MNEMONIST ORCHESTRA – Mnemonist Orchestra (Dys ‎– DYS 01 / LP-1979)

Label: Dys ‎– DYS 01

Format: Vinyl, LP / Country: US / Released: 1979

Style: Free Jazz, Abstract, Noise, Experimental

Recorded in March 1979, Fort Collins, Colorado (U.S.A.).

Artwork [Booklet Art] – McGregor, Yeates, Hougen

Artwork [Labels] – Yeates, Hougen

Photography By [Jacket Cover] – McGregor

Concept By [Jacket Cover] – Sharp

Conductor, Tape [Taping Assistance] – Bruce McGregor

Engineer [Sound Engineering] – Mark Derbyshire

Producer – William Sharp

Matrix / Runout (Side A runout, etched): DYS 01 A RD 18404

Matrix / Runout (Side B runout, etched): DYS 01 B RD 18405

"DYS 01" was recorded in March 1979, Fort Collins, Colorado (U.S.A.). The musicians improvised within loose arrangements intended to suggest the concept of each piece. All pre-taped sounds were mixed live with the other instruments.

Record contains an 8 page insert with various art prints made by the project. LP in thick, handglued cover. Limited to around 100 copies.

side 1:

A1 - Input .................................................................................................................. 12:00

A2 - Vulnerable, Then Functional ............................................................................. 11:40

Side 2:

B1 - Corrosive On Contact ....................................................................................... 11:20

B2 - Stasis ................................................................................................................ 15:40

MNEMONIST ORCHESTRA:

Steve Chaffey – drums, percussion

John Herdt – electric guitar, percussion (A2, B2)

Torger Hougen – spoken word, illustrations

Bruce McGregor – tape, conducting, photography, illustrations

Dave Mowers – trombone, percussion

Hugh Ragin – trumpet, percussion

Steve Scholbe – alto saxophone

William Sharp – tape, conducting, arrangements, production, cover art, design, piano (A2),

5-string electric guitar (B1)

Randy Yeates – spoken word, illustrations

Additional musicians:

Dave Calvin – bass guitar (B1, B2)

Dave Marsh – bass guitar (A1, A2)

Nicki Relic – piano [prepared piano]  (A1, B1, B2), spoken word (A1)

Mnemonist Orchestra is the eponymously titled debut studio album of the free improvisation ensemble Mnemonist Orchestra, released in 1979 by Dys Records. – Extremely Rare LP...

The album was recorded in March 1979 by a group of friends and collaborators coming from diverse backgrounds, including musicians, visual artists, and scientists. Interested in the possibilities of spontaneous interaction among a diverse group, they intended the album to be an exploration of the effects of technological saturation on society, particularly upon children. The music drew heavily from musique concrète and film music, both of which would continue to influence the ensemble's future works.

There are thirteen in Mnemonist Orchestra : trumpet, trombone, alto sax, guitar, piano, bass, vocals, percussion, etc. Mark Derbyshire is the tape manipulator who brings together hundreds of free fragments; Bill Sharp is the ideologue and the spokesperson. The four movements of the symphony take place in an absolutely chaotic and uncoordinated way, independent and random sound elements follow each other quickly: monologues, jazz improvisations, background distortions, toy noises, electronic fanfares, and so on to infinity. Input is the archetype: free instruments and voices at the Art Enseble Of Chicago, with the clownesque trumpets, the other instruments that agree with indifference and nonchalance, guitar distortions, bells.the chirping of a sax in an electronic tornado leads to a crazy hard-rock for guitars forgotten with frantic and dissonant harmony of the winds. In Corrosive a tenuous piano sonata is hit by a chaotic free jazz jam. The masterpiece is Stasis , another disconnected delirium of wind instruments on a percussive carpet made of random gongs, broken objects, clock ticks, beaten metal sheets; a decaying orgy of crumbling sounds. They are absurd pieces that owe more to avant-garde jazz than to rock or electronics. Their paranoid ritual develops according to a very specific emotional thread, a convulsive gesticulation that leads to psychic collapse through a progressive rarefaction of the material.

(Review By: Achim Breiling)



If you find it, buy this album!

BIOTA – Rackabones (Dys ‎– DYS 12/13 // 2LP-1985)

Label: Dys ‎– DYS 12/13

Format: 2 × Vinyl, LP, Album / Country: US / Released: 1985

Style: Abstract, Art Rock, Jazz, Experimental, Avantgarde, Free Improvisation

Recorded Spring 1984 – Winter 1984/85. Rec. Technology Inc / Camarillo California.

George Harms – photography

Carol Heineman – [folder mezzotints & line etching], design

Tom Katsimpalis – illustrations [center labels], folder insert drawings

Tanya Staab – jacket inside drawings (artwork - l.)

Joy Froding – jacket inside drawings (artwork - r.)

Peter Lange / Randy Yeates – artwork [jacket outside (drawings)]

Bruce Leek – engineering
Mark Derbyshire – technician [technical assistance]

Composed By [Composition], Producer [Production] – Carol Heineman, Mark Piersel, Randy Yeates, Steve Scholbe, Tom Katsimpalis, William Sharp

Coordinator [UK Coordination] – Bryan Downes

Effects [Processing], Mixed By [Mixing] – Piersel, Scholbe, Sharp

Matrix / Runout (Side A runout, etched): DYS 12 A RD 18426 - I

Matrix / Runout (Side B runout, etched): DYS 12 B RD 18427 - II

Matrix / Runout (Side C runout, etched): DYS 13 C RD 18428 - A

Matrix / Runout (Side D runout, etched): DYS 13 D RD 18429 – B

side 1:

A - Vagabones - I ....................................................................................................... 26:10

side 2:

B - Vagabones - II ...................................................................................................... 26:00

side 3:

C - Rackabones - I .................................................................................................... 17:38

side 4:

D - Rackabones - II ................................................................................................... 17:30

BIOTA:

Carol Heineman – instruments, production

Tom Katsimpalis – instruments, production, illustrations

Mark Piersel – instruments, production, mixing

Steve Scholbe – instruments, production, mixing

William Sharp – instruments, production, mixing

Randy Yeates – instruments, production

Musical sources: organs/ guitars / dulcimers / tamboura / ching / ukulele / alto saxophone / clarinet / harmonicas / bagpipes / accordion / recorders / whistles / voice / toys / bass drum / bodhran / metronome / side drum / maracas / wood drums / bells / kalimbas /…

Recorded Spring 1984 – Winter 1984/85. Comes with a visual portfolio with 6 folders. Distributed by Recommended Records.

Rackabones is the sixth studio album by the free improvisation ensemble Biota, released in 1985 by Dys Records. The album marked the official beginning of Biota as an ensemble separate from the Mnemonists name. (The name Mnemonists has continued to be retained for the group's visual output.)

Incredible stuff from the American band. This was after they’d changed their name from Mnemonists, and forged forward as the musical project Biota. Under the new moniker, the collective were quieter; more discrete. However, the music oozes towards you in an extremely unsettling manner; rolling, cracking, clumping, and dissolving then reforming before your very eyes.

Founded amid the college-town environs of Fort Collins, Colorado, in the late 1970s, Biota's initial recordings were produced under the name Mnemonist Orchestra (soon after shortened to Mnemonists). Produced and engineered by Mark Derbyshire and William Sharp, Mnemonists released five albums between 1980 and 1984 on its self-founded Dys label.

After the release of Gyromancy in 1984, the group split into two collaborative factions: a visual-arts collective, which retained the name Mnemonists, and the musical group, Biota.

Biota is a longstanding American experimental electronic music ensemble that has released a growing number of elaborate musical-visual projects and albums since their beginnings in the late 1970s. Biota is known for its highly detailed and often radical approach to composition and arrangement, founded largely upon principles of studio-based co-composition, simultaneity, and meticulous electronic processing of mostly acoustic sound sources — creating an unconventional continuum of traditional and nontraditional musical forms, including folk, jazz, chamber, rock, and occasional balladry.

Four long pieces can be heard on "Rackabones", which are stylistically based on the two long compositions found on "Gyromancy". In the very elaborately designed booklet of the LP (which also contains 6 double-sided art prints), the musicians and the instruments used are listed, but without specifying who played what. Steve Scholbe, Tom Katsimpalis, Mark Piersel, Randy Yates, Carol Heineman and William Sharp serve here: organs, guitars, dulcimers, tambura, ching, saxophones, clarinets, ukulele, harmonicas, bagpipes, accordion, recorders, whistles, voice, toys, bass drum, bodhran, metronomes, side drum, wood drums, bells, kalimbas. The whole thing was edited, distorted and mixed by the Trio Sharp, Piersel, Scholbe, with the help of Mark Derbyshire, who still belonged to the band on "Gyromancy".

The result is an adventurous and extremely complex sequence of countless sound events, the origins of which cannot always be clearly heard. The music fluctuates between ambient-like soundscapes, RIO-like strumming, electronic sound walls, pure noise confusion, meditative sound floating, minimalist sound constructions, strange songs, edgy chamber music confusion, percussive stamping, confused plingings, bizarre tape collages, chopped-up sound puzzles, strange white sound puzzles, strange , broken folk fragments, somber roar and halls, weird gurgling and almost industrial noise back and forth. For almost 90 minutes there is just strange, hard to describe music to the ears, which, if you get involved, offers a very fascinating listening experience. The whole thing often looks as if someone had put a myriad of different recordings, of instrumental voices, noises, voices and rhythms, into a mixer, finely chopped them up, mixed them well, hung them together, and then electronically distorted the mess. Amazingly, the result is a very dense whole, which oozes out of the speakers like an extreme acoustic nightmare, like an intense sound hallucination, like a drug trip painted in sound. This is how madness sounded. Grandiose!

At least two things can be gathered from my painstaking attempt to put this musical event into words: on the one hand, the whole thing is a rather extraordinary, musical work of art (and in my opinion the best album from Mnemonists / Biota), which on the other hand is far beyond it, what is considered "normal" in the musical field. So only music lovers who hear rather strange "stuff" should listen in here. For lovers of avant-garde sounds, this album is highly recommended! A small problem, however, is that "rackabones" are not yet available on CD.

(Review By: Achim Breiling)

Note:

A small change was deliberately made at the some pages which has no effect on the quality of the original design. In this way, I protect my work.

If you find it, buy this album!

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!

NOIR MIX-4 – Per Different Jazz In My Room (DP-10004 / night mix-2020)

Noir MIX-4 / Per Different Jazz In My Room
(DP-10004 / 2020)
MIX de Nuit / Night MIX
CISM and Free Jazz shows from Montreal
Thursday Night or Friday Morning: 2 AM to 4 AM /
episodes of January 14, 2009. until December 28, 2012.
CISM 89.3 FM :: WWW.CISM893.CA
département jazz et nouvelles musiques de CISM /
department Jazz and New Music by CISM
Author by Francois Samson-Dunlop
Cover Design by vitkoArt / Noir MIX [graphics] by VITKO /2020

one lane:

04 - NOIR MIX-4 – Per Different Jazz In My Room ................................................. 122:16

"Noir MIX-4"...... Parts of the radio episodes "mix de nuit" (night mix), popular CISM and Free Jazz Shows from Montreal (CISM 89.3 FM) by François Samson-Dunlop were used. The episodes lasted from January 14, 2009 until December 28, 2012 and aired between 2 AM and 4 AM. I liked the concept very much and I followed it literally .... The characteristic of these soundtracks is that the music runs continuously for two hours without interruption, the tracks flow seamlessly from one to another with the perfect feeling of combining the artist and changing the tempo ...

.... A noir mix that disperses without ever getting lost.....

If you love yourself, pick this up...!

THE LOUNGE LIZARDS – The Lounge Lizards (Editions EG – EGS 108/LP-1981)

Label: Editions EG ‎– EGS 108

Format: Vinyl, LP, Album / Country: US Released: 1981

Style: Avant-garde Jazz, No Wave, Free Improvisation

Recorded at CBS Recording Studios in New York on July 21-22, 28-29 1980.

Mixed at CBS Recording Studios in New York on August 6, 14-15 1980.

Design – Peter Saville

Photography By – Fran Pelzman

Engineer – Frank Laico, Ted Brosman

Recorded By – Teo Macero

Mastered By – Gc

Mixed By – Don Puluse

Producer – Teo Macero

Pressed By – Hub-Servall Record Mfg. Corp.

Matrix / Runout (Runout area side A Var.1): ESG - 108 - A STERLING HuB

Matrix / Runout (Runout area side B Var.1): ESG - 108 - B STERLING Gc HuBre

side1:

A1 - Incident on South Street   (John Lurie) .............................................................. 3:21

A2 - Harlem Nocturne   (Earle Hagen) ...................................................................... 2:04

A3 - Do The Wrong Thing   (John Lurie / Steve Piccolo) .......................................... 2:40

A4 - Au Contraire Arto   (John Lurie) ......................................................................... 3:22

A5 - Well You Needn't   (Thelonious Monk) .............................................................. 1:55

A6 - Ballad   (John Lurie) .......................................................................................... 3:25

A7 - Wangling   (John Lurie) ......................................................................................2:58

side2:

B1 - Conquest of Rar   (John Lurie / Evan Lurie/ Anton Fier) ................................... 3:14

B2 - Demented   (John Lurie) ................................................................................... 2:02

B3 - I Remember Coney Island   (John Lurie) .......................................................... 3:29

B4 - Fatty Walks   (John Lurie) ................................................................................. 2:52

B5 - Epistrophy    (Thelonious Monk / Kenneth Clarke) ........................................... 4:15

B6 - You Haunt Me   (John Lurie) ............................................................................. 3:40

Personnel:

John Lurie – alto saxophone

Evan Lurie – keyboards

Steve Piccolo – bass

Arto Lindsay – guitar

Anton Fier – drums, percussion

The Lounge Lizards is the first album by The Lounge Lizards. It features hectic instrumental jazz. The songs are mostly composed by band leader and saxophone player John Lurie. The album artwork was designed by the English graphic designer Peter Saville.

The Lounge Lizards were an eclectic musical group founded by saxophonist John Lurie and his brother, pianist Evan Lurie, in 1978. Initially known for their ironic, tongue-in-cheek take on jazz, The Lounge Lizards eventually became a showcase for John Lurie's sophisticated compositions straddling jazz and many other genres. They were active until about 1998 with the Lurie brothers as the only constant members, though many leading New York City based musicians were members of the group.

The group's name was borrowed from American slang. A lounge lizard is typically depicted as a well-dressed man who frequents the establishments in which the rich gather with the intention of seducing a wealthy woman with his flattery and deceptive charm.

At its founding, the band consisted of John Lurie and Evan Lurie, guitarist Arto Lindsay, bassist Steve Piccolo, and percussionist Anton Fier. They released a self-titled album on EG Records in 1981. The album included two Thelonious Monk covers, but as one critic noted, "the two aforementioned Monk covers seem a strange choice when you actually hear the band, which has more in common with sonic experimentalists like Ornette Coleman or Sun Ra."

By the mid-1980s, a new line-up included bassist Erik Sanko, trombonist Curtis Fowlkes, guitarist Marc Ribot, saxophonist Roy Nathanson, and percussionists Dougie Bowne and E.J. Rodriguez. This group recorded various live and studio albums and showcased John Lurie's increasingly sophisticated and multi-layered compositions.

Note:

In 1998, the band released Queen of All Ears on John Lurie's Strange and Beautiful Music label and had added Steven Bernstein, Michael Blake, Oren Bloedow, David Tronzo, Calvin Weston, and Billy Martin. "The Lizards' music isn't jazz," said Fred Bouchard of JazzTimes, "but it is intelligent and rhythmically and harmonically interesting (it ain't rock either, in other words) and, despite the ultra-hip trappings, it has an almost innocent directness that can transcend stylistic prejudice."

Recent years have found the Lounge Lizards less active. John Lurie has been occupied with painting, while Evan has worked on The Backyardigans, a children's show that highlights multiple musical genres.

If you find it, buy this album!