free jazz

[chveik]

There has been some nice stuff in the 'jazz without saxophones' thread but I mostly like to listen to jazz that incorporates winds or horns. I stumbled upon this wonderful band the other day, King Tears Bad Trip, a septet with 4 drummers, a guitar and a tenor sax, and I thought that it would be a nice idea to dedicate a thread to free (or avant-garde) jazz. Unfortunately they have only made one album (which is insanely good and very original).
Anyway, here's a link:

King Tears Bat Trip - Stolen Police Car
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fvtX9f0vwGI

I'm also very fond of Joe McPhee, a great saxophonist who's work is not very well-known.
'Cosmic Love' is one of my favourites songs: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bCmo30r3OXI

The Thing is also a wonderful recent band (a trio saxophone-double bass-drums). They did a nice album of cover songs with Neneh Cherry but they usually do more aggressive stuff (with sometimes drone elements in it)
A good example: Reboot - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tBkWUkQTmUQ

Do you have some nice free jazz to recommend? (ideally more obscure stuff, anyone that loves free jazz knows Ornette Coleman, late-era Coltrane, Ayler etc.)

[Gregory Torso]

Personally, I love some skronking saxophone, but I'm more into the "rock" side of it (Flying Luttenbachers, for example)

One of my favourites: 16-17, a Swiss band from mid 80s - late 90s.

Direkt B
Attack Impulse

[purlieu]

Probably the most difficult but texturally fascinating free jazz I've come across is Derek Bailey & Dave Holland's Improvisations for Cello and Guitar, part of ECM's early run of albums that don't particularly fit the label's stereotype at all. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yl_ObKL3Y9s

Barre Phillips's Mountainscapes is tremendous, a hugely atmospheric work blending clattering free jazz with almost proto-ambient synth & bowed bass soundscapes. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jYitzZCTmB8&list=PLaey_zM7o5IOOFwvBs1u5Mprbonj_rcGp

Although not free jazz, certainly on the strange end of things, is Collin Walcott, one of the few jazz sitarists the world's seen: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KHQWXJu3qk8


edit: how could I forget Company? Evan Parker playing some of the least saxophone-like saxophone ever on here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dAGn4Y_1EUM

[Gregory Torso]

Also, I really love Tiger Hatchery -

Live song - couldn't find any album tracks on youtube but I recommend Sun Worship

[Gregory Torso]

King Tears Bat Trip - Stolen Police Car
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fvtX9f0vwGI

This is fucking great, by the way.

[chveik]

Personally, I love some skronking saxophone, but I'm more into the "rock" side of it (Flying Luttenbachers, for example)

You might like EX EYE then, it's the new band of Colin Stetson (sort of a jazz/noise rock thing) :
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G_KaJrAq0oI

I love 16-17, it reminds me a little of Painkiller.

[Avril Lavigne]

Personally, I love some skronking saxophone, but I'm more into the "rock" side of it (Flying Luttenbachers, for example)

One of my favourites: 16-17, a Swiss band from mid 80s - late 90s.

Direkt B
Attack Impulse

This is excellent! Where would you recommend starting with these guys, album-wise?

[Gregory Torso]

They don't have a huge catalogue although I prefer the "Early Recordings". Their album "Gyatso" is great, too. I get the impression they were one of those bands that went unnoticed at the time and got some recognition later.

[Gregory Torso]

I hope I'm not just turning this into a "bands with saxophone" thread, but I want to finally mention Otomo Yoshihide's amazing band Ground Zero, whose records "Plays Standards", "Revolutionary Peking Opera" and "Null & Void" are all essential listening,


Here's TV-Q Missile from "Null And Void". I wish there were more bands like this and 16-17.

[Rocket Surgery]

Where would you recommend starting with [Flying Luttenbachers], album-wise?

Got fond memories of Destroy All Music, largely because a) I actually bought the CD, and b) I got in trouble for playing it at work one time.

OP: is it just the really loud/violent end of free jazz you're interested in?

[Rocket Surgery]

Ground Zero"Plays Standards", "Revolutionary Peking Opera" and "Null & Void"

American football?

Marry me you mad cunt.

[Gregory Torso]

Got fond memories of Destroy All Music, largely because a) I actually bought the CD, and b) I got in trouble for playing it at work one time.

Weasel Walter's anti-karaoke version of Wings' Jet is one of the finest covers ever.

[chveik]

OP: is it just the really loud/violent end of free jazz you're interested in?

Yes, mostly. But feel free to post anything you like.

Another band that I love
Die Like A Dog Quartet - Fragments of Music, Life and Death of Albert Ayler
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iEcgaoptwJ0

edit: again another band with Brotzmann!

[Avril Lavigne]

Got fond memories of Destroy All Music, largely because a) I actually bought the CD, and b) I got in trouble for playing it at work one time.

I just heard the first track and I'm sold :)

[Rocket Surgery]

It's weird that Noah Howard's Black Ark album is now just a click away: it was apparently the Holy Grail for free-jazz heads for decades, and now it's just there.

Not as paint-peeling as I remember it, actually, but still really good.

Wasn't expecting this to be on Youtube at all, but it seems to be your lucky night! Gets pretty rowdy, pretty quickly... but some of the later tracks go into really spacey (as in: silences, breathy reeds and ethereal textures, alien sounds from familiar instruments etc.) and then you're face first back into the maelstrom in due course.

Hope you like. More on the way, I just have to pop out.

[alan nagsworth]

Weasel Walter's anti-karaoke version of Wings' Jet is one of the finest covers ever.

Woof. Love WW, his cover of Bohemian Rhapsody is similarly utterly mental and brilliant. The grind/black metal/noise explosion at the end is hilarious. Fantastic cover.

[Avril Lavigne]

It's weird that Noah Howard's Black Ark album is now just a click away: it was apparently the Holy Grail for free-jazz heads for decades, and now it's just there.

Not as paint-peeling as I remember it, actually, but still really good.

Wasn't expecting this to be on Youtube at all, but it seems to be your lucky night! Gets pretty rowdy, pretty quickly... but some of the later tracks go into really spacey (as in: silences, breathy reeds and ethereal textures, alien sounds from familiar instruments etc.) and then you're face first back into the maelstrom in due course.

Hope you like. More on the way, I just have to pop out.

Thanks! My major experience/knowledge in the genre is mostly through John Zorn and his various projects, maybe Henry Cow if you'd put them under the same umbrella, some Sun Ra and Cecil Taylor, and a bunch of other bands who come close but I'm not sure you'd really class as jazz. It's cool to see there's so much there that I just had no idea existed.

[alan nagsworth]

There has been some nice stuff in the 'jazz without saxophones' thread but I mostly like to listen to jazz that incorporates winds or horns. I stumbled upon this wonderful band the other day, King Tears Bad Trip, a septet with 4 drummers, a guitar and a tenor sax, and I thought that it would be a nice idea to dedicate a thread to free (or avant-garde) jazz. Unfortunately they have only made one album (which is insanely good and very original).
Anyway, here's a link:

King Tears Bat Trip - Stolen Police Car
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fvtX9f0vwGI

this is fuckin r8 good by the way. really enjoying it

[purlieu]

Personally, I love some skronking saxophone, but I'm more into the "rock" side of it

If you're not familiar with them, the wonderful Death Sentence: PANDA! were a hardcore punk-inspired three-piece consisting of drums, vocals, and very skronky clarinet, who might appeal.
New China Blazers
Animals Hate You
Terrible Ways

[Rocket Surgery]

Is NoSleep uuuh asleep?

The Peter Brotzmann Octet - Machine Gun and (since I think somebody already mentioned Evan Parker) Parker/Bailey/Bennink - Topgraphy Of The Lungs should be got out of the way early doors.

[chveik]

Thinking of Peter Brotzmann, Last Exit is another great violent free jazz/punk band (a quartet with Laswell, Sharrock and Shannon Jackson) :

Iron Path https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7_nt7rOHA5c

[Sin Agog]

I think the album the Jazz Composers Orchestra (so Cecil Taylor, Pharoah Sanders, Don Cherry, Gato Barbieri and a bunch of others) recorded in '68 might be the apotheosis of the Free Jazz I've heard.

As to the more rocky shit, do check out the works of the Japanese band Midori with their demented teen banshee singer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i7_uJpG5qaA

[Rocket Surgery]

Morning!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bqq0Z-Jo1B4

[thugler]

This thread is amazing! Some great recommendations. Unfortunately i think most of the stuff i would post has already been posted, but i may be able to dig something out later

[poodlefaker]

trioVD from Leeds are worth a look: sax, drums, electric guitar.

Also, i love the Irreversible Entanglements album from last year - free jazz with angry black liberation poetry

[greenman]

Mid 60's Coltrane is I admit as far as I tend to go...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3HEhV1dQvCE

[Gregory Torso]

As to the more rocky shit, do check out the works of the Japanese band Midori with their demented teen banshee singer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i7_uJpG5qaA

Oh I like this! It's like a pissed off teenage Deerhoof!

[NoSleep]

Is NoSleep uuuh asleep?

You're all doing well without me (quite busy these days).

Went to see Peter Brotzmann's Chicago Tentet at the Cafe OTO a couple of years back. Storming band!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=anHIOlzc_bE

Their "3 Nights In Oslo" 5 CD set is well worth tracking down.

An old favourite of mine that needs to be recommended is the John Surman/Barre Philips/Stu Martin album The Trio.

I think it comes packaged in a collection named The Dawn Sessions under Surman's name (released 1999, re-released 2018 as Incantation - The Dawn Sessions). Anyways, it's another stormer; the jazz equivalent of the Jimi Hendrix Experience or something.

Oh Dear
Joachim

Maybe I'll post some more later - back to work.

[Shit Good Nose]

Pat Metheny, of all people, did some amazing stuff for a VERY short period in the mid 90s with the aforementioned Derek Bailey.  The album - The Sign of 4 - is either the best or worst thing that's ever happened in jazz, depending on who you ask.

[chveik]

Morning!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bqq0Z-Jo1B4

That's amazing!