LAST EXIT – Last Exit (Enemy Records ‎– EMY 101 / LP-1986)

Label: Enemy Records ‎– EMY 101

Format: Vinyl, LP, Album / Country: Germany / Released: 1986

Style: Free Jazz, Heavy Metal, Free Improvisation

Recorded at New Morning, Paris, Feb 16, 1986.

Mixed at Quad Recording Studios

Design – Thi-Linh Le

Photography By – Val Telberg

A&R [Enemy Records Administration] – Michael Knuth

Engineering: Robert Musso

Assistant Engineer: Peter Sturge

Mastered by Howie Weinberg

Producer, Performer, Composed By – Last Exit

Matrix / Runout (Runout A-side, stamped): EMY 101 - A1

Matrix / Runout (Runout B-side, stamped): EMY 101 - B1

side 1:

A1 - Discharge .......................................................................................................... 3:28

A2 - Backwater .......................................................................................................... 5:30

A3 - Catch As Catch Can .......................................................................................... 2:15

A4 - Red Light ........................................................................................................... 8:03

side 2:

B1 - Enemy Within ...................................................................................................  3:50

B2 - Crackin .............................................................................................................. 7:49

B3 - Pig Freedom ...................................................................................................... 4:03

B4 - Voice Of A Skin Hanger ..................................................................................... 1:46

B5 - Zulu Butter ......................................................................................................... 2:28

Personnel:

Peter Brötzmann – saxophone [tenor, alto, bass]

Sonny Sharrock – guitar

Bill Laswell – electric bass [6 strings]

Ronald Shannon Jackson – drums, percussion, voice

In the mid-'80s, Bill Laswell had a great idea. Why not combine rock's raging rhythms and volume with free jazz improvisation's unfettered creativity and ferocity? To this end, he made three inspired choices to fill out his band. Drummer Ronald Shannon Jackson was a veteran of Ornette Coleman's Prime Time ensemble as well as a past member of Cecil Taylor's volcanic mid-'70s bands. Sonny Sharrock had burst onto the scene in the late '60s with Pharoah Sanders, Don Cherry, and others, establishing a unique approach to free electric guitar playing, only to retreat from the scene before being lured out of retirement by Laswell. The wild card was German saxophone behemoth Peter Brötzmann, known for his classic, shatteringly intense album Machine Gun from 1968 as well as multitudes of subsequent recordings where a premium was placed on visceral, gut-wrenching interplay among musicians. Mix these elements together and Laswell (with his own funky, dub-heavy electric bass anchoring the proceedings) had an incendiary formula, one that perhaps couldn't hold together long but, while it did, it produced some amazingly powerful music. Never was this more in evidence than on this first, self-titled release, one of the very finest albums of the '80s.

Entirely improvised, Last Exit nonetheless based most of its pieces on blues forms, even if highly abstracted. This bedrock allowed the musicians, particularly Brötzmann and Sharrock (whose early death in 1994 would cancel any possibility, however tenuous at that point, of the group's continuation) to freely explore the outer boundaries of their instruments, sublimely soaring over the down to earth and dirty rhythm team of Laswell and Jackson. This tension, strongly shown on the first four tracks here, reached almost unbearable degrees; its release when they would slide back into a groove leaves the listener utterly drained. Subsequent albums (notably Koln) would come close to attaining this level of intensity and creativity, but Last Exit ranks as a pinnacle both in Laswell's career and in the jazz/rock/free improv genre it spawned.

A classic release, one that should be in the collection of anyone interested in either contemporary free improvisation or the more creative branches of jazz/rock.

(Review by Brian Olewnick)

If you find it, buy this album!

LAST EXIT – Cassette Recordings 87 (Enemy Records ‎– EMY 105 / LP-1987)

Label: Enemy Records ‎– EMY 105

Format: Vinyl, LP / Country: Germany / Released: 1987

Style: Jazz-Rock, Free Improvisation

Cassette recordings from Copenhagen, North Sea Jazz Festival, Den Haag, Allentown, Penn. Produced at Quad Recordings, NYC. Mastered at Masterdisk.

Mastered By – Howie Weinberg

Other [Enemy Administration] – Michael Knuth

Producer [Assistant] – Robbie Norris

Producer [Salvage Production] – Robert Musso

Matrix / Runout (Side A, Etched): EMY 105 / Efa 03505 A

Matrix / Runout (Side B, Etched): EMY 105 / Efa 03505 B

side 1:

A  -  Line Of Fire ...................................................................................................... 20:35

side 2:

B1/B4 - Big Boss Man > Sore Titties > Ulli Bulli Fooli > Ma Rainey ....................... 16:29

             1 - Big Boss Man ............................. 1:05

             2 - Sore Titties ................................. 6:17

             3 - Ulli Bulli Fooli .............................. 3:57

             4 - Ma Rainey .................................. 5:08

B5 - My Balls / Your Chin .......................................................................................... 2:36

Personnel:

Peter Brötzmann – saxophone [tenor, alto, bass], tárogató

Sonny Sharrock – guitar

Bill Laswell – electric bass [6 strings]

Ronald Shannon Jackson – drums, percussion, voice

Beautiful, 1987 German Only Original vinyl LP. Recorded Live At The North Sea Jazz Festival.

Sharrock / Brötzmann

Laswell / Jackson

Raw, but these live recordings are better recorded than the title might indicate. Into this recipe Peter Brötzmann brings the euro improvisation ferocity and Cecil Taylor influences, Sonny Sharrock adds the American jazz innovation, Ronald Shannon Jackson's ingredients include the blues and bang-on-a-pot suddeness, and Bill Laswell, well he contributes a fatty slice of the avant garde, and some knowledge of knob-twidding to boot would be my guess. All mixed into an explosive whole. Noisy, yes. Freely, most definitely.

The first track, "Line Of Fire", is a good example: Albert Ayler opening, then rumbling, rumbling, rumbling, and everyone goes off into their own worlds, all the while maintaining a semblance of being a band, a grouping, a gathering of artists, rather than just some guys standing in the same room, blasting and clanging and squalling away on what-have-you. There's superb interaction despite all the sonic feces being flung every which way.

So I'm going to say: stay patient, give it time and a few listens, and you may find yourself falling in love with (or at least have a passing attraction to) a band that no longer exists but which once held the music world by its ear and gave it a good shake.

(Review by RIStout)

If you find it, buy this album!

THE GOLDEN PALOMINOS – The Golden Palominos (CEL 6662 / LP-1983)

Label: Celluloid ‎– CEL 6662

Format: Vinyl, LP, Album / Country: France / Released: 1983

Style: Avantgarde, Free Improvisation

Recorded at Radio City Music Hall Studio/NYC and OAO Studio/Brooklyn

Mixed at RPM Studio/NYC and OAO Studio/Brooklyn

Design [Layout] – Jan Luss

Photography By – Thi-Linh Le

Engineer – Don Hünerberg, Martin Bisi

Engineer [Assistant At RPM] – Mike Krowiak

Mixed By – Anton Fier, Bill Laswell, Martin Bisi

Executive-Producer – Karakos, Roger Trilling

Producer – Anton Fier, Bill Laswell

Producer [Associate] – Arto Lindsay, Martin Bisi

Repetiteur [Vocal Coach] – Peter Blegvad

Matrix / Runout (A-Side Runout, Etched): Cel 6662 A

Matrix / Runout (B-Side Runout, Etched): Cel 6662 A

side 1:

A1 - Clean Plate   (Fier, Lindsay) .............................................................................. 6:32

A2 - Hot Seat   (Fier, Noyes, Miller) .......................................................................... 5:13

A3 - Under The Cap   (Fier, Lindsay) ........................................................................ 5:32

A4 - Monday Night   (Fier, Lindsay) .......................................................................... 6:29

side 2:

B1 - Cookout   (Fier) ................................................................................................. 4:38

B2 - I.D.   (Fier, Lindsay) ........................................................................................... 6:45

B3 - Two Sided Fist   (Fier, Lindsay, Frith) ................................................................ 7:42

Musicians:

ARTO LINDSAY – vocals, guitar

ANTON FIER – drums, oberheim DMX, percussion

FRED FRITH – guitar, violin

BILL LASWELL – bass guitar

JOHN ZORN – alto saxophone, clarinet, game calls

NICKY SKOPELITIS – guitar on "Monday Night" / "I.D."

THI-LINH LE – vocals on "Monday Nigh''

MARK E. MILLER – vocals on "Hot Seat", turntables on "Hot Seat" / "Monday Night"

DAVID MOSS – percussion on "Clean Plate" / "Under the Cap" / "Two Sided Fist"

MICHAEL BEINHORN – drums and Oberheim DMX on "Hot Seat", piano on "Cookout"

JAMAALADEEN TACUMA – Steinberger bass guitar on "Clean Plate" / "Two Sided Fist"

ROGER TRILLING – tape on "Cookout"

The group first featured drummer Anton Fier, singer-guitarist Arto Lindsay, saxophonist John Zorn, bass guitarist Bill Laswell and violinist/guitarist Fred Frith. Their self-titled debut album was released on New York's Celluloid Records in 1983, and featured guest appearances by bassist Jamaaladeen Tacuma, guitarist Nicky Skopelitis, percussionist David Moss, turntablist M.E. Miller and others.

Arto Lindsay / Anton Fier

For twenty years, the Golden Palominos have been musical chameleons, continually changing lineups and styles. The only constant has been drummer Anton Fier, whose vision and interests have steered the group through two decades of music making.

The Golden Palominos were formed in the early 1980s, as a joint project, by drummer Anton Fier and noise-guitarist Arto Lindsay. Fier came from Cleveland where he had played with new wave cult band Pere Ubu. In 1978, he left Ohio for New York City. Once there he moved through various bands including a band he formed himself, the Feelies and the Pedestrians. At the end of the 1970s, with Lindsay and John Lurie, he co-founded the Lounge Lizards, a band that played an indescribable combination of noise, rhythm, and jazz. “Actually, when I first started playing with the Lounge Lizards, Arto and I wanted to call the band the Golden Palominos,” Fier told Down Beat’s Bill Milkowski. “We liked the name but Lurie didn’t.” Lindsay, Fier said, was the reason he joined the Lounge Lizards. So when Arto left the band, Fier did too and decided the next step was for the two of them to form a new band together, which they were able to name the Golden Palominos.

The group’s first incarnation was as a super group of the late-1970s New York downtown improv scene. Its participants included luminaries such as saxophonist John Zorn, guitarists Fred Frith and Nicky Skopelitis,and bassists Bill Laswell and Jamaaladeen Tacuma. The music the band made was a marvelous combination of incongruous styles. On the one hand, the music was improvised, free, uncontrolled even. Lindsay, the Palominos de facto frontman, played chunks of noise on his 12-string guitar which he deliberately refused to tune and squawked out truncated, nonsensical lyrics, while Zorn was as likely to accompany the band with bird calls as with his horn. On the other, when the band played it locked into a throbbing, unrelenting funk groove driven by Tacuma and Laswell’s basses and Fier’s unerring backbeat.

The group gave a series of critically well-received concerts in the New York City area in 1982, and in 1983 released a record, simply titled Golden Palominos, on Bill Laswell’s Celluloid label. The New York Times lavished praise on the album. Down Beat called it “a masterpiece…an enormously important and satisfying album” and gave it five stars, the magazine’s highest rating.

If you find it, buy this album!

FRED FRITH – Step Across The Border (2LP-1990)

Label: RecRec Music – RecRec 30

Format: 2 × Vinyl, LP, Compilation / Country: Switzerland / Released: 1990

Style: Avantgarde, Experimental, Jazz-Rock

Music for the film by Nicolas Humbert and Werner Penzel, Recorded between 1979 and 1989.

Artwork [Lithography] – Busag, Zürich

Design [Cover] – Peter Bäder

Engineer – Benedykt Grodon

Photography By – Oscar Salgado

Recorded By – Jean Vapeur

Compiled with additons and alterations at Sound Fabrik, Munich Dec. 89.

A1 - Sparrow Song ........... (1:31)

A2 - Voice of America, Part III .......... (4:26)

A3 - Selluloid Restaurant ........... (3:12)

A4 - After Dinner .......... (1:49)

A5 - Houston Street .......... (2:56)

A6 - Drum Factory .......... (2:04)

A7 - Regardless of Rain ............ (3:07)

B1 - Candy Machine ............ (3:02)

B2 - Romanisches Café .......... (6:22)

B3 - The Border ........... (3:31)

B4 - Nirvana Again ............ (1:55)

B5 - Scottish Roppongi ........... (1:50)

C1 - Norrgarden Nyvla ............ (2:59)

C2 - Birds ........... (2:21)

C3 - The As Usual Dance towards the Other Flight to What Is Not, Part 3 ........... (1:50)

C4 - Williamsburg Bridge ........... (1:56)

C5 - Same Old Me .......... (4:13)

C6 - The As Usual Dance towards the Other Flight to What Is Not, Part 7 ........... (2:28)

C7 - Lost and Found .......... (3:20)

D1 - Nine by Nine .......... (5:54)

D2 - Evolution ........... (3:23)

D3 - Union Square .......... (1:44)

D4 - Morning Song .......... (2:03)

D5 - Voice of America, Part IV .......... (2:05)

D6 - Too Much Too Little ........... (2:09)

D7 - Too Late ........... (2:25)

Line-up / Musicians:

- Fred Frith / guitar, violin, bass, home-mades, DX7, Casio, voice, percussion, bottles, trumpet

- Tom Cora / cello, drum, voice

- Zeena Parkins / keyboards, drum, voice

- Bob Ostertag / Serge synthesizer, tapes, samples

- Bill Laswell / bass

- Fred Maher / drums

- John Zorn / alto saxophone

- Daihachi Oguchi / factory sound

- Jean Derome / alto saxophone

- René Lussier / bass

- Kevin Norton / drums

- Eino Haapala / guitar

- Marc Hollander / alto saxophone

- Lars Hollmer / keyboards

- Hans Bruniusson / drums

- Tim Hodgkinson / bass clarinet

- Iva Bittová / violin

- Pavel Fajt / beer cans, guitar, voice

- Eitetsu Hayashi / taiko

- Tina Curran / bass

- Haco / piano, voice

Step Across the Border is a 1990 avant-garde documentary film on English guitarist, composer and improviser Fred Frith. It was written and directed by Nicolas Humbert and Werner Penzel and released in Germany and Switzerland. The film was screened in cinemas in North America, South America, Europe and Japan, and on television in the United States, Germany, Switzerland, Austria and France. It was also released on VHS by RecRec Music (Switzerland) in 1990, and was later released on DVD by Winter & Winter (Germany) in 2003.

Shot in black and white, the 35mm documentary was filmed between 1988 and 1990 in Japan, Italy, France, Germany, England, the United States and Switzerland, and shows Frith rehearsing, performing, giving interviews and relaxing. Other musicians featured include René Lussier, Iva Bittová, Tom Cora, Tim Hodgkinson, Bob Ostertag and John Zorn.

The film won "Best Documentary" at the European Film Awards in 1990. A companion soundtrack album, Step Across the Border was also released by RecRec Music in 1990.

A ninety minute celluloid improvisation by Nicolas Humbert and Werner Penzel.

"Improvisation" here refers not only to the music, but also to the film itself. Humbert and Penzel state in the 2003 DVD release of the film:

“In Step Across the Border two forms of artistic expression, improvised music and cinema direct, are interrelated. In both forms it is the moment that counts, the intuitive sense of what is happening in a space. Music and film come into existence out of an intense perception of the moment, not from the transformation of a preordained plan.”

The film is not narrated, and the musicians, the music and the locations are not identified. Instead it is a sequence of "snapshots' taken of Frith and musicians he has worked with, rehearsing and performing, interspersed with apparent random images of movement (trains, cars, people, grass) that blend in with the music. The improvised nature of the film and its Direct Cinema approach make it more of an art film than simply a documentary on a musician.

The music in the film is performed by Frith on his own, with others, and by others on their own. Some of the music is improvised, some is composed material performed "live", and some is previously recorded material played as accompaniment to many of the "movement" sequences in the film.

The recording of the film coincided with the formation and activity of Frith's review band Keep the Dog (1989–1991), and many of the participants of the band appear in the film. There are even a few rare glimpses of the band rehearsing. René Lussier in particular, features prominently and "interviews" Frith about his musical upbringing and approach to music.

The title of the film comes from the lyrics of the song "The Border", recorded by Skeleton Crew on their album, The Country of Blinds (1986). A brief "video" of this song also appears in the film.

Although this is technically the soundtrack to a film of the same name by Nicolas Humbert and Werner Penzel, Step Across the Border actually serves as an excellent overview of Fred Frith's groundbreaking work as a soloist, bandleader, and collaborator. There's an example of his "guitars on the table" approach ("Romanisches Cafe"), and a couple of excellent duos with tape manipulation whiz Bob Ostertag ("Voice of America, Pt. 3," from the lost and lamented Voice of America album they made for the defunct Metalanguage label). There are also scraps of material from his work with Skeleton Crew as well as numerous other well-chosen miniatures that vary from tuneful and charming to stark and forbidding. Perhaps the best thing this album accomplishes is that it puts some of the material from the astounding (but, sadly, long out of print) album of avant-garde power trio compositions and improvisations Frith recorded with Bill Laswell and Fred Maher under the name Massacre back into circulation: the very fine "Legs" is included here, as is a previously unreleased live track from 1983. Very highly recommended.

_ Review by Rick Anderson

The collection itself is wonderful, showing all sides of Frith's skillful and innovative playing and composition. The songs range from sounds similar to The Residents, whose Commercial Album featured Frith as a sideman, to early Zappa, and even one song Evolution, with high pitched vocals and a reggae influenced beat, that sounds sort of like a deranged version of The Police.

This is a gem in my collection. Highly recommended for the RIO fan.

If you find it, buy this album!