Roscoe Mitchell Sextet "Sound" 1966

“Sound” is one of those rare recordings that announces itself like Chtcheglov's “I come from the other land” - a self-contained, self-sustaining something else from somewhere else. Its audacity continues to astonish, even close to a half-century later. Audacity on the part of the creators – making something very distinct from even the cutting edge records of the time, audacity on the part of Delmark Records, who could not have listened to the sessions with a mindset of Return on Capital.

Even now, when the field that “Sound” set out has been plowed for many years, the challenge to norms of music-making are breathtaking. If one can hear fragments of Ornette Coleman (partly bidden by the explicit name-check), if one can hear fragments of the Albert Ayler group of 1965, it still remains out on its own. In a 1996 interview, Chuck Nessa, who recorded this and other important Chicago music, talked of self-reliance, and that shines through here.

“The Little Suite” shows a looseness that would not have been possible in jazz just a couple of years previously – and still wasn't. It also shows a group music coming together, in a way that would be continued the following year in “Old / Quartet” and evolve into the Art Ensemble of Chicago.

But it is the quality of silence that is most disturbing on the present album. Sun Ra had deployed silence-as-emptiness on “Heliocentic Worlds” the previous year, but in a programmatic way, within the context of an overall structure and forward impulse. In “Sound” what is deployed is not always silence as complete absence of sound, but silence as the loss, omission or destruction of forward rhythmic impulse. A decomposition into moments of indifference, where what – if anything – happens next involves decision / will and might as likely be nothing.

The wilfulness extends beyond that, particularly on “Sound” itself. If the main theme statement has some recognisable relationship to free jazz, the piece then moves into a feeling of radical challenge to pre-existing norms of musicality, a feeling that received wisdom of solo space and of thematic material are being conscious put in question and avoided.

Towards Philip Cohran

I have been intending to write next on Philip Cohran as a prime example of someone oriented towards a social function of music, based on listening to two 1968 LPs "On the beach" and "Malcolm X Memorial", as well as his music with Sun Ra. 
However today in the excellent Monorail Music in Glasgow I found a copy of "Kelan Philip Cohran and the Hypnotic Brass Ensemble". The article will need to wait...

Noah Howard “The Black Ark”

The records featured here to date have been at what might be the sedate end of expectations of 1960s free jazz – small groups working with free-flowing theme, quiet listening and interplay in developing, discarding the structural rigidities of hard bop. "The Black Ark" occupies another place, so let's go for that counter example.

Here the space is recognisably that created by the late Coltrane group: a “constituting power” which has become a “constituted power”. The muscular melodicism of Coltrane's 1966-7 performances – the lyricism that time forgot – is a clear influence both on Noah Howard himself and on the wider grouping. From the start, one can hear the “Meditations” format being embraced and extended.

“Domiabra” begins like one of those repetitive riff platforms that became common as the 1960s became the 1970s, but that begins to dispel as soon as the theme is stated. The three horns slurp at the phrases over a swirling sea of percussion. The often problematic Arthur Doyle is kept back – obviously not restrained, intensifying and thickening the sound, but contained in time and contribution. Trumpeter Earl Cross is someone I recall from a more restrained post-bop trio setting some 10 years after this recording; here he contributes powerful intensity. The busyness of the double percussion backwall and Sirone's fine prodding bass may conceal the extent of the traditional structure here, the essential sequentiality that allots each their solo space.

"Mount Fuji" has particularly pronounced Coltrane influence, much of the time close to being a version of Coltrane's “The Father, Son and Holy Ghost”.

In recent years, “The Black Ark” has risen well beyond its original reception and come to be seen as a free jazz classic, a landmark album. And yet, landmark of what? What is to be said of the “Mount Fuji” - “Queen Anne” side effectively being a replay of the first side of “Meditations”? Is that a bad thing, denoting some lack of novelty? Perhaps it is simply the sign of a community who had grasped it as the basis material for a shared music.

Another view: Free the Music 

 

Turning point 1964

Paul Bley's Improvising Artists Inc. glowed briefly in the mid 1970s, retrieving remarkable past moments from his own repertoire (the Hillcrest Club group with Ornette Coleman and Don Cherry) and providing a platform for new recordings in unexpected settings (the Sun Ra solo sessions).

“Turning point” contained particularly interesting material, in the form of five pieces recorded in March 1964 by his group with Gary Peacock and Paul Motian along with John Gilmore, then performing for a brief and rare period in settings outside the Sun Ra Arkestra.

Carla Bley composed all but one of the compositions on the session. The most interesting performance though is probably that of Paul Bley's own “Turning”. It encapsulates the dynamic flow between the group members and the individual spaces that open up. Gilmore takes some space akin to his solo on Sun Ra's “Rocket Number Nine”, finding his way to a conclusion pushed by the other three musicians.

“Ictus”, a composition familiar from Bley's then recent recordings with Jimmy Giuffre, is taken at an extremely fast pace. It sounds like Bley has ingested the theme into automatic mode, and Gilmore makes no attempt to state the theme. This makes the overall performance more interesting, as Gilmore's performance over a blur of impressions of the thematic material forces him to take his commentary to new places.

The session concludes with “Ida Lupino”, a melodic, rhythmic, almost Latin feel, with an elegant conclusion from Gilmore.

Bley would record another album predominantly of Carla Bley compositions a few months later with another musician from the Sun Ra Arkestra in a very different group, with a very different sound envelope. In this respect “Turning point” perhaps does represent just that, a pointer on the way to the “Barrage” quintet.

Other afternoons 1969

Several times in the 1970s and early 80s I saw Jimmy Lyons perform, but always as part of the Cecil Taylor Unit. His was always a clear and important voicing in that challenging setting; he brought to it an individuality which was steeped in jazz tradition. It was a surprise that, whether by choice or opportunity, Lyons did not record widely outside the Unit.

A month after participating in the explosive concert by the Cecil Taylor Unit at the Fondation Maeght in July 1969, Jimmy Lyons had the opportunity to record what turned out to be the only LP solely under his name until the 1980s. (That balance has been redressed since by Ayler Records issue of many later recordings.)

Lyons, Alan Silva and Andrew Cyrille had recorded together previously in Paris, on Cecil Taylor's “Student Studies” in 1966. Here, for this recording session around Lyons' own compositions, he added Lester Bowie, one of the most heavily recorded musicians of the moment, with BYG records seeming to record the Art Ensemble of Chicago's every daily activity during July 1969 in Paris.

The use of the theme is familiar from Lyons' playing in the Taylor group. The melodic phrase fragments that make up the themes are effectively call-and-response. They do not impel harmonic or rhythmic motion; instead the forward impetus is energy based (or what Ekkehard Jost called “urgent, dynamic chains of impulses”), allowing for extreme shifts in dynamics. This can be heard almost immediately in the title piece, which drops almost immediately to a minimalist, near silent interplay by bass and drums before embarking on the collective exposition.

An Ornette Coleman influence is noted in the original French sleevenotes and is certainly audible in much of the interplay between alto sax and trumpet. Bowie plays the Cherry role, fluttering and complementing the alto lines, but as soon as he takes the front, the whole feel switches to the Art Ensemble (vocalising, phrase parodies).

Cyrille's drumming is dry in texture. For much of the time, the snare is the highest sound, over underlying rumbling drums, with very little prominent cymbal; a long way from the traditions of jazz drumming.

The second track “Premonitions” may be the most challenging, in its recurring use and start and close of wayward pitch variations and resulting interference patterns. Silva moves from conventional string bass playing to join this with pulsating bowed harmonics.

“However”, the third theme, is particularly reminiscent of the Coleman quartet. It is built around the strong centre of Silva's almost conventional bass line, but with many of the conventions of the jazz quartet mutating. Cyrille's off-centre march drumming is constantly sliding, and above are Lyons' Parkeresque alto and interspersed trumpet lines and commentaries. A loose shuffle around tradition that comes together in playful unison arund the theme.

With “My you”, the session finishes on a slow and sedate tuning-together, as sessions so often do.