ESP-Disk’, the premier American avant-garde record label of the sixties, announces its November 2008 releases of modern music of the past, present and future with six titles, including three reissues of groundbreaking albums from its catalogue of uncompromising free jazz and new music of the sixties, two newly recorded dates evolving from that tradition, and an impressively packaged collector’s edition of rare early recordings by one of jazz’s first and most individualistic modernists, at the beginning of his career. The centerpiece of this latest collection of compact discs from the revolutionary record label, Charlie Parker - Bird In Time 1940 - 1947, chronicles Parker’s evolution. Reissues of Paul Bley - Barrage, Alan Sondheim - Ritual - All - 7- 70 and The Levitts - We Are The Levitts document the wide array of music being made in New York during the label’s heyday. The two new releases - Charles, by the band Barnacled; and Unpop, by Japanese solo artist, Yximalloo - continue ESP’s decades-old practice of bringing to a wider audience the most cutting-edge performers of the day.
The 4-CD set Charlie Parker - Bird In Time 1940–1947 (ESP 4050) brings together for the first time rare, often private, Parker recordings from his earliest days in Kansas City as a sideman and soloist, to his work with Jay McShann’s pre-bop big band and on through his collaborations with other bebop pioneers, including Billy Eckstine, Dizzy Gillespie, Fats Navarro, Ray Brown and Max Roach. Painstakingly produced by jazz historian/broadcaster Michael Anderson, the set traces Parker’s early development through recordings and in various interviews with Parker disciples, conducted by Anderson on his public broadcasting show Bebop City. The set opens with a rare interview with Bird himself, discussing his life in Kansas City. Anderson’s interviews with the likes of Max Roach, Milt Jackson, Howard McGhee, Earl Coleman, Teddy Edwards, and Roy Porter are intelligently interspersed with broadcasts and recordings on which those artists appeared or which they witnessed, to give a sense of “being there,” as the music traces Bird’s nascence and ascendance in the new music. Accompanied by two 32-page booklets in which Anderson succinctly traces the life of Parker and the history of the music he helped to create, Charlie Parker - Bird In Time 1940 - 1947 is a must for enthusiasts of the music that set America on its ear during its time, and continues to remain relevant today.
Paul Bley - Barrage (ESP 1008), recorded in 1964, a transformative year for the pianist who is credited with applying Ornette Coleman’s conception to the keyboard, features Bley, who is best known for his solo and trio work, in a rare quintet recording. Joined by the frontline of Sun Ra alto saxophonist Marshall Allen (in one of his very few appearances outside of the Arkestra) and trumpeter Dewey Johnson (who would later appear on John Coltrane’s Ascension album) and the bass and drum team of Eddie Gomez and Milford Graves (which would join forces with pianist Don Pullen on Giuseppi Logan’s first ESP outing), Paul Bley explores six characteristic Carla Bley compositions on this date, which AllMusicGuide calls “a lost free jazz classic.”
The ESP dictum “the artists alone decide” is especially applicable to the music heard on the album Alan Sondheim - Ritual - All - 7-70. Sondheim, who played xylophone, alto saxophone, clarinet, bansari, koto, and a variety of guitars and other “ethnic” instruments, was the leader of a pack of communally-living artists in Providence, Rhode Island, who refused to have their music limited by categorization. Wordless vocals by Ruth Ann Hutchinson, the bongo/tabla percussion of Barry Sugarman, and trumpeting by Robert Poholek spiraling around the shifting rhythms of bassist Chris Mattheson and drummer JP. The sounds here combine the earthiness of what is now called “world music” with the ethereal environment of tape and electronics. On thirteen short improvised and reassembled tracks, Sondheim and company herald a world of things to come.
The sixties were full of family bands like the Partridge Family and the Cowsills, but none were as hip as The Levitts, whose We Are The Levitts album is an appealing intergenerational attack on what was then commonly known as the generation gap. Thirteen-year-old guitarist Sean Levitt was scouted by ESP as a street performer in Central Park. The band includes his journeyman jazz drummer dad, Al Levitt, (best known for his work with Lee Konitz) and swing vocalist mom, Stella Levitt (who sang with Woody Herman), along with his Levitt Family siblings, drummer George and singing sisters Michelle, Minou and Teresa. Accompanied by a horn section comprised of well-known New York sessioners Lew Orensteen, Pete Yellin and Ronnie Cuber, with pianist Chick Corea and bassist Teddie Kotick, among others, this unique date joins music, both classic and novel. into something completely its own, with the mellifluous sound of the Mamas and the Papas, Fifth Dimension and Sergio Mendes and Brazil 66 echoing in the intensity of sixties modal jazz.
The first commercially released recording in thirteen years by Japanese solo artist, Yximalloo - Unpop (ESP 4047), showcases the eclectic iconoclast’s one-man band sound of guitar, laptop and voice. The CD’s annotator, Scottish oddball pop star Momus, lauds Yximalloo as “the closest thing we have in pop music to a visionary outsider artist … John Lee Hooker with a synth, Wild Man Fisher with a bone. He’s our Moondog, our Sun Ra.” He goes on to astutely describe the music’s elements as “idiotic repetitions, primal grunts, chants, children’s songs, simple splashes of tone colour, put together in unexpected ways, odd but successful combinations of ethnic music and synthesizers.” He even covers Donovan’s top 40 hit “First There Is A Mountain”, in his own idiosyncratic style, on a daring record that is right at home in the ESP catalogue.
Barnacled - Charles (ESP 4049), the new, full length, and first outing for ESP Disk, is a rollicking, propulsive offering, featuring the band in some of its most intricate formations. This deftly arranged record follows Barnacled as it tightens itself into high corners, only to purposely fall down, find new ground, and pick itself back up again. This work is highly playful, even at its most intense - and it does get intense, with saxophone battles surging over electronics and highly distorted accordion fire offerings. Then, all of a sudden, the sound drops out, save for a plaintive lone bassoon call, or static from a shortwave radio, that sounds soothing by comparison. Intertwining rhythms and melody lines then revolve around a pulse that creates a new frame of reference, while also complicating it. This music invites deep listening, and rewards the curious. Often, it is simply mesmerizing—essentially what adventurous minds have come to expect from the legendary ESP-Disk' oeuvre.
Entering its fifth decade of recording and issuing uncompromising music, ESP-Disk persists in bringing courageous sounds to listeners who eschew the commonplace. From Charlie Parker’s “new music” of the ‘40’s, through Paul Bley’s free jazz, Alan Sondheim’s electronic world music and the Levitts’ jazz-folk fusion of the ‘60s, and on to the 21st-century experimentalism of Yximalloo and Barnacled today, ESP-Disk continues to serve artists daring enough to look to the future and the audiences that are waiting to hear them.
The 4-CD set Charlie Parker - Bird In Time 1940–1947 (ESP 4050) brings together for the first time rare, often private, Parker recordings from his earliest days in Kansas City as a sideman and soloist, to his work with Jay McShann’s pre-bop big band and on through his collaborations with other bebop pioneers, including Billy Eckstine, Dizzy Gillespie, Fats Navarro, Ray Brown and Max Roach. Painstakingly produced by jazz historian/broadcaster Michael Anderson, the set traces Parker’s early development through recordings and in various interviews with Parker disciples, conducted by Anderson on his public broadcasting show Bebop City. The set opens with a rare interview with Bird himself, discussing his life in Kansas City. Anderson’s interviews with the likes of Max Roach, Milt Jackson, Howard McGhee, Earl Coleman, Teddy Edwards, and Roy Porter are intelligently interspersed with broadcasts and recordings on which those artists appeared or which they witnessed, to give a sense of “being there,” as the music traces Bird’s nascence and ascendance in the new music. Accompanied by two 32-page booklets in which Anderson succinctly traces the life of Parker and the history of the music he helped to create, Charlie Parker - Bird In Time 1940 - 1947 is a must for enthusiasts of the music that set America on its ear during its time, and continues to remain relevant today.
Paul Bley - Barrage (ESP 1008), recorded in 1964, a transformative year for the pianist who is credited with applying Ornette Coleman’s conception to the keyboard, features Bley, who is best known for his solo and trio work, in a rare quintet recording. Joined by the frontline of Sun Ra alto saxophonist Marshall Allen (in one of his very few appearances outside of the Arkestra) and trumpeter Dewey Johnson (who would later appear on John Coltrane’s Ascension album) and the bass and drum team of Eddie Gomez and Milford Graves (which would join forces with pianist Don Pullen on Giuseppi Logan’s first ESP outing), Paul Bley explores six characteristic Carla Bley compositions on this date, which AllMusicGuide calls “a lost free jazz classic.”
The ESP dictum “the artists alone decide” is especially applicable to the music heard on the album Alan Sondheim - Ritual - All - 7-70. Sondheim, who played xylophone, alto saxophone, clarinet, bansari, koto, and a variety of guitars and other “ethnic” instruments, was the leader of a pack of communally-living artists in Providence, Rhode Island, who refused to have their music limited by categorization. Wordless vocals by Ruth Ann Hutchinson, the bongo/tabla percussion of Barry Sugarman, and trumpeting by Robert Poholek spiraling around the shifting rhythms of bassist Chris Mattheson and drummer JP. The sounds here combine the earthiness of what is now called “world music” with the ethereal environment of tape and electronics. On thirteen short improvised and reassembled tracks, Sondheim and company herald a world of things to come.
The sixties were full of family bands like the Partridge Family and the Cowsills, but none were as hip as The Levitts, whose We Are The Levitts album is an appealing intergenerational attack on what was then commonly known as the generation gap. Thirteen-year-old guitarist Sean Levitt was scouted by ESP as a street performer in Central Park. The band includes his journeyman jazz drummer dad, Al Levitt, (best known for his work with Lee Konitz) and swing vocalist mom, Stella Levitt (who sang with Woody Herman), along with his Levitt Family siblings, drummer George and singing sisters Michelle, Minou and Teresa. Accompanied by a horn section comprised of well-known New York sessioners Lew Orensteen, Pete Yellin and Ronnie Cuber, with pianist Chick Corea and bassist Teddie Kotick, among others, this unique date joins music, both classic and novel. into something completely its own, with the mellifluous sound of the Mamas and the Papas, Fifth Dimension and Sergio Mendes and Brazil 66 echoing in the intensity of sixties modal jazz.
The first commercially released recording in thirteen years by Japanese solo artist, Yximalloo - Unpop (ESP 4047), showcases the eclectic iconoclast’s one-man band sound of guitar, laptop and voice. The CD’s annotator, Scottish oddball pop star Momus, lauds Yximalloo as “the closest thing we have in pop music to a visionary outsider artist … John Lee Hooker with a synth, Wild Man Fisher with a bone. He’s our Moondog, our Sun Ra.” He goes on to astutely describe the music’s elements as “idiotic repetitions, primal grunts, chants, children’s songs, simple splashes of tone colour, put together in unexpected ways, odd but successful combinations of ethnic music and synthesizers.” He even covers Donovan’s top 40 hit “First There Is A Mountain”, in his own idiosyncratic style, on a daring record that is right at home in the ESP catalogue.
Barnacled - Charles (ESP 4049), the new, full length, and first outing for ESP Disk, is a rollicking, propulsive offering, featuring the band in some of its most intricate formations. This deftly arranged record follows Barnacled as it tightens itself into high corners, only to purposely fall down, find new ground, and pick itself back up again. This work is highly playful, even at its most intense - and it does get intense, with saxophone battles surging over electronics and highly distorted accordion fire offerings. Then, all of a sudden, the sound drops out, save for a plaintive lone bassoon call, or static from a shortwave radio, that sounds soothing by comparison. Intertwining rhythms and melody lines then revolve around a pulse that creates a new frame of reference, while also complicating it. This music invites deep listening, and rewards the curious. Often, it is simply mesmerizing—essentially what adventurous minds have come to expect from the legendary ESP-Disk' oeuvre.
Entering its fifth decade of recording and issuing uncompromising music, ESP-Disk persists in bringing courageous sounds to listeners who eschew the commonplace. From Charlie Parker’s “new music” of the ‘40’s, through Paul Bley’s free jazz, Alan Sondheim’s electronic world music and the Levitts’ jazz-folk fusion of the ‘60s, and on to the 21st-century experimentalism of Yximalloo and Barnacled today, ESP-Disk continues to serve artists daring enough to look to the future and the audiences that are waiting to hear them.
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