Free Jazz Music

While I wouldn't say it's a "fun" record, Mark Dresser's Aquifer is certainly more playful and less claustrophobic than his duo disc, Sonomondo, with Frances-Marie Uitti. Out of nowhere, "hyperpiano" player Denman Maroney breaks into a stride piano solo in the middle of early highlight "Digestivo," and there's a bouncy, woozy vibe to "Threaded/Spin X" that suggests the trio (composed of Dresser, Maroney and flautist Mathias Ziegler) is coming down from a nitrous oxide high.

All three musicians are sonic alchemists, conjuring new sounds from their instruments and experimenting with their mixture. Dresser somehow evokes a swarm of bees in the opening section of the album centerpiece "Sonomatopoeia" while Maroney scrapes the inside of his prepared piano and Ziegler's flute becomes a gust of wind. The aquatic theme of the album is recalled on the opener "FLBP," as the combo moans and creaks like an old, leaky boat slowly sinking into the ocean.

There's a lot of spacious improv on this disc, but the composed pieces are pretty awesome, too. The pointillistic "Pulse Field" is more or less a dance piece, albeit totally perverted and thoroughly syncopated. And on "FLAC," Maroney pulls off the insanely difficult task of doubling Dresser's brainy line with his left hand and doubling Ziegler's equally brainy but completely unrelated line with his right hand. Simultaneously. The same trick that Brad Mehldau uses, without being abetted by the strictures of tonality...wow.

"Aquifer" can be listened to as compelling background music, but there is a whole lot to listen to. Buy this, pick up the 2000 disc "Sonomondo" on Cryptogramophone, then enroll in UC San Diego, where Dresser is replacing Bertram Turetzky as resident master bass teacher.

i got this CD because i heard that buckethead was on it. i am also a fan of jazz and fusion, but i didn't know that this CD was so jazzy. i thought it would be ambient crap, but i got it because it was buckethead, and i had nothing to lose. all the songs on this CD are somewhat ambient, but nowhere near boring. i would catagorize this CD as ambient acid jazz-fusion.
everybody's performance on this CD is simply stunning.
buy this CD!

This album is one of my favorites. On this wonderful recording we have jazz greats like Graham Haynes, Byard Lancaster, Pharoah Sanders, and of course the amazing Tony Williams, with studio wizard Bill Laswell (who also plays bass on this) and fusion guitarists Buckethead and Nicky Skopelitis. This is the sort of recording that you can just sit back and listen to these incredible musicians go off into their own world... Take Williams' off-time jazzy rhythms, with Laswell's tasty and well fitted bass lines, with Sanders' astonishing improvised sax soloing, add Buckethead's mind-boggling virtuoso playing and you have quite an eclectic mix. A must have for fans of Jazz Fusion. Stand-out tracks: "Returnin" and "Circles Of Hell".

first of all let me say this is the most expensive single CD i've ever purchased (i paid around $22-25 for it), but undoubtably one of the best i've ever heard.

This is prog/jazz/fusion at its best with an all-star cast that actually comes to play (unlike other all-star Laswell related discs such as Material: third power which, despite the cast, have let me down). Pharoah is still a tremendous talent and lends his own freakout sax stylings on a couple of trakcs. Buckethead fans won't be disappointed either, as he plays a major role in the few tracks that he actually appears on. Finally, Tony Williams is amazing...you won't believe that this is his last outing before his death as his chops are as fine tuned as ever.

Its often times difficult for me to relate to my friends what this disc sounds like, as simply labeling it prog-jazz or fusion seems to be an inept definition. I came up with the term "psychedelic masterpieces" to describe the feel of the tunes on this CD to one of my friends and in a way its the best description i have given yet. Each track is its own world, often times dark and dramatic, yet with much beauty and life manifested inside. One can get lost in their own visions while listening to this album, creating vivid imagery of the history of life in ones own head while experiencing the peaks and plateuas of this amazing album.

Basically all i can say is that if you have read anything about this album and the idea of bringing all of these legends together in one disc intrigues you, don't cop out of buying it due to the price. it is worth every penny.

This is jazz-fusion of the highest order. No fooling around, no chick vocalists or fluffy synths, no out-of-tune soprano saxophone solos meandering around the room, no slickness, no concession to pop radio or any of that nonsense. This is blazing, hard, rhythm-based improvisational music. The late Tony Williams attacks the drums with a power rarely heard outside of death-metal, various guitarists add thick furious layers of skronk to the mix, and greats like Pharaoh Sanders return to glory with cathartic free-jazz solos. And above it all (or perhaps below it all) lurks Bill Laswell on bass and keyboards. Next time somebody dismisses jazz-fusion out of hand (and they do have the right), offer this as supporting evidence along with "Jack Johnson".

Wow! This was Tony Williams' last recorded album. He's drumming straight-8th fusion style all over this recording. The supporting cast(actually everyone contributes equally), Bill Laswell, Pharoah Sanders, Byard Lancaster, Graham Haynes, Nicky Skopelitis, and Buckethead, are all incredible musicians in their own right.

But, just because you assemble some great, respective and creative musical artists together, doesn't mean they're going to deliver. This time, however, you can only wonder, "what would've been"?Tony WIlliams died before this was released, so any fan of his would be proud to own this as a final "swansong" recording.

I am proud to have it because it is an interesting creative fusion recording. It used to be that Jazz-Rock was a genre full of promise--until the moneyhounds and Record companies got a hold of it and turned it into generic Fuzac. I was wary of purchasing what could very well be a regurgitated carbon-copy of funky-sounding sleepy Elevator music. If you're wanting something interesting and creative, and respect only ONE of the names on this disc, I would suggest that purchasing this might be a sure-thing for ya. Buckethead's guitar is incredible, so is Tony's drumming, and Laswell, well, his name on anything as producer and bassists insured a rubber-stamp of quality and creativity unlike anyone else for the past 25 years!

I was really into Tony Williams music during the Miles years and some of his fusion is pretty good. But as a drummer he has had to rely on the supporting cast to step up and meet the quality of his drumming. These guys did it in a fresh way. Plus this is a gateway into Buckethead, Laswell, Pharoah Sanders, and the others. I plan on going through that door, with eager anticipation.

Unlike the previous two reviews, I actually prefer Bailey in group improvisation that solo (except for earlier works like Pieces, etc). I think Bailey in groups suffered from what a lot of free improv/free jazz talents experience, which is a loss of something critical when committed to recording. Bailey's recordings should be approached from an experiential perspective rather than trying to read them as "works" per se (i.e. concluded improv as composition). Consequently, what I find the most rewarding about the group recordings are musicians trying to deal with Bailey. Parker's solution is to, as has been said, run circles around him--but of course Bailey could recognize this, and probably refrained even further just to frustrate Parker. I can't imagine Bailey was ever easy to work with, and thus the groups as recordings you want to revisit over and over, don't always work. Arch Duo is no exception. In Bailey, I think the deconstructive, negative-space approach sometimes wanders into just destruction. It's interesing as an historical document, but not really rewarding on repeated listen.

Bailey's record with Steve Lacy, Outcome, is perhaps the most effective of the duets, in my opinion. They break from the "duo as dialogue" idea that has become so prevalent and do something kind of new which I'm struggling to describe. Somehow they function as a unit while also reacting to themselves. Does that make sense?

Anyhow, Arch Duo can be skipped. You can probably gather all there is to know about it from the audio snippets.

This is a rather lengthy continuous improvisation from two of the most well-known and skilled British free improvisers. It's always interesting to hear Evan Parker before he began to stess circular breathing techniques as his primary mode. His lines are still longer than those of, say, Peter Brotzmann, but the shorter soprano spirals have a delightful way of doubling back as they dance about Bailey's spiky, angular instant edifices. I'll concede to the previous reviewer that Parker is playing circles around the guitarist for much of the disc, but this is characteristic of much of Bailey's "unresponsive" group playing. His frequent apparent obliviousness to other players can be chalked up to his stated preference for the unexpected quasi-Cageian juxtapositions that leaving the "jigsaw puzzle" incomplete can produce. However, there are many points on this cd where the two lock into a rapid tangle that turns into an exciting game where Bailey feints and parries while Parker uses his speed and fluidity to pre-emptively shadow the moves of one the most unpredictable improvisers of all time. Even when Bailey withdraws into disinterest, the saxophonist playfully darts about, attempting to prod him back into battle. Both players have much better cds available, but it's fascinating to hear these two pioneers going head to head before their falling out.

I actually didn't know that Bailey and Parker had played(and recorded, presumably)regularly together in the late 70's, when I picked this one up some time ago, thinking perhaps that it was a one-of-a-kind piece. Now I wish I had passed, as this collaboration just does not seem to click. I played it for my father, a relatively experimental jazz listener(the first Cecil Taylor records I heard were his), and he was helpful in pointing this out: Bailey sounds over his head with Parker; Parker is playing circles around him. One complaint about Bailey in general would be the inflexibility of his approach; for this reason, I prefer his solo work. If you are a devoted Bailey fan, this is probably for you, as Evan Parker never, in my experience, disappoints, except perhaps in some of his choices of collaborations.

drumb's not too far off: armageddon finds hooker in the studio with personnel shifting on every song. hooker's a powerhouse drummer, firmly in the free-jazz tradition, and given the proper setting, his records can be transcendent.

armageddon is not such a record. the tunes meander and there's too much noodling. the tinny recording quality doesn't help either.

my favorite hooker record is 'mindfulness.' it's much more focused, and even grooves in a few spots. glenn spearman helps temper hooker, and hooker draws out some serious fire from late tenor saxist. start there for a much more aproachable record.

A recent pressing of the "Pearls Before Swine" comic strip depicted one character asking another character what the term "Avant Garde" meant. The response was, "it's French for bad," and William Hooker's Armageddon is proof of why this joke works. Avant Garde is by it's very nature expected to be complex, challenging, heady material that only a select portion of it's target audience will take any interest in, but while visionary artists like John Zorn, Mike Patton, and Trey Spruance have all used the broad genre association of Avant Garde to create an umbrella categorization which allows pushing the boundaries of conventional rock to arrive at something truly inspiring and unique, William Hooker has simply taken Avant Garde to mean: "abrasive." With no clear direction, purpose, or motive in mind, William Hooker has recorded a series of live improv. "songs" that are all so indistinguishably identical that he might as well have only included one of the 7 lengthy tracks. Even giving these songs titles is absurd because the ideas contained within are all so horribly conceived that they show no evidence whatsoever of any real thought or skill on the part of the participating musicians which could even amount to something worthy of classification. If executed correctly, improv. music can have amazing and startling results (ie: Pink Floyd, John Zorn, Sonic Youth, King Crimson, Josh Homme's Desert Sessions), but when played with no identifiable purpose in mind other than to create an abrasive pile of noise, it is extremely rare that the results will be worthwhile, and in William Hooker's case, they most definitely are not.

Hooker is one of the most unique and unabashedly dangerous players/composers existing within the free jazz idiom. The only thing I can think of that somewhat compares to this is Sonny Sharrocks Last Exit forrays. This cd recorded in 95' is just as relevant and challanging today as it was 5 years ago, high energy avant garde that slaps you in the face and kicks you in the stomach. No one is making music like this. Free jazz that packs a punk rock punch! Enter if you dare.

Hooker is one of the most unique and unabashedly dangerous players/composers existing within the free jazz idiom. The only thing I can think of that somewhat compares to this is Sonny Sharrocks Last Exit forrays. This cd recorded in 95' is just as relevant and challanging today as it was 5 years ago, high energy avant garde that slaps you in the face and kicks you in the stomach. No one is making music like this. Free jazz that packs a punk rock punch! Enter if you dare.