & Ear Control is essential..
Cecil's "Unit Structures" is great..
izititiz 'our jazz' is a weird nnck/test related thang from the nineties that i dig..

Alan Silva's records on ESP and Actual are so so so so so good.

The triple-LP (2-CD) orchestra set on BYG/Actuel (Seasons) is seriously the high fucking water mark for large-group works in this music (or at least it's tied with Cecil's Alms/Tiergarten (Spree). Utterly compelling from beginning to end.

otm, total scorch

no mention of frank wright? i love all his stuff that i've heard, my fave is probably "your prayer"

i didn't mention Frank Wright upthread ... surely some mistake!

Since we're here, any opinions on Frank Lowe's Black Beings? there's a copy local, but at a price just beyond my 'take a punt' level...

Black Beings is great. Get the most recent reissue, which features the full versions of the tracks (originally edited by quite a bit in order to fit on vinyl). And btw, ESP-Disk is releasing a CD next week, Loweski, which is the other half of the concert documented on Black Beings - a single 40-minute piece in five chunks. They're also putting out a previously unreleased live Frank Wright album from 1974 featuring James "Blood" Ulmer on guitar, Benny Wilson on bass and Rashied Ali on drums. I haven't heard either yet 'cause I don't know who's doing PR for ESP-Disk at the moment, but I'm extremely excited about both.

Black Beings is a v good record imo.

does whiney g weingaerteeen like the pharaoh sanders rekkerds? are they not HEAVY & NOIZE enuff for this thread? there are so many great ones.

monkey pocky boo?

^^^

Thanks for Black Beings recommendations - copy I saw is a vinyl reish on get Back - legit I assume? - I'll be in town tomorrow and will pick it up if it's still there.

btw, Tom Surg4ll is making a film abt free jazz which, from talking to him a bit, seems like it's gonna be really awesome. interviews with most of the living key players etc.

ooh, that sounds excellent!

who is he planning to interview?

he has already done like 25 interviews i think. trying to remember ppl he's mentioned to me. keith rowe, sonny simmons, rashied ali...

not sure why his name needed to be google-proofed, since Tom Surgal has already spoken in public about this project (and mentioned a few of the interviewees):

http://blogs.villagevoice.com/music/2012/02/white_out_interview.php?page=2

didn't NEED to be googleproofed, especially since i misspelled it.

anway, i think it will be an awesome film when it is done.

Agreed. The thing about free jazz is that it is so visually arresting. People like Gustafsson and Brötzmann are really wrestling with their instruments. The scene is lucky to have been blessed with many great photographers to document it. The book that came with the FMP box set is a treasure trove of great photos.

surgal plays on that great blue humans live in london alb, so I hope he interviews rudolph grey for the movie

related note: if you befriend alan silva on facebook you are regularly blessed with a deluge of jazz footage, both free & traditional.

yes! it's slightly weird seeing silva pick things like bill evans, but also cool that he isn't just into the freer side of life

idk, he's an old man now! old men like nice sounding music. /blanket statement

Silva on fb also posts videos of himself talking about music; after Bill Dixon passed away in 2010, Silva posted a very moving tribute.

i loved Borbetomagus in high school, in art class we were allowed to bring music to listen while we did art and i brought a live tape i had, it was allowed to play for maybe a minute and then the whole class had their ears covered and the teacher was yelling at me and i was sent to the principles office, i could not play music in class after that.

bunch of philistines

that's a great story jacob - and i'm sure the borbs wldn't have it any other way

is bill dixon have recordings that are ecstatic jazz? i have only heard the archie shepp split record.

i mean does he

Was once visiting a friend on the top floor of a dorm when we got a knock on the window. (Not an everyday occurrence 'cause we were, like, 10 flights up.) Anyway it was Donald Miller who was setting up to play on the roof and wanted us to plug in his extension chord. Donald Miller's in Borbetomagus, right? Back then I think he was in Sick Dick & the Volkswagens...

haha that's a good storyt!