Recently acquired / most wanted

 

I did say recently that I would do a post listing recordings which I'm particularly lacking: those which I am most keen to hear among the greater number that I don't already have in some form. First, then: at the time I said that, I also said that I was actively seeking a copy of the CIMP album Nine Compositions (Hill) 2000 - which I have since got hold of. That is, McClintic Sphere got in touch shortly afterwards to pass on a copy, and another friend has since offered to do as much, so I'll clarify here that I do now have this one (in digital form, at any rate).

One item here sort of belongs on both lists... but we'll get to that. In terms of recent acquisitions, I already said last time out that I'd bought a copy of the Creative Orchestra Music 1976 CD; around the same time, I also finally managed to get hold of Duo (Victoriaville) 2005, the officially-released version of B's concert with Fred Frith, which I'd flagged up last year as being something I coveted; copies of it are not exactly hard to come by, but it's not especially easy to get one at a reasonable price, or not in the UK at any rate. In this case, I was delighted to snag a copy at the price which I paid for it (even whilst I got the impression that the seller couldn't believe their luck in getting such a good price for what they probably saw as a worthless item). It absolutely did not disappoint, either: of course I had managed to hear most of it online, but as previously mentioned in that November post, the last part of the recording does not seem to be available in the usual place, even though there is a file doing the rounds which claims to be just that. Anyway: this really does seem to be one duo recording where B's playing was actively affected by the contributions of his playing partner (I say this having previously speculated that this may not always be the case). Frith really turns up the heat at times on this one, and B. definitely responds to that, delving deep into his capacious bag of tricks to unleash some delightfully warped timbral distortions. Safe to say I was not even slightly disappointed by this purchase.

I also picked up a physical copy of something I already had in digital form, Quartet (Warsaw) 2012 - a Diamond Curtain Wall concert which was released in 2013 on the Polish label For Tune. I posted about this towards the end of 2013 - a time when, had I but known it, the blog was on the verge of winding down to almost complete dormancy for the best part of the next decade (weird/scary, but unfortunately true) - but in all these years since I first heard an mp3 rip of it, I had never seen a hard copy; even the scans seemed to be elusive, which rather suggested that there probably weren't any worth seeing (as all too frequently turns out to be the case). However, when my second-hand copy arrived I was very pleasantly surprised by the high quality of the booklet, which contains some very decent colour photos accompanied by an intelligent essay (in Polish, but also presented in an English translation). I don't have anything else on this label, but I'll certainly remember it as one which releases good-quality product. As for the music - where the maestro and his right-hand small brass player were joined this time not by Mary Halvorson nor by frequent DCWM collaborator Katherine Young, but rather by James Fei and violinist Erica Dicker - well, how not-good would we expect that to be? I hadn't listened to this recording in a few years, but have played the CD twice already, not giving it my undivided attention on either occasion; but whenever I tuned right in, there was always something focused and interesting taking place. (As we would expect.)

The third item here is the one with a place on both lists: that is, until just recently it had pushed its way to the very top of my wants list, but I've now unexpectedly got hold of it. And that item is Ghost Trance Solos by the Belgian guitarist Kobe Van Cauwenberghe.

I first touched on this guy's Braxton projects last September, when I came across his Ghost Trance Septet for the first time; a month or so later I had ordered a copy of that band's CD and was impatiently waiting for it to turn up. (It eventually did, after much prompting of the label from my end.) Eventually, I will get round to writing about that; in the interim, I had gradually become more and more aware of the guitarist's having recorded what purported to be a solo album of GTM pieces. That, I had always thought to be impossible: GTM requires two voices at an absolute minimum. Of course, I hadn't particularly thought about loops and multi-tracking... anyway, at some point (having realised how fantastically good that septet is) I decided that I just had to have this album. That seemed to be a bit of a tricky problem, since it didn't seem to be carried by most of the usual online retailers... Discogs had a couple of listings for it, but both were based in the US, and with things the way they are vis à vis international postage, and Brexit-related cockups, I wasn't about to risk ordering from that far away. A few weeks back, a copy turned up for sale in Germany, and I thought OK, that may be worth the risk - and the shipping won't be too exorbitant. I'll look to pick that up in time for my birthday - and then, inevitably, someone must have bought it 'cos the listing vanished. Finally, in desperation really, I did what I ought to have done in the first place and looked up the label (All That Dust) online; I had no idea where they were based, so I just played along with the Add to Basket option, and to my astonishment, it turns out they are based right here in the UK. The easiest and cheapest option by far was, all along, to order it directly from them. Clearly there is a lesson in there (but I doubt that most people reading this will need it...).

So, the CD itself (and the label seems to make most of its profit from downloads, as I guess all labels have to these days: download only = £8; CD + download = £10, which scarcely seems to make sense, but there you go) arrived last week... it was a busy week, leading up to an internal job interview at the end of it, so what with one thing and another, I didn't get round to playing the digital files, just waited for the actual CD. And yes, of course, there is much looping and multi-tracking going on there, which explains how a soloist can take on GTM in the first place... I will try and cover this one properly in due course; for now, suffice it to say that it's a very interesting recording from an extremely interesting musician. I'm just glad I eventually did the obvious and looked into the possibilities of ordering from the label...

***

Moving on, then... now that I no longer need to work out where to get my copy of Ghost Trance Solos from, what follows from here downwards is a (non-exhaustive) list of stuff which I am looking for at present; a few of the items on the list (which will be subdidvided into sections) are recordings which I have heard, but don't own in any form(at), whilst most of them are recordings I've not even heard. If anyone is in a position to hit me up with anything on the list, most likely in the form of an online rip*, please leave a comment (the blog's "official" email account hasn't been used in years, I really must get round to seeing whether it even still exists at this point).

I'm not going to include multi-dics sets here; perhaps some other time. (The 4-CD Piano Music set by Hildegard Kleeb will really have to be obtained at some point, assuming my familiarity eventually reaches the point where I feel capable of assessing the relative merits of Kleeb's interpretations and those of Geneviève Foccroulle, later.)

I will also avoid getting into the whole question of releases on New Braxton House: most of these are digital-only anyway (although while I'm at it, I may as well say that I don't have a hell of a lot of them after 2011, and none at all after 2013, so if anyone is in a position to do me a favour here... well, you know what to do!) and, again, maybe I'll try to tackle that whole subject some other time. 

Finally- in terms of introductory remarks, I mean - I want to highlight something which has appeared in Discogs at some point along the way, but which very probably never existed: a recording credited to Charlie Mariano (meets AB) entitled, supposedly, Elegy For a Goose. Not an item which I ever saw in any edition of the Restructures discography, this was purportedly released in France in 1982, on the "Mariano Studios" label (which itself has only one release cross-referenced to it, i.e. this one). A line-up of B. and Mariano on horns, with Aki Takase, Joe Fonda and Günter "Baby" Sommer sounds intriguing in principle - albeit highly unlikely, given that Fonda's extensive association with B. didn't begin until approximately twelve years after this was "recorded", in late 1981** - and the idea of a twenty-one minute "Geese Suite" composed by B. may sound more intriguing still, but the more one looks into this, the more spurious the whole thing appears; in the final analysis, one can only really conclude that it's someone's extremely recondite idea of a prank. No copies for sale, none ever sold (at least through the only website which has ever mentioned it to begin with)... and wouldn't you know it, literally within the last week, someone calling themselves vitaltransformation has left a comment to the following effect: "Confirmed with Joe Fonda in person that no such recording ever took place". Quite what the point of all this was, I couldn't begin to speculate... but I think it's safe to say that none of us will be adding this "rarity" to the collection any time soon.

***

1. Albums featuring B. (which also include music composed by him)

- in no order:

Eight Compositions (Quintet) 2001 (CIMP) #1 

Shadow Company (with Milo Fine)  (Emanem, 2005)

Anthony Braxton /Sonny Simmons /Brandon Evans /Andre Vida /Mike Pride /Shanir Blumenkranz (Parallactic, 2003) #2 

Toronto (Duets) 2007 (with Kyle Brenders)  (Barnyard Records, 2008)

Compositions / Improvisations 2000 (with Scott Rosenberg)  (Barely Auditable)

Duet (with James Fei)  (Other Minds, 2022) #3 

12 Comp (ZIM) 2017  (Firehouse 12, 2021) #4 

Small Ensemble Music (Wesleyan) 1994  (Splasc(h) Records, 1999)

2 Compositions (Ensemble) 1989/1991  (hat ART, 1992) #5 

Two Lines (with David Rosenboom)  (Lovely Music, 1995)

Duet: Live At Merkin Hall (with Richard Teitelbaum)  (Music & Arts, 1996)

The Aggregate (with ROVA)  (CD version)  (Sound Aspects Records, 1989) #6 

Four Compositions (Solo, Duo & Trio) 1982/1988  (hat ART, 1990)

Ao Vivo Jazz Na Fábrica  (Selo SESC SP, 2016) #7 

1a. Albums on (the original) Braxton House***

- there weren't many of these, but I think the only one I've actually heard is Sextet (Istanbul) 1996. The others, therefore, are very much on the list, as follows:

Composition No. 102 (For Orchestra & Puppet Theatre) (1996)

Tentet (New York) 1996

Four Compositions (Quartet) 1995  (1997) #8 

Octet (New York) 1995  (1997) #9 

Ensemble (New York) 1995  (1997) #9 

Four Compositions (Washington, D.C.) 1998  (1999) 

[Anyone who is really paying attention at this point may note that I have only accounted for seven of the label's nine releases; one of them was a box set (see above) and the other, a double-vinyl-only solo saxophone album, Solo (Skopje) 1995, which supposedly was only released in 2003 (despite bearing the catalogue number BH002); this last one isn't such a priority, since I am behind on listening to the solo sax albums already in my possession, but hey - if anyone happens to have access to it, preferably in digital form, do please let me know anyway..!]  UPDATE: got that one now (see comments)

2. Albums featuring B. (which do not include music composed by him)

Archie Shepp & Philly Joe Jones, untitled LP  (America Records, 1970) #10 

Marion Brown, Afternoon Of A Georgia Faun  (ECM, 1970) #11 

Gunter Hampel, Enfant Terrible  (Birth Records, 1975) #12 

Roscoe Mitchell Creative Orchestra, Sketches From Bamboo (Moers Music, 1979) #13 

Neighbours with Anthony Braxton, untitled LP  (Great Neighbours Music, 1984) #14 

3. Albums featuring B's music (where he does not play)

Roscoe Mitchell and the Sound Ensemble, Snurdy McGurdy And Her Dancin' Shoes (Nessa, 1981) #15 

London Jazz Composers Orchestra, Zurich Concerts  (Intakt, 1988 (1995)) #16 

Steve Lantner Trio, What You Can Throw  (hatOLOGY, 2007) #17 

... and that's about it (for now). I'm sure everyone would agree that's (more than) enough to be getting on with, anyway XD

* Real efforts appear to have been made to stop people sharing this sort of thing - maybe? - at least as far as a well-known search engine goes... and I do take the point... but don't expect me to feel guilty about looking, given the amount of money I have spent on music over the decades...

** Actually the recording date is given as November 31st, 1981 - so, a date which doesn't exist, at a Paris venue supposedly called Foie Gras (which I'm pretty sure also never existed). Somebody somewhere probably has a reason for inventing this, but it's way beyond me...

*** The label was short-lived. Most of its releases are pretty hard to obtain on this side of the pond; imagine my irritation, then, at learning that Downtown Music Gallery (NYC) appears to have surplus stock of most (if not all) of the ones I'm looking for, at knockdown prices. Add international postage to that - and assume that the package ever shows up - and it would not be quite such a bargain. Most annoying.

#1 I have absolutely no clue about the content of this release, except that it's all B's materials, and there are no vocalists involved. I'm assuming it is at least somewhat interesting, therefore (unlike another CIMP release which I've already ruled out)

#2 This untitled album was originally released as a double CD-R by Evans, and apparently later got reissued (also as a double CD-R) on a label called Human Plastic in 2017. I've coveted it for years. I'm pretty sure it's the only place to hear B. with Simmons - and compositions by both of them are included, although what is meant by "508M (+ N. 136)" is anyone's guess, since we are still nowhere near that high in the numbering system...

#3 This recent new release - showcasing B's new Lorraine strategy - is already a bit of a sore point. I had assumed it would be relatively easy to buy, and it's absolutely isn't. 

#4 This would preferably be in digital form, since otherwise I can't listen to it anyway (yet). But of course I'll buy the Blu-Ray anyway if I get the chance (technically it's not a box set, hence its inclusion here - that, and the fact that I really, really want a copy of this stuff)

#5 Contains the original (uncollaged) version of Comp. 147, as recently discussed. 

#6 This has to be the CD version, since I already have a vinyl rip; there's an extra 19 mins on the CD

#7 Brazilian release, discussed last year. 

#8 This album features the very first GTM performances. It also appears to give the lie to something I said earlier this year (about the shortest official GTM recording): Comp. 183 clocks in at just under ten minutes. I really have to hear this one.

#9 These two were both, supposedly, "Recorded November (...) 1995 at the Tri-Centric (Thanksgiving 1995) Festival at the Knitting Factory" - which makes me wonder about all those live boots from 1996 which I got from Volkan, as detailed just recently. How many of these TCF festivals were there?

#10 It's taken a very long time to catch up to the knowledge that I never got to hear this album... the presence of a vocalist/harmonica player suggests that I may yet conclude that ignorance was bliss, after all..? 

#11 I did say recently that I thought I'd got this, and just hadn't found it yet; actually I don't think I ever did get a rip of this one.

#12 A glance at the track listing for this on Discogs suggests that B. and Martinelli may even have had Hampel in mind, when they came up with the eventual numbering system...

#13 Even more than the Marion Brown album, I can hardly believe that I never got hold of this one, but I really don't think I did... 

#14 This looks properly obscure, and the vinyl itself is evidently not easy to come by. I have no idea whatsoever about who these guys were or how this came about; the label itself was obviously theirs too, and seems to have issued a grand total of three albums, this being the last of them. 

#15 Principally relevant here as it contains Mitchell's group arrangement of (what would eventually be known as) B's Comp. 40q, a piece debuted as a duet between Mitchell and B. (coincidentally the recording on which the Braxtothon finally foundered). The presence here of Jaribu Shahid on bass and Tani Tabbal on drums suggests strongly that James Carter borrowed Mitchell's arrangement for his own later version of the piece, including the same two sidemen. (I am interested in the album anyway, and definitely don't have this one yet.)

#16 Two discs, one of which has nothing to do with B's music, the other of which contains nothing but. Not quite sure how I managed to go this long without someone slipping me this one (in some form or other)

#17 Again, this is on here because it contains just one of B's pieces - this time a version of Comp. 23j. I have no idea who Lantner is - but he keeps fast company: Joe Morris (on bass) and Luther Gray. The whole album, which opens with one of Morris's numbers and ends with Ornette's "Broken Shadows", looks pretty tasty actually...