MACHINE GUN – Machine Gun (MU Records ‎– MU 1001 / LP-1988)

Label: MU Records ‎– MU 1001

Format: Vinyl, LP / Country: US / Released: 1988

Style: Experimental, Jazz-Rock, Free Improvisation

Side A recorded live at the Court Tavern, N.B., N.J.

Side B recorded live at CBGB's N.Y.C., except Trinity Rain recorded

at Trinity College, Hartford, Conn.

All tracks improvised

Cover design by – Thi Linh Le

Produced by – Robert Musso

Engineered by – Tom Ruff

Mastered by – Howie Weinberg

℗ 1988 MU Records / Printed in Canada

Matrix / Runout (A-Side Runout, Etched): MU 1001 SA QΔ 1-1

Matrix / Runout (B-Side Runout, Etched): MU 1001 SB QΔ-X 1-1

side 1:

A1 - In Court ............................................................................................................. 5:53

A2 - The Opening Of Entry ....................................................................................... 3:30

A3 - Fancy Products ................................................................................................. 3:46

A4 - Prancing In Your Bed ........................................................................................ 4:48

A5 - Dive ................................................................................................................... 3:50

side 2:

B1 - Myffy's 1st Date ................................................................................................ 2:49

B2 - The .8 Factor .................................................................................................... 3:58

B3 - One For The Chipper ........................................................................................ 2:04

B4 - Trinity Rain ........................................................................................................ 3:21

B5 - Hierocryptics ..................................................................................................... 5:52

Personnel:

Thomas Chapin – saxophone, flute

Robert Musso – guitar, 6-string bass, electronics [ambient tapes]

Jair-Rohm Parker Wells – electric bass

Bil Bryant – drums [acoustic and electric drums]

John Richey – electronics [vocal cut-up's, tapes]

with guests:

Sonny Sharrock – guitar

Karl Berger – melodica, voice

Thomas Chapin (March 9, 1957 – February 13, 1998) was an American composer and saxophonist/multi-instrumentalist. Though primarily an alto saxophonist, he also played sopranino, as well as soprano, tenor, baritone saxes and flute.

Many of his recordings as a leader featured his trio with drummer Michael Sarin and bassist Mario Pavone, occasionally joined by guests, as well as founding Machine Gun, a free-funk-free-jazz-rock band with guitarist/producer/engineer Robert Musso.

Chapin studied with Jackie McLean and Paul Jeffrey.

Chapin died of leukemia three weeks before his 41st birthday. He last played two weeks before his death, at a benefit concert.

Karl Berger / Sonny Sharrock

For all practical purposes, this is the very first Machine Gun record, comprised of two live performances in New Jersey and New York. Machine Gun was a band that played hybrid forms of rock, jazz, and funk, all from an outsider's perspective. Personnel were the late saxophonist Thomas Chapin, guitarist Robert Musso, drummer Bill Bryant, bassist Jair-Rohm Parker Wells, and vocalist and electronic cutup artist John Richey. Special guests on these dates included the late guitarist Sonny Sharrock and Karl Berger (melodica, voice). From the opening skronk of "In Court," it's obvious that Machine Gun plays high-energy, visceral music. There are riffs and form, but lots of improvisation follows that form, and mutates it further into other forms. Feedback, tape manipulation, and hard rock and punk attitude are at the heart of the Machine Gun approach to music and noisemaking. On "Fancy Products," a striated funk riff is wound around itself and a vocal until it becomes a harmolodic jazz riff that collapses in on itself before remerging as a colossal free improv jam where Chapin and Musso trade out eights for the remainder.

On the New York CBGB's date, which covers the latter half of the disc, percussion and guitars create sparkling shards of rhythm as Berger plays a melodica through the center of "Muffy's 1st Date," turning around a small lyric idea until it gradually expands out to involve the entire band in its hypnotic simplicity. Here again, there is little refinement to the approach -- just an insistence on energy and forward thrust as the dynamic range collapses by the seventh or eighth track. This is very interesting.... and performance promise incredible sense of space and sounds, and in the end you get it all in the best possible manner .... Great album!

(Review by B. Bismount)

If you find it, buy this album!

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!

STEVE MARCUS / MIROSLAV VITOUS / SONNY SHARROCK / DANIEL HUMAIR – Green Line (SMJX 10109 / LP-1970)

Label: Victor World Group ‎– SMJX 10109

Format: Vinyl, LP, Album, Gatefold / Country: Japan / Released: 1970

Style: Free Jazz, Free Improvisation

Recorded at Victor Studio, Aoyama Tokyo 11 September 1970.

Artwork – Tadayuki Naito

Engineer – Norio Yoshizawa

Producer – Fujiya Jimbo, Tetsuya Shimoda

Manufactured By – Victor Company Of Japan, Ltd.

Green Victor World Group Label

Matrix / Runout (Matrix, label side A): SVIR-10067-A

Matrix / Runout (Matrix, label side B): SVIR-10067-B

Matrix / Runout (Runout, side A stamped): Ⓑ SVIR 10067 A 121+ UL

Matrix / Runout (Runout, side B stamped): SVIR 10067 B 111+

A1 - Melvin ........................................................................................................... 8:52

A2 - Mr. Sheets At Night ....................................................................................... 7:11

B1 - Green Line ................................................................................................... 6:15

B2 - The Echos .................................................................................................. 10:57

Personnel:

Steve Marcus – tenor and soprano saxophone

Sonny Sharrock – electric guitar

Miroslav Vitous – bass

Daniel Humair – drums, percussion

1970 Victor World Group ‎– SMJX 10109 (Japan) Stereo LP / GREEN LINE / Steve Marcus, Daniel Humair, Miroslav Vitous, Sonny Sharrock / Released in a gatefold sleeve with a double sided glued inner leaf containing credits and liner notes. ______Out Of Stock__

Truly stunning LP from four hungry young badasses in 1970.  Miroslav Vitous, Sonny Sharrock, Steve Marcus and Daniel Humair are all heavyweight cats captured in their youthful prime here, not a weak moment to be found. They each just sound so great! Vitous really stands out with a ton of seriously sick bass viol action--what's up with those simultaneous arco and pizzicato parts?!  He's just exploding on the groove in "Melvin", with Sharrock doing a perfect lean funky part, holding back to keep the groove simmering instead of blowing hard over it.  Vitous' solo in "Mr. Sheets at Night" and Marcus's painfully sensitive saxophone is something else. It's a gorgeous piece with a bristling spirit underlying the ballad surface. This album is a bit overlooked in Sonny Sharrock's discography, probably because it was released as a co-billing for the quartet, alongside the fact it's more of a straightahead jazz album than the legendary freakbombs he'd dropped in the preceding years in cahoots with Queen Linda.  His explosions on side B make for some seriously essential listening for any Sharrock-head. All four cuts are distinctive gems, but "The Echoes" is the one track that is an epic blowout that tastes good down to the last gnarly drop.  This is the real sound of jazz in 1970.

If you find it, buy this album!

PHAROAH SANDERS – Tauhid (LP-1968)

Label: Impulse! – A-9138, ABC Records – AS-9138

Format: Vinyl, LP, Album, Reissue, Stereo / Country: US / Released: 1968

Style: Free Jazz, Free Improvidation

Recorded At Van Gelder Studio, Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey, 11/15/66.

Design – Robert Flynn

Design [Liner] – Joe Lebow

Photography By – Charles Stewart

Engineer – Rudy Van Gelder

Liner Notes – Nat Hentoff

Producer – Bob Thiele

Matrix / Runout (Side A): AS 9138 A LW

Matrix / Runout (Side B): AS 9138 B LW

Matrix / Runout (Side A + B): VAN GELDER (Stamped)

Note:

A-9138 on sleeve. AS-9138 on labels and runout. Black and red ABC Impulse! labels 1968.

"A Product Of ABC Records, Inc. New York, N.Y. 10019 Made in USA" on bottom perimeter of label.

A  -  Upper Egypt & Lower Egypt ................................................................ 16:30

B1 - Japan .................................................................................................... 3:29

B2 - Aum / Venus / Capricorn Rising ...........................................................14:52

Pharoah Sanders – alto sax, tenor sax, piccolo flute, vocals

Warren "Sonny" Sharrock – guitar

Dave Burrell – piano

Henry Grimes – bass

Roger Blank – drums, percussion

Nat Bettis – percussion

A - Upper Egypt and Lower Egypt

The album opens with a collective meditation. Tympani(?), cymbal smashes, Sharrock's new approach to post-Coltrane ballad guitar, twangy and shuddering, Burrell as chordal colourist - a group - sound - and - feel -, not the soloist as free individual striving to be the lone voice...

A brief Henry Grimes bass solo - again concerned with textures and sounds, with the bass's properties as means of producing sound, with timbre and quality, with woozy arco rather than the melodic, horn-like role of La Faro or Gomez with Bill Evans.

Now Sanders' enters for the first time. His delayed entry could be said to either downplay or enhance the individual leader role I hinted at in the first paragraph: by waiting so long, his entry becomes more expected ("this album is under his name - where is he?"), more hoped for, perhaps - but at the same time the delay is a way of saying "you don't - need - to hear me straightaway - these other guys are important too." Playing piccolo, rather than sax, he vocalises through the instrument while playing, as he does on 'To Be', the flute/piccolo duet with Coltrane on 'Expression'. An 'exotic' and still striking sound, it could have become a novelty effect if Sanders had chosen to over-deploy it, but this and 'To Be' are the only recorded instances, I think. Needless to say, it's effect is a little different to Roland Kirk's use of similar techniques...

Drum ritual, low-toned. Almost nine minutes in, and Grimes is about to solo again - no, instead he locks in and begins to build the famous groove that will underpin the rest of the track (I guess we've reached 'Lower Egypt')... In itself, with the emphasis on rhythm (the players' truly functioning as 'rhythm section' here!), this could be seen as part of the 'back to Africa' movement - although (I speak from a position of relative ignorance), with a simplified, totalizing effect that downplays the complexities of actual African tribal music.

And Pharoah's solo, though brief, has such impact. For reasons of context perhaps: it's the first time he's let rip on sax, indeed, the first time we've heard him play sax at all on the album. Once again, the employment of the delaying/ waiting tactic - "that groove's been going on for - three minutes - now - what the hell is going on?" You're about to find out - Pharoah, first, echoing the groove line, three times playing the riff, then some repeated figure, now a note, first clean, now overblown - then, suddenly, WHAAARGH! WHAAARGH! WHAAARGH! I find it hard to restrain a physical reaction to those overblown whorfs of sound when I hear them. They seem so inevitable, so right - so truly the sound of a man as himself, as one with his instrument, as looking at his true centre, his true self. From the liner notes, his quotes resonate: "I don't really see the horn anymore. I'm trying to see myself. And similarly, as to the sounds I get, it's not that I'm trying to scream on my horn, I'm just trying to put all my feelings into the horn. And when you do that, the ntoes go away[...] Why [do] I want clusters [of notes]? So that I [can] get more feeling, more of me, int oevery note I play. You see, everything you do has to mean something, has to be more than just notes. That's behind everything I do - trying to get more ways of getting feeling out."

The subdued vocals that follow, might be a little underwhelming on their own, but are perhaps a necessary coming down, back to earth, back to the groove, to melody, after that solo...

B1 - Japan

At just over three minutes, this is quite clearly an 'interlude' between the two long tracks. Chugging bells and a stately promenade beat, Grimes mixing things up a little by alternating affirmative on-the-beat plucks with melodic counterpoint that goes in a slightly different direction. Sanders then sings the melody a few times, Grimes takes what I suppose one might call a short solo, then it ends.

B2 – a) - Aum

Pharoah had been here before, participating in Coltrane's 'OM' from 1965 (about which, see 'Circling Om', Simon Weill's superb article, available on the All About Jazz website). Things aren't nearly as terrifying here, though this is probably the freest section of the album. Lick-spit-riddling cymbals and hit-hat keep the sound tight, Grimes' immediately perplexing it with fast free walking, Burrell adds boxy ominous chords, then Sanders comes in, sribbling away on alto while Roger Blank switches to the more forceful toms. Off-mike for a moment, we might suppose Pharoah to be in an eye-closed calisthenics of ecstasy; he roils up and down, his tone vocal and gruff (though not as powerful as on tenor). Sawing, see-sawing up and down in motions that lead to a - strain - for volume and air, at the end, of those long notes held before the next darting rally. Highest in the mix behind the sax are the drums - the recording isn't great (they really should release a new mix of the album), but your ear can just about pick up Sonny Sharrock raging behind the Pharoah. Imagine the sonic experience if this had been better recorded! These guys truly had power behind their sound, it was - frightening - ...

B2 – b) - Venus

Sounds like they suddenly turned Sharrock up in the mix because they thought he was going to solo - as it is, Pharoah comes back in almost immediately, on tenor, but we do get to hear a precious few seconds of that guitar squall. Sanders' tone just - radiates - spirituality - later on, perhaps he traded on that a bit too much (by playing even just melodies he could convince), but here the utter sincerity is captivating, the vitality of being and the living of life in sound. Shakers and cymbals, strummed repeated bass notes and finally piano runs that prefigure Lonnie Liston Smith's harp-like arpeggios on 'Hum-Allah'. One might also note that 'Aum/Venus/Capricorn Rising' has the concision 'Hum-Allah' lacks. The three-part structure focusses things, prevents over-reliance on just one groove, one vibe. Sanders' playing of the melody, and variants on it, are the main focus here; either Sharrock's not playing, or he's just really undermiked - I guess guitar in avant-jazz wasn't really too common at the time; maybe producer Bob Theile just didn't know how to deal with it.

B2 – c) - Capricorn Rising

'Capricorn Rising' seems to be a variation on the melody of 'Venus', no less sublime. It's as if Pharoah taps into this stream of melody which is that of the universe - he takes a little fragment, puts it in barlines, turns it into a melody of its own - self-sufficient, but part of a greater whole. And I guess that's the essence of jazz improvisation too - endless variation, and sometimes that reality can include what we'd term noise, fearsome sounds of overblown shrieks - all part of Pharoah's 'Journey to the One'. Earth-bound for transcendence, Pharoah's playing here acknowleges difficulty and struggle; indeed, it - incorporates - them into lyricism, rather than retreating into the slightly drippy peace-and-love sentiment, as with 'The Creator Has a Masterplan'...

So, where does that love 'Tauhid' as a whole? Well, it shows that, for all their reputations, free jazzers wrote damn good tunes... At a relatively brief 34:20, Tauhid has all the elements which characterised Sanders' astral excursions—explicit spiritual references, vocal chants, a rolling bass ostinato, "exotic" percussion, out-there but lyrical tenor saxophone, and extended vamp-based collective jamming—and crucially, was played by an edgier and more challenging band, including guitarist Sonny Sharrock and pianist Dave Burrell, than was assembled for Karma. The later album was made by a distinctly more blissed-out line-up, lacking Sharrock, in which the comfort-zone pianist Lonnie Liston Smith and vocalist Leon Thomas figured large.

Over the next few years, Lonnie Liston Smith, already worryingly jazz-funkish on Karma, played a key role on Sanders' albums, which became increasingly codified and formulaic. In retrospect, the first cut was indeed the deepest, and for many devotees Tauhid remains Sanders' finest (half) hour.

­_Rewiew By – DAVID GRUNDY

If you find it, buy this album!