There are even hummable themes, however brief they may be. Machine Gun is not all volume, though: there are passages of silence and chilling hints of space between barrages of instrumental fury. Noise artists for generations to come would give everything to be half this abrasive. Even today, so many years after this was captured to tape, it's still startling, and still brings to question any ideas you might have about what could be considered "jazz." Yes, American fire music players had broken countless barriers earlier in the 1960s, but nobody had ever really sounded like this before. Machine Gun opens with a deafening blast of pure sound, a pummeling broadside of Brotzmann, Evan Parker, and Willem Breuker's saxophones. Peter Brotzmann's second release as a leader, this was the album that firmly established his voice as a performer and an improviser, defined what would become the FMP aesthetic, and truly distinguished European free-music from its American counterpart. Parov Stelar Trio feat.2018 marks the 50th anniversary of Machine Gun's release, but it's still just as shocking and powerful a record as ever, a stunning and bewildering listen from beginning to end. Jimmy Castor - Hey Leroy, Your Mama’s Callin’ You Junior Walker & the Allstars - Roadrunner It’s a terrifying piece of music and the quintessence of freeform jazz. Think of it as one of those hidden tracks at the end of an album that used to be so popular a few years agoĪfter the silence, The Peter Brötzmann Octet’s Machine Gun had to stand alone. Now for fun on my YouTube playlist, I have added a 4’33” interval so that those of a nervous disposition can run away before the final track. Saltash is on the right side of the Tamar, too, at the beginning of God’s own country. It is so gorgeous that I knew from the first notes that it would be on the list.
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But far less familiar, in fact completely new to me, was Saltash Bells by John Surman. I love a bit of Frank Zappa, and The Gumbo Variations is an old favourite from one of Zappa’s best albums. It has that lovely, lazy rhythm that just makes you want to sway along to it. If I didn’t know this was Senegalese, I would have thought it was pure Cuban. Not so, however for Orchestra Baobab and Utrus Horas – Pirate’s Choice. The Parov Stelar Trio featuring Michael Wittner won me over with La Calatrava party on the strength of the video. Now we move towards a hypnotic repetitive background track with the sax swirling around it. He’s playing only one saxophone here but his instrument has microphones all over it, so it is awash with unconventional sounds. On Judges, Colin Stetson uses the circular breathing technique employed by Roland Kirk. I am unsure whether it exists as a band or a recording other than this video but it was too good to miss out on the fun of All Cameras with Sax Battle in NYC Subway. However, the next one is something of a mystery, with Google producing no further information. In contrast to King Curtis, Fun House by the Stooges has the classic braying sound of the tenor sax. Here it is lyrical and restrained, though not lacking in passion.įancy some music to dance round the kitchen to? Even my cats got the groove on Jimmy Castor’s Hey Leroy, Your Mama’s Callin’ You. The sound of a sax is often braying and wide open, and that’s one of the things I love about it. So let’s kick off with some northern soul, and what’s not to to love about Junior Walker & the Allstars with Roadrunner?įor a change of pace, let’s try A Whiter Shade of Pale by King Curtis. A couple of early A-listers turned out to be in previous A-lists from other topics, so were void. Because of this, many much loved solos have been omitted.
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So I have tried to pick tracks where the sax runs the whole way through the music. It was too hard to choose between them and would also have made for a very homogenous playlist. Calm your fears I’ve saved most of that for the B-list – where you might find almost all of the classic sax players. Some of you who may know, from Readers Recommend, of my taste for freeform jazz, industrial noise and the farther reaches of metal, and so may be slightly afraid of what’s coming. I don’t think I’ve ever had a harder time narrowing down the choice to 12 tracks.