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MTE 074-75LP
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Rich in musical associations yet utterly singular in its voice, joyous with an inner tranquility, the music of Natural Information Society is unlike any other being made today. Their sixth album in eleven years for eremite records, descension (Out of Our Constrictions) is the first to be recorded live, featuring a set from London's Cafe OTO with veteran English free-improv great Evan Parker, & the first to feature just one extended composition. The 75-minute performance, inspired by the galvanizing presence of Parker, is a sustained bacchanalia of collective ecstasy. You could call it their party album.
This was the second time Parker played with NIS. Joshua Abrams: "Both times we played compositions with Evan in mind. I don't tell Evan anything. He's a free agent."
The music is focused & malleable, energized & even-keeled, drawing on concepts of ensemble playing common to musics from many locations & eras without any one specific aesthetic realization completely defining it.
"The rhythms that Mikel plays are not an exact reference to Chicago house, but that's in there," Abrams says. "I like to take a cyclic view of music history, can we take that four-on-the-floor, & consider how it connects to swing-era music? Can we articulate a through line? I dee-jayed for years in Chicago & lessons I learned from playing records for dancing inform how I think about the group's music. The listener can make connections to aspects of soul music, electronic music, minimalism, traditional folk musics, & other musics of the diaspora as well. It's about these aspects coming together. I don't need to mimic something, I need to embody it to get to the spirit, to get to the living thing."
For jazz fans, the sound of Parker's soprano & Jason Stein's bass clarinet might evoke Coltrane & Dolphy, even though they didn't necessarily set out to do that & they play with complete individuality. Abrams sees a bridge to the historical precedent, too. "Since we first met in the 1990s, one of the things that Evan and I connected on was Coltrane's music," he says. "I hoped that we would tap into that sound world intuitively. In this case, I think that level of evocation adds another layer of depth, versus a layer of reference."
Indeed, this is a performance in which the connections among the ensemble & the creative tension between improvisation and composition build into a complex mesh of associations & interactions. While the band confines itself to the territory mapped out by Abrams' composition, they are remarkably attentive & responsive, making adjustments to Parker's improvisations. When Parker's intricate patterns of notes interweave with the band, the parts reinforce one another & the music rockets upward. Sometimes, Parker's lines are cradled by the group's gentle pulse & an unearthly lyrical balance is struck.
Drummer Mikel Patrick Avery is locked-in, playing with hellacious long-form discipline, feel & responsiveness. Jason Stein's animated, vocalized bass clarinet weaves in & out with Lisa Alvarado's harmonium to state the piece's thematic material; the pulsing tremolo on the harmonium brings a Spacemen 3 vibe to the party. Abrams ties together melody & rhythm on guimbri, a presence that leads without seeming to. Like his bandmates, he shifts modes of playing frequently, improvising & then returning to the composed structure.
"As specific as the composition is, the goal is to internalize it & mix it up," Abrams says. "The idea is to get so comfortable that we can make spontaneous changes, find new routes of activity, stasis & byways every gig. It's like a web we're spinning. If someone makes a move, we all aim to be aware of it, make room for it. Experiencing & listening is what it's about, & Evan supercharges that."
& "supercharged" is the word for this album. With Parker further opening up their music, descension (Out of Our Constrictions) is the sound of Natural Information Society growing both more disciplined and freer, one of the great bands of its time on a deep run.
Mastered by Helge Sten, Audio Virus, Oslo. Lacquers by Kevin Gray, Cohearent Audio, So Cal. Liner Notes by Theaster Gates. LPs pressed on premium audiophile-quality vinyl at RTI.
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2LP
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MTE 070-71LP
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Limited repress on clear vinyl. Double LP version. LPs pressed on premium audiophile-quality vinyl at RTI from Kevin Gray Lacquers; Presented in a textured gatefold Stoughton "laserdisc" jacket with a cover painting by Lisa Alvarado. Jackets, retro-audiophile sleeves and record labels hand-screen printed by Alan Sherry at Siwa Studios, Northern New Mexico. Mandatory Reality, the new album by Joshua Abrams and Natural Information Society, is here. Setting aside (for the moment) the electric instrumentation of Simultonality (GB 048CD/MTE 068LP, 2017) and Magnetoception (MTE 063-64LP, 2015), Joshua Abrams conceived Mandatory Reality for an eight-piece acoustic manifestation of NIS, consisting of himself on guimbri, Lisa Alvarado on harmonium and gongs, Mikel Avery on tam-tam and gongs, Ben Boye on autoharp and piano, Hamid Drake on tabla and tar, Ben Lamar Gay on cornet, Nick Mazzarella on alto saxophone, and Jason Stein on bass clarinet. A double album, Mandatory Reality is comprised largely of two performances, both Joshua Abrams compositions, 24- and 40-minutes in length. While new to the band's records, long duration pieces are familiar to those who've heard Joshua Abram and NIS in concert in recent years, where elaboration on a single composition for an hour or more is not unusual. Gradual tempos dominate Mandatory Reality. Recorded two months before the 2017 solar eclipse, Mandatory Reality is the sound of Joshua Abrams and NIS taking its time. Merging methodical compositions with sonically voluptuous orchestration, Abrams heightens the immersive and hypnotic qualities Abram and NIS music is known for, taking the band and the listener deep into a collective meditative space. A grand realization of long-form psychedelic music, Mandatory Reality is a dispatch from a sound world that is increasingly unique to itself. All performances on Mandatory Reality are full takes recorded live to tape by the full ensemble, magnificently captured by Greg Norman at electrical audio, Chicago -- the first true "audiophile" recording of Joshua Abrams and NIS. Mastered by Helge Sten at Audio Virus, Oslo.
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MTE 071-72CD
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Mandatory Reality, the new album by Joshua Abrams and Natural Information Society, is here. Setting aside (for the moment) the electric instrumentation of Simultonality (GB 048CD/MTE 068LP, 2017) and Magnetoception (MTE 063-64LP, 2015), Joshua Abrams conceived Mandatory Reality for an eight-piece acoustic manifestation of NIS, consisting of himself on guimbri, Lisa Alvarado on harmonium and gongs, Mikel Avery on tam-tam and gongs, Ben Boye on autoharp and piano, Hamid Drake on tabla and tar, Ben Lamar Gay on cornet, Nick Mazzarella on alto saxophone, and Jason Stein on bass clarinet. A double album, Mandatory Reality is comprised largely of two performances, both Joshua Abrams compositions, 24- and 40-minutes in length. While new to the band's records, long duration pieces are familiar to those who've heard Joshua Abram and NIS in concert in recent years, where elaboration on a single composition for an hour or more is not unusual. Gradual tempos dominate Mandatory Reality. Recorded two months before the 2017 solar eclipse, Mandatory Reality is the sound of Joshua Abrams and NIS taking its time. Merging methodical compositions with sonically voluptuous orchestration, Abrams heightens the immersive and hypnotic qualities Abram and NIS music is known for, taking the band and the listener deep into a collective meditative space. A grand realization of long-form psychedelic music, Mandatory Reality is a dispatch from a sound world that is increasingly unique to itself. All performances on Mandatory Reality are full takes recorded live to tape by the full ensemble, magnificently captured by Greg Norman at electrical audio, Chicago -- the first true "audiophile" recording of Joshua Abrams and NIS. Mastered by Helge Sten at Audio Virus, Oslo. Cover painting by Lisa Alvarado. Jackets, retro-audiophile sleeves and record labels hand-screen printed by Alan Sherry at Siwa Studios, Northern New Mexico.
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MTE 069LP
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[sold out, possibly repressed 2020 or 2021-ish] Eremite presents the definitive vinyl edition of the most legendary private press underground jazz album of the 1970s. There's not another record on the planet that sounds even remotely like vibraphonist Khan Jamal's eccentric, one-of-a-kind masterpiece, Drum Dance to the Motherland. In its improbable fusion of free jazz expressionism, black psychedelia, and full-on dub production techniques, Drum Dance remains a bracingly powerful outsider statement forty-five years after it was recorded live at the Catacombs Club in Philadelphia, 1972. Comparisons to Sun Ra, King Tubby, Phil Cohran and BYG/Actuel merely hint at the cosmic otherness conjured by The Khan Jamal Creative Arts Ensemble and by sound engineer Mario Falana's real-time enhancements. Originally issued by Jamal in 1973 in an edition of three hundred copies on Dogtown records, Drum Dance to the Motherland was effectively a myth until Eremite's 2005 CD reissue (MTE 050CD). Eremite's LP edition has been a long time coming. With the master tapes long vanished, the audio was transferred on the pneumatic Rockport table at Sony Music's 54th street studio from a minty copy of the original LP, manually de-clicked, and remastered on Sony's vintage outboard tube EQs by Ben Young and Andreas K. Myer. The LP is pressed on premium audiophile quality vinyl by RTI from a Kevin Gray lacquer. Alan Sherry at Siwa Studios screenprinted by hand every component of the package: the screenprinted labels and heavyweight Stoughton laserdisc jackets reproduce exactly the artwork of the original Dogtown release. A screenprinted insert with Ed Hazell's detailed telling of Drum Dance's incredible history and eremite's signature retro-audiophile screenprinted dust sleeves are unique to this edition. 999 copies. Personnel: Khan Jamal - vibraphone, marimba, clarinet; Alex Ellison - drums and African percussion; Mario Falana - sound effects; Dwight James - drums, glockenspiel, clarinet; Billy Mills - fender bass, double bass; Monette Sudler - guitar, percussion.
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MTE 068LP
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Simultonality is the follow-up to Joshua Abrams's critically acclaimed 2015 album Magnetoception (MTE 063-64LP, 2015). Credited to Joshua Abrams and Natural Information Society (NIS), it is the first recording in the project's nine year, four album history made by a regularly gigging manifestation, rather than a special assembly of friends. Recorded in 2014 and 2015 in single takes by the full ensemble during and after tours of the US and Canada, Simultonality once more affirms the project's unique approach to joining traditional musics, American minimalism, and jazz with the Gnawa ceremonial instrument the guimbri. Stasis, continuity, and repetition, central qualities of Abrams language, defined Magnetoception, listed by many as one of the best records of 2015. These same qualities form the heart of Abrams's music on Simultonality. But where Abrams once said Magnetoception is about "winter and death", Simultonality, in Abrams's words, is an album of "pure motion". Without sounding frenetic it is the most explosive NIS music on record, and without sounding over-determined, it is Abrams's most structured and through-composed music yet. Much of it is also fast, a mass of densely patterned elements swiftly orbiting constantly reconfiguring centers that are variously harmonic and rhythmic, clearly stated or implied. The music is at no time any more disorderly than a colony of bees pollinating a vast garden. Its many moving parts function in mutualistic relationship toward fulfilling Abrams's long stated intention for the project: to help listener's achieve a meditative center and to consciously use music as a gateway to living. Abrams credits William Parker as an inspiration for this intention. The musicians on Simultonality date back to the nascency of NIS. Along with Hamid Drake, Mikel Avery and Frank Rosaly are Abrams first-call drummers for the project. On Simultonality, Avery is in the left channel, Rosaly the right. Astute heads may recognize the rhythm in "Sideways Fall" as Jaki Leibezeit's drum break in Can's "Vitamin C". At Abrams behest, the two drummers divided the beat into separate parts. According to Hamid Drake, the rhythm was popularized, if not originated, by John "Jabo" Starks and Clyde Stubblefield of the J.B.'s. Nearly ten years into its existence, Abrams and the NIS wear their influences with creativity and ease. Long standing NIS members, Ben Boye and Emmett Kelly, were previously together with Abrams, or not, in Bonnie Prince Billy's band, and Abrams and Boye have at different times played in Kelly's band The Cairo Gang. Harmonium player Lisa Alvarado contributes the large format pattern paintings used by NIS at concerts and for its album covers. Personnel: Joshua Abrams - guimbri, bass, small harp, bells; Lisa Alvarado - harmonium, Leslie, percussion; Michael Avery - drums and percussion; Ben Boye - chromatic electric autoharp, piano, Wurlitzer; Ari Brown - tenor saxophone (on "2128½"); Emmett Kelly - electric guitar; Frank Rosaly - drums and percussion, resonator bells. Pressed on premium quality audiophile vinyl by RTI, presented in replica audiophile dust sleeves and heavyweight Stoughton LaserDisc jackets screenprinted by Alan Sherry/Siwa.
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2CD
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MTE 059-60CD
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NYC free jazz cooperative TEST was literally an underground favorite -- as part of the Music Under New York program in the 1990s, TEST was out on the street and subway platforms year-round, playing long-form unadulterated free jazz with an energy and creativity rarely encountered. Even on a scene known for strong personalities, these guys were renegade cats. Eremite heard and recorded TEST many, many times over a ten-year period; Always Coming from the Love Side, a two-CD set from TEST's 1999 US tour captured live by Malachi Ritscher at Fred Anderson's Velvet Lounge just weeks before Y2K (on November 13, to be exact), is right up there among the band's strongest and most memorable performances. The cover photo, for those who don't recognize it, is of the Velvet Lounge's legendary wallpaper. Other images include a portrait of Fred Anderson in front of the club (shot November 2005 by Peter Brötzmann just months before the building was destroyed by the city of Chicago to build a parking garage) and Tony Getsug's photos of TEST tearing up the bandstand there, as well as art and photography by Joshua Abrams and TEST bassist Matthew Heyner. Tom Bruno, drums; Daniel Carter, winds; Matthew Heyner, bass; Sabir Mateen, winds. Edition of 550 copies. Presented in a tri-fold Stoughton sleeve.
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MTE 026CD
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2001 release. 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. An iconic figure in the avant-garde for three decades, Silva's contribution to the methodologies and vernacular of large ensemble improvisation is enormous, prefiguring the conductions of Butch Morris and 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, and Mingus, developments in the visual arts (namely abstract expressionism), and a preternaturally warped response to the post-WWII American culture of show tunes, film music, radio theater, and cold war propaganda. This CD was recorded during the 1999 Vision Festival, a rare chance for Silva to work and extensively rehearse with a band of veteran improvisers, and 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 and exploding television sets. They re-assembled in an 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) and 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.
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MTE 017CD
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1998 release. Alan Silva's playing and 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, and Albert Ayler, on into the Celestial Communications Orchestra and 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 and to all the great string players of the 20th century. It was recorded at the first duo performance Silva and Parker undertook, and is volume one of Eremite's Silva/Parker duos. Two full improvising orchestras couldn't mix it up more completely.
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MTE 009CD
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1998 release. 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
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2CD
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MTE 047/48CD
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2005 release. 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.
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MTE 030/31CD
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2001 release. 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 interest in double-reed instruments and Moondoc's introduction of a soprano saxophone moves their music into realms of joyfully non-tempered playing that recall the Master Musicians of Joujouka. Elsewhere, the old bass and alto slam it out. On disc two, 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.
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MTE 043CD
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2003 release. Eremite continues its extensive documentation of Jemeel Moondoc with this previously unreleased 1981 session. Recorded at Tucasa Sound Studio on Avenue B, Moondoc and authentic jazz legend Denis 'Jazz' Charles are completely and totally on fire from start to finish.
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MTE 049CD
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2006 release. 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 and forceful improviser in the tradition of his mentors, Borah Bergmann and 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.
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MTE 034CD
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2002 release. Recorded at the 1998 vision festival Jimmy Lyons memorial celebration, a powerful commemoration from four of Lyons's oldest and 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, and ferocity characteristic of his strongest music.
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MTE 045CD
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2005 release. 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 (MTE 046CD), 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.
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MTE 046CD
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2005 release. 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, following Vol. I (MTE 045CD). 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. Murray is a different drummer than he was 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. 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.
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MTE 036CD
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2001 release. Vol I of the 2001 ICA concert in Boston, recorded on 23 February 2001. 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, and vocalist Leena Conquest. A considerable leap forward in recording quality from the band's highly estimable past productions.
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MTE 061CD
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Eremite presents the first CD edition of Joshua Abrams's acclaimed 2010 LP Natural Information, now out of print on vinyl. Abrams's first record for Eremite is another fascinating entry in his discography of recordings that gather aesthetic input from all over the map into vivid personal statements. At the heart of Natural Information is the guimbri, a three-stringed animal hide bass traditionally used by the Gnawa people of North Africa in healing ceremonies. Combining solo, trio, and quartet formats with adroit use of sampling techniques, Abrams creates intricate, psychedelic environments that join the hypnotic character of Gnawa guimbri music to more contemporary musics and methodologies. Natural Information garnered praise from Downbeat, The New York Times, and Wax Poetics, appeared on best-of-2010 lists from WFMU, Dusted, and Aquarius, and was selected as one of the 50 notable records of 2010 by The Wire. Played with Jason Adasiewicz, Lisa Alvarado, Jim Baker, Ben Boye, Emmett Kelly, Frank Rosaly, and Noritaka Tanaka. CD edition packaged in a Stoughton high-gloss miniaturized gatefold sleeve with 20 minutes of previously unreleased additional material.
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MTE 054/56LP
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2011 release. 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 and bassist Juma Sultan's Aboriginal Music Society. Drawn from Sultan's mammoth private archive of recordings, this groundbreaking set includes two audiophile LPs and a CD, a 28-page 12" x 12" 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 multimedia 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 organization and a killer band. For ten years, Sultan and the loose alliance of like-minded musicians in AMS produced independent concerts, owned and operated their 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, hand drum grooves, and heaven-storming free jazz. The first of the set's two LPs, a 1970 Boston studio date, features a New York-Woodstock sextet -- including Sultan, Abuwi, Gene Dinwiddie, Philip Wilson, Ralph Walsh, and Earl 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, and additional loose memorabilia.
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MTE 006CD
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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."
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