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Browse by Label: EREMITE
Artist:
CAULEY, CHRISTOPHER
Title:
FINland
Label:
EREMITE
Format:
CD
Price:
$12.00
Catalog #:
MTE 006CD
Debut release by a Montreal-based alto saxophonist who has played with Lisle Ellis, Raphe Malik, Malcolm Goldstein & others. His group here features William Parker (bass), Gregg Bendian (percussion) & Steve Swell (trombone). "Mr. Cauley has brought a distinctive & thoughtful alto saxophone response, informed by the trinity of avant-garde alto saxophone (Lyons, Coleman & Dolphy), but in no way beholden to it. A friendly & very particular recording,
FINland
introduces a new voice to the world of creative improvised music."
Artist:
CHARLES QUARTET, DENIS
Title:
Captain of the Deep
Label:
EREMITE
Format:
CD
Price:
$13.50
Catalog #:
MTE 009CD
Denis Charles (drums), Nathan Breedlove (trumpet), Wilbert DeJoode (bass), Jemeel Moondoc (alto sax). Recorded by VPRO radio on 9 May, 1991, De Effenaar Cultural Center, Eindhoven, Holland. "The album you hold in your hands is a remarkable document. It is notable as one of only two recordings released under the leadership of the legendary Denis Charles. It is equally notable as the sole remaining evidence of a superb quartet, one whose existence was as brief as it was ecstatic. The opening piece, 'We Don't,' is my favorite selection. Mr. Moondoc and Mr. Breedlove achieve the rough, sanctified sax/trumpet interplay that was the Ayler Brothers stock in trade. Mr. Charles takes a solo so evocative of West Africa's talking drum tradition as to lend the piece an ancient character. All the material on this album has a sweet congruence. This band never fails to fill you with the magnificent sense of individuals working towards a greater whole. Nobody steps on anyone else's notes, nobody shoves anyone aside, and it is obvious throughout that the interpersonal communication is happening at a very high level." --Byron Coley, Deerfield, MA
Artist:
PARKER, WILLIAM
Title:
Through Acceptance of the Mystery Peace
Label:
EREMITE
Format:
CD
Price:
$13.50
Catalog #:
MTE 012CD
Repressed. "William Parker's earliest recordings as a leader. First released in 1979 on his own Centering Records (Centering 1001), in an edition of 500 copies,
Through Acceptance of the Mystery Peace
has been a much sought-after collectors item for many years. Eremite is proud to return this vital & historically valuable music to common circulation. Five ensembles recorded between 1974 & 1979, ranging in size from trio to octet. Denis Charles, Charles Brackeen, Billy Bang, Jason Hwang, Jemeel Moondoc, Daniel Carter, Toshinori Kondo, Tristan Honsiger, Polly Bradfield, & numerous others from far corners of the NYC free music community. An altogether different view of the New York loft scene than that provided by the Wildflowers sessions. With one previously unissued performance."
Artist:
MURRAY/SABIR MATEEN, SUNNY
Title:
We Are Not At The Opera
Label:
EREMITE
Format:
CD
Price:
$13.50
Catalog #:
MTE 014CD
Repressed. "Like Baby Dodds & Kenny Clarke before him, Sunny Murray revolutionized the role of the trap drums in jazz. His playing with Ayler & Taylor opened up entirely new expressive realms for the instrument, & his influence on the last thirty-five years of improvised music cannot be overestimated. Long in exile from the American scene, Murray made a rare working visit to the states in the summer of 1998. This live recording from a 27 June Meetinghouse performance in Amherst unites Murray with an old comrade, the masterful multi-instrumentalist Sabir Mateen (TEST, One World Ensemble), who stimulates some of Murray's most intense playing on record since the classic
Jump Up
side with Jimmy Lyons. Both men are former citizens of the nation state Philadelphia, PA, & that pitiless city's deep tradition of great black music courses through the set. If action music -- furiously energized & immediate -- is what you dig, this set delivers heavily."
Artist:
SILVA/WILLIAM PARKER, ALAN
Title:
A Hero's Welcome: Pieces For Rare Occasions
Label:
EREMITE
Format:
CD
Price:
$13.50
Catalog #:
MTE 017CD
"Alan Silva's playing & live composition have been a highlight of the avant garde's living history for the past 35+ years. From his work with Sun Ra's Arkestra, through extended relationships with Bill Dixon, Cecil Taylor, & Albert Ayler, on into the Celestial Communications Orchestra & the Frank Wright Center of the World Band, Silva has been one of the music's most consistently valuable thinkers. A child of Alan Silva's other-worldly strategies for double bass, William Parker is the premier bassist of the post-Vietnam era.
A Hero's Welcome
is a spontaneous composition dedicated to the spiritual essence of Sun Ra & to all the great string players of the 20th Century. It was recorded at the first duo performance Silva & Parker undertook, & is the first installment of the Eremite Silva & Parker ongoing strings duo project, which among other things will entail at least one duo (or extended duo) recording by Silva & Parker for Eremite per year from now until the big O. Two full improvising orchestras couldn't mix it up more completely."
Artist:
DIE LIKE A DOG QUARTET FEATURING ROY CAMPBELL
Title:
From Valley To Valley
Label:
EREMITE
Format:
CD
Price:
$13.50
Catalog #:
MTE 018CD
"The debut North American performance of Peter Brotzmann's Quartet for the apocalypse, recorded live in Amherst at the '98 Fire In the Valley. Brotzmann on reeds, William Parker on bass, Hamid Drake on trap kit & percussion. Roy Campbell's open & muted brass replaced Kondo for these seventy uproarious minutes of group conjuring. Only Brotzmann delivers music of this immediacy & Old Testament purpose. Violent & beautiful enough to rip you, briefly, out of history."
Artist:
MOONDOC/WILLIAM PARKER, JEMEEL
Title:
New World Pygmies
Label:
EREMITE
Format:
CD
Price:
$13.50
Catalog #:
MTE 020CD
"Moondoc pulls out all the stops on this album; it's the most complete documentation of his instrumental prowess on record. From the sustained melodic invention of the title track, to the sound-color-texture manipulations of 'Huey Sees A Rainbow" to the gut-wrenching interpretation of "Another Angel Goes Home', Parker's tribute to the late Denis Charles, Moondoc is at the top of his game. Listening to him on the title track as he carefully picks his notes, threading his way in crazy zigzag lines that avoid cliche at every turn, I thought of Thelonious Monk -- not his style but his spirit. The proud insistence on the idiosyncratic, the way he favors deliberate rough edges over polish and 'technique', the unsentimental rigor of his ballads, and the sheer emotional honesty of his playing -- these are Moondoc's virtues just as surely as they were Monk's and they make Moondoc's music unlike anyone else's working in the free jazz idiom. Oh, you can hear echoes of Jimmy Lyons' merciless intellect, Ornette Coleman's vulnerability, and Jackie McLean's sharp intonation and economy. But they are filtered through Moondoc's own experience, his own heart and mind. And when history fuses with experience in the creative act, it's only the individual voice you hear in the heat of the moment that counts. What you hear is pure Moondoc. Writers and critics will have run out of superlatives long before William Parker has run out of ideas on his instrument. His creativity is boundless, he has a feel for time as distinctive as his own heartbeat, and he can play any role the music calls for." ?Ed Hazell, liner notes
Artist:
BRUNO, TOM
Title:
White Boy Blues
Label:
EREMITE
Format:
CD
Price:
$13.50
Catalog #:
MTE 022CD
"Best known as a member of the guerrilla free-jazz collective Test, Tom Bruno's history on the NYC free music scene reaches back more than 30 years.
White Boy Blues
is a 1981 performance by Bruno as a 'solo artist', along with the drum kit, he plays piano, sings, and dances. The musicality, hard-angled swing, and unfussy attack that mark Bruno's drumming in Test were already point-blank in 1981, and his piano playing, dancing and vocalizing really get in there. An interesting contrast to some of the solo opuses produced by European free drummers of the same era.
White Boy Blues
is the first joint production between Eremite and the New York City Artists Collective."
Artist:
ANDERSON/HAMID DRAKE/KIDD JORDAN/WILLIAM PARKER, FRED
Title:
Two Days In April
Label:
EREMITE
Format:
2CD
Price:
$21.00
Catalog #:
MTE 023/24CD
2000 release, repressed. "Double CD set documenting two 1999 concerts (in Amherst and Boston) by this summit gathering of American free jazz heavies. Two continuous long-form group improvisations. A major statement on American improvisational methodologies at the end of the century. 'A wall of energy, a tidal wave of celebration, that sweeps away the listener.'" Anderson & Jordan (tenor sax), Parker (bass), Drake (percussion).
Artist:
ENEIDI/PARKER/ROBINSON
Title:
Cherry Box
Label:
EREMITE
Format:
CD
Price:
$13.50
Catalog #:
MTE 025CD
"While there was no leader, per se, on this session it is clearly a welcome opportunity to hear alto saxophonist Marco Eneidi out in front of bassist William Parker & drummer Donald Robinson. Eneidi's in the middle of something deep, knowingly. In his early forties at the time of this recording, Eneidi makes good on years of dedication that have included significant encounters with Jimmy Lyons, Cecil Taylor & Bill Dixon. This is not to say he is in anyone's shadow. If anything, this record will make clear to a wider audience what close watchers of this scene have known for years: he sounds like no other." -- Christopher Cauley
Artist:
SILVA & THE SOUND VISION ORCHESTRA, ALAN
Title:
Label:
EREMITE
Format:
CD
Price:
$13.50
Catalog #:
MTE 026CD
"On his third CD for Eremite records, Alan Silva is back in front of an orchestra for the first time since 1982's
Desert Mirage
(I.A.C.P). An iconic figure in the avant-garde for three decades, Silva's contribution to the methodologies & vernacular of large ensemble improvisation is enormous, prefiguring the conductions of Butch Morris & John Zorn's game pieces. His three album 1970 BYG recording
Seasons
is universally regarded as one of the high water marks in avant-garde jazz. Silva's orchestral pieces offer a broader view of his mad genius than perhaps any other context for his music. They also reveal an artist of uniquely American themes & sources, informed equally by the legacies of Ives, Ra, Ellington & Mingus, developments in the visual arts (namely abstract expressionism), & a preternaturally warped response to the post-WWII American culture of show tunes, film music, radio theater & cold war propaganda. This CD was recorded during the 1999 Vision Festival, a rare chance for Silva to work & extensively rehearse with a band of veteran improvisers, & again present his orchestra music on native soil (a first since 1968). The band's festival performance was plagued by every imaginable technical difficulty, including complete power outages & exploding television sets. They re-assembled in a empty hall one week later to play the spectacularly expansive music heard on this recording. Resolution 57! Twenty-three piece ensemble featuring Silva (conduction, vocals, some synthesizer) & Sabir Mateen, Roy Campbell Jr, Raphe Malik, 'Kidd' Jordan, Joe Daley, Steve Swell, J.D. Parran, Bill Lowe, Rob Brown, Wilbur Morris, Karen Borca, Jackson Krall, et al."
Artist:
MOONDOC & THE JUS GREW ORCHESTRA, JEMEEL
Title:
Spirit House
Label:
EREMITE
Format:
CD
Price:
$13.50
Catalog #:
MTE 029CD
"The Jus Grew Orchestra was Jemeel Moondoc's chief artistic focus for nearly a decade. The band's hellified performances at Lower East Side venues such as Neither/Nor, 1st on 1st, & the Newyorican poetry cafe are the stuff of underground legend. Lower East Side gentrification & a burgeoning conservatism in jazz combined to put the band out of work. Nearly one decade later, Moondoc re-formed Jus Grew for a series of NYC concerts & a New England tour (the source for this audio-verite concert recording). The band's combination of modern conduction techniques, blues & cosmos, super-churning rhythms, & uproarious expressionism will loosen the death root in your head. With Roy Campbell Jr & Flip Barnes (trumpets); Steve Swell & Tyrone Hill (trombones); Moondoc, Zane Massey & Michael Marcus (saxophones); Bern Nix (guitar); John Voigt (bass); Codaryl Moffett (drums)."
Artist:
MOONDOC & WILLIAM PARKER W/ HAMID DRAKE, JEMEEL
Title:
New World Pygmies Vol 2
Label:
EREMITE
Format:
2CD
Price:
$21.00
Catalog #:
MTE 030/31CD
Moondoc (alto & curved soprano saxophones); Parker (bass, bombard, gralle; Drake (trap drums). Eremite continues its documentation of this remarkable duo, who have played together since 1973, with a double CD set (140+ minutes) featuring two cleanly recorded concerts from a November 2000 American tour. Parker's recent interest in double-reed instruments & Moondoc's introduction of a soprano saxophone moves their music into realms of joyfully non-tempered playing that recall the Master Musicians of Jajouka. Elsewhere the old bass & alto slam it out. On disc 2, Hamid Drake joins the duo at Chicago's Velvet Lounge for an emotionally-charged homecoming concert for Moondoc with much of his family in the audience."
Artist:
PARKER CLARINET TRIO, WILLIAM
Title:
Bob's Pink Cadillac
Label:
EREMITE
Format:
2CD
Price:
$21.00
Catalog #:
MTE 032/33CD
Parker: (bass, gralle, jogibaba, orchestra bells, vocals); Walter Perkins: (trap drums), vocals; Perry Robinson (clarinet, ocarina). Two CD set, studio & live, of a new Parker-led trio featuring the authentically legendary Perkins & Robinson. The terrifically resourceful Walter Perkins has worked in nearly every context in post-war jazz. From the chamber settings of the Art Farmer/Jim Hall Quartet to the more insistently swinging requirements of Roland Kirk, Sonny Rollins, & the MJT, Walter Perkins has done it all. & for those of you who agree that far too little of Perry Robinson's highly colorful playing exists on record after his totally classic 1962 Savoy album (
Funk Dumpling
) & ESP 1026 (Henry Grimes:
The Call
), you're suffering has just been eased. The man is still the last word for all the clarinet's possibilities in creative music." Parker: "The clarinet trio, we're going almost anywhere, but it's more rooted in the blues & folk, extending from the history of jazz. It swings, it sings and, you know, it stings. We don't know where it will go from night to night, but the basis of it is the blues."
Artist:
MALIK QUARTET, RAPHE
Title:
Companions
Label:
EREMITE
Format:
CD
Price:
$13.50
Catalog #:
MTE 034CD
"Recorded at the 1998 vision festival Jimmy Lyons memorial celebration, a powerful commemoration from four of Lyons' oldest & closest comrades. Malik (trumpet); 'Mad' Paul Murphy (drums); William Parker (bass); Glenn Spearman (tenor saxophone). One of the best groups ever assembled under Malik's leadership, with all the concentrated drive, tautness & ferocity characteristic of his strongest music."
Artist:
PARKER & THE LITTLE HUEY CREATIVE MUSIC ORCHESTRA, WILLIAM
Title:
Raincoat In The River
Label:
EREMITE
Format:
CD
Price:
$13.50
Catalog #:
MTE 036CD
"Vol I of the 2001 ICA concert in Boston. A 17 piece version of Little Huey perform Parker's five section narrative suite based on the life of the late street musician Marvin Nunez (aka Uncle Marvin). Featured soloists include Parker (who solos four times on four different instruments), Roy Campbell Jr, Rob Brown, & vocalist Leena Conquest. A considerable leap forward in recording quality from the band's highly estimable past productions."
Artist:
BROTZMANN/PARKER/DRAKE
Title:
Never Too Late But Always Too Early
Label:
EREMITE
Format:
2CD
Price:
$21.00
Catalog #:
MTE 037/38CD
"Dedicated to Peter Kowald. The complete concert from 10 April, 2001, Casa del Popolo, Montreal, on two CDs. Eremite recorded every North American performance by this venerable trio (& guests) during 2000 & 2001, & this one is the motherfucker of them all. Cover & liner notes -- an unusually intimate remembrance of his friend Peter Kowald -- by Brotzmann."
Artist:
MOONDOC WITH DENIS CHARLES, JEMEEL
Title:
We Don't
Label:
EREMITE
Format:
CD
Price:
$13.50
Catalog #:
MTE 043CD
"Eremite continues its extensive documentation of Jemeel Moondoc with this never before released 1981 session. Recorded at Tucasa Sound studio on Avenue B, Moondoc & authentic jazz legend Denis 'Jazz' Charles are completely & totally on-fire from start to finish."
Artist:
ALLEN/DRAKE/JORDAN/PARKER/SILVA
Title:
The All-Star Game
Label:
EREMITE
Format:
CD
Price:
$13.50
Catalog #:
MTE 044CD
"A romping, epical feast of sound by five dudes of considerable standing, brought together to expand on a prolificacy of personal & historical relationships. Drake appeared in last minute substitution for a light not able to be there. Silva & Allen (thirty + years after the Intergalactic Research Arkestra), Silva/Parker, Jordan/Parker/Silva, Parker/Jordan, Jordan/Allen, Drake/Parker, Jordan/Parker/Drake: Allen/Drake/Jordan/Parker/Silva."
Artist:
MURRAY, SUNNY
Title:
Perles Noires vol. I
Label:
EREMITE
Format:
CD
Price:
$13.50
Catalog #:
MTE 045CD
Sunny Murray: drums; Sabir Mateen: alto and tenor saxophones, alto-clarinet; Dave Burrell: piano; Alan Silva: bass; Louis Belogenis: tenor saxophone. "Sunny Murray's talent is bigger than any category you could use to describe it. He's one of the most original musical minds of the past 50 years, a genuine innovator, the liberator of the drum kit, and an artist of uncompromising honesty. Murray's playing in the 1960s with Albert Ayler, Cecil Taylor, Archie Shepp, and others opened up entirely new expressive realms for the drums in jazz. Murray's act of liberation -- to free drummers from their strict time-keeping role -- still outrages many listeners, and his militant individuality, his obstinate adherence to his artistic vision over the years, still make him something of an outlaw presence in jazz. It should come as no shock to his listeners, then, that the music on this CD and its companion volume, recorded on brief visits to the U.S. from Murray's home base in Paris, is full of fire and surprise, ornery as hell, charming and urbane, and totally, unstintingly true to his free- spirited aesthetic."
Artist:
MURRAY, SUNNY
Title:
Perles Noires vol. II
Label:
EREMITE
Format:
CD
Price:
$13.50
Catalog #:
MTE 046CD
Sunny Murray: drums; Sabir Mateen: alto and tenor saxophones, clarinet; John Blum: piano; Oluyemi Thomas: bass clarinet and c-melody saxophone. "There's enough great music from Sunny Murray's 2003 Northeast tour to fill yet another volume. The designation is dictated partly by chronology -- this material comes from the later part of the tour -- and partly by an aesthetic decision to program the music to show off the diversity and contrasts in Murray's handling of the different ensembles he worked with on the tour. At 66, Murray is a different drummer than he was forty years ago when he first made jazz history with Cecil Taylor and Albert Ayler. Partly that's because it's harder at his age to physically sustain the intense high energy of previous decades. Partly, it's a matter of artistic growth, development, and change. Murray's drumming on these discs is unfailingly musical. His unerring touch, sensitivity to sound and color, his relaxation and swing, are the mark of a mature talent who knows exactly what he's doing. As he approaches 70 years of age, Murray's creativity, wit, and power are at a mature peak and no aspect of improvised music is beyond this most individual -- and still radical -- drummer."
Artist:
ANDERSON, HAMID DRAKE, WILLIAM PARKER, FRED
Title:
Blue Winter
Label:
EREMITE
Format:
2CD
Price:
$21.00
Catalog #:
MTE 047/48CD
"
Blue Winter
is a milestone achievement in the great career of one of the stalwarts of the tenor saxophone, Fred Anderson. An exponent of the illustrious Chicago heavyweight tenor tradition that includes his contemporaries Gene Ammons, Johnny Griffin, John Gilmore and Von Freeman, Anderson spent decades as a family man and bar owner before starting to seriously tour and record in the nineties. Born 1929 in Monroe, Louisiana, Anderson migrated to Chicago in 1940, where he devoted many years of study to the music of Lester Young, Coleman Hawkins and Charlie Parker. In 1964 Anderson co-founded the seminal Chicago musicians' organization the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM). The strength and individuality of his playing in early AACM ensembles with Muhal Richard Abrams, Joseph Jarman and Henry Threadgill earned Anderson the nickname 'the lone prophet of the prairie.' On
Blue Winter
, Anderson is joined by one of the premier rhythm sections in any music genre, William Parker on bass and
nagaswaram
(an Indian double-reed instrument) and Hamid Drake on drums. The two-CD set features a beautifully-recorded complete concert from the trio's 2004 northeast tour."
Artist:
BLUM ASTROGENY QUARTET, JOHN
Title:
Label:
EREMITE
Format:
CD
Price:
$13.50
Catalog #:
MTE 049CD
John Blum (piano), Denis Charles (drums), Antonio Grippi (alto sax, alto clarinet), William Parker (bass). Studio recordings from 1998. "There are few sessions to rival this one for sheer urgency and gusto. It's as if something pent-up in these four musicians waited for this combination of players to unleash it...the music explodes into action. Pianist John Blum is a secret hero of New York's free jazz community, known as a proficient & forceful improviser in the tradition of his mentors, Borah Bergmann & Cecil Taylor. Blum's performance on
Astrogeny
is his shining moment on disc to date. The legendary Denis Charles was at his best when paired with William Parker; together they formed one of the great, yet under-documented, rhythm-sections in the music. Antonio Grippi, a shadowy figure in free-jazz history, makes an appropriately rousing contribution on alto saxophone."
Artist:
JAMAL CREATIVE ARTS ENSEMBLE, THE KHAN
Title:
Drum Dance To The Motherland
Label:
EREMITE
Format:
CD
Price:
$13.50
Catalog #:
MTE 050CD
Classic reissue of this 1974 private press album! "There's not another record on the planet that sounds even remotely like vibraphonist Khan Jamal's eccentric, one-of-a-kind masterpiece,
Drumdance to the Motherland
. In its improbable fusion of free jazz expressionism, Black psychedelia, & full-on dub-like production techniques,
Drumdance
remains a bracingly powerful outsider statement thirty-four years after it was recorded live at the Catacombs Club in Philadelphia in 1972. Comparisons to Sun Ra, King Tubby, Phil Cohran & BYG/Actuel merely hint at the cosmic otherness conjured by the band & by recording engineer Mario Falana's real-time 'enhancements.' The first edition of three hundred copies, issued by Jamal in 1973 on the local Philadelphia label Dogtown, was barely distributed outside the city's limits. Since then
Drumdance
has assumed a mythic status among the very few aficionados, eBay mutants, & heads who know of it at all. Hallelujah that it can finally be heard outside their murky inner-sanctums!"
Artist:
SOLIDARITY UNIT, INC.
Title:
Red, Black & Green
Label:
EREMITE
Format:
LP
Price:
$26.00
Catalog #:
MTE 052LP
"Originally produced & issued by Charles 'Bobo' Shaw himself,
Red, Black & Green
, by the band Solidarity Unit, Inc. documents what happened at The Bag Room in St. Louis, MO, the day Jimi Hendrix died. Captured in a gloriously blunt & low-res recording that is as stark as the B&W cover art, Shaw & the ten piece group produce a raw, teeming, clattering sound that never relinquishes. Lake & Bowie were by this time already powerful soloists, & both declaim fervently & damn near relentlessly over Shaw's swaggering themes. Dead at age 34 & recorded just four times, guitarist Richard Martin's performance is a true revelation; as Martin leaps from blues idioms to screaming attacks to pure howling feedback, one wonders if even Sonny Sharrock reached these places with the instrument. Furious kit & hand drumming, violently rattling little instruments, jabbing percussive Rhodes, thundering bass guitar -- these guys don't hold back! Easy to say 'lost underground free jazz classic,' but that's the real story here. The music was remastered from the best available sources by Mike King (Reel Recordings), pressed on premium HQ-180 gram vinyl by RTI, & presented in a heavyweight Stoughton replica sleeve in an edition of 600."
Artist:
SULTAN'S ABORIGINAL MUSIC SOCIETY, JUMA
Title:
Father Of Origin
Label:
EREMITE
Format:
2LP BOX/CD
Price:
$100.00
Catalog #:
MTE 054/56LP
"Deep archeology into a long buried and previously undocumented chapter in the history of the early '70s loft era brings forth the revelatory
Father of Origin
, Eremite's box set retrospective of percussionist/bassist Juma Sultan's Aboriginal Music Society. Drawn from Sultan's mammoth private archive of recordings, this ground-breaking set includes two audiophile LPs and a CD, a 28 page 12x12' book featuring previously unpublished photographs and ephemera and a detailed historical essay by jazz scholar Michael Heller, all manufactured to highest quality-freak standards. This old-school multi-media extravaganza exposes some of the most extraordinary and explosive free jazz of the period to the light of day for the first time. Established by Sultan and percussionist Ali Abuwi in Woodstock in 1968, Aboriginal Music Society was both a radical arts presenting organization and a killer band. Dedicated to musician self-sufficiency and stubbornly non-commercial, AMS waged guerrilla cultural warfare against mainstream America from strongholds in rural Woodstock and from lofts on New York's Lower East Side. For ten years, Sultan and the loose alliance of like-minded musicians in AMS produced independent concerts, owned and operated its own recording studio, and collaborated with legendary artist-run New York loft space Studio We on performances and educational programs. But during that whole time, they never released a record. Inspired by an emerging understanding of African cultures and the political ideas of the black power moment, AMS synthesized an African approach to percussion and collective performance with the revolutionary jazz of its day. In open-ended free improvisations they played an incendiary mix of massive trap kit and hand drum grooves and heaven-storming free jazz. The music was a cry of freedom, a declaration of black cultural artistic and political independence; and until now it has not been heard since the day it was made. The first of the set's two LPs, a 1970 Boston studio date, features a New York-Woodstock sextet--including Sultan, Abuwi, Dinwiddie, Wilson, Walsh, and Cross--engaged in a characteristically percussion-heavy improvisation. The other vinyl disc features a private jam session by Sultan, Abuwi, and saxophonist Frank Lowe at the Broadway headquarters of AMS. Recorded in April 1971, it predates by several months Lowe's recording debut on Alice Coltrane's
World Galaxy
. The CD features yet another historic meeting--an undated concert with the Woodstock crew and a trio of Midwesterners recently relocated to New York--saxophonist Julius Hemphill, cellist Abdul Wadud, and drummer Charles 'Bobo' Shaw, all members of the St. Louis music and arts collective, Black Artists Group.
Father of Origin
is presented in a heavyweight telescoping box in paper wraps screen-printed by Alan Sherry at Siwa, who also screen-printed the LP sleeves, CD jacket & additional loose memorabilia."
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