DBMITW: Togashi

The great Japanese drummer Masahiko Togashi, with Masahiko Satoh and Gary Peacock:

Favorite albums: Ballads by Paul Bley

Ballads by Paul Bley
1967 - ECM 1010

Paul Bley - piano
Gary Peacock, Mark Levinson - bass
Barry Altschul - drums

Compositions by Annette Peacock


This is kind of a funny entry to this series. It has taken me a long time to come to fully appreciate this record. It's very open, very impressionistic, and offers few, ah, "conventional satisfactions"; each track is in broadly-paced free time,  harmonically ambiguous (not to say atonal), with little in the way of tension and release, and no explosive performances.  It's nobody's idea of a fist-pumping jazz record.

So, I've had it in my bins since the late 80's, and putting on every few years it's stayed kind of aloof, but it kept its hooks in, and eventually clicked. The record is more an environment than a conventional piece of music, and the perfect embodiment of pure improvised music, and of a certain player's space. 

Barry Altschul is one of the most urgent-sounding drummers ever- pushing even beyond Roy Haynes or Alan Dawson for the amount of forward momentum in his playing- and he manages to keep that quality through this spacious, non-climax-seeking record. There's also a very different type of free playing at work here than the familiar dense style of drummers like Sunny Murray or Rashied Ali, or Paul Motian's naive/primitive thing- Altschul seems to be among the first very polished free players.

Annette Peacock also has become one of my favorite composers for her work recorded by Bley- her bio is rather interesting as well. The compositions here are perfect for this record, meaning they don't immediately jump out and grab you as needing to be played again.

YouTube audio of "So Hard It Hurts" after the break:

Out-of-print LP rips: some finds

Here are some exciting drummer-led things I found while paying a visit to the thriving community of record-collecting bloggers dedicated to ripping out-of-print LPs and making them available for download. Apparently no one wants to sell you this music any more, and this is the only way you can get it, short of dedicating your life to scouring the used bins and getting really lucky. This does raise some ethical questions, which I've addressed after the break.

Download links for the albums are usually located in the comments section; Mediafire links are quick and easy, Rapidshare links are a pain.

Bob Moses - Bittersuite in the Ozone
A famous record, and extremely rare- I've never seen it in close to 30 years of trolling the used bins. Features Billy Hart, Randy Brecker, Dave Liebman, Howard Johnson, Eddie Gomez, and more.

Roy Haynes Hip Ensemble
Haynes' "jazz-rock" band from the 70's. I've only seen one other record by this group, and I own the only copy of it I've ever seen in the wild. Recorded in Rome in 1975 for the Horo label. With Don Pate, Bill Saxton, John Mosley, and Mark Fiorillo.

Jack DeJohnette - Have You Heard?
I have not, in fact, ever heard of this great, very free Milestone release. Features Bennie Maupin, Gary Peacock, Hideo Ichikawa.

Elvin Jones - The Town Hall
Smoking John Coltrane memorial concert from 1971. One of the first Elvin LPs I bought, used, in '86 or so. With Frank Foster, Chick Corea, Joe Farrell.

Buddy Rich - A Different Drummer
Burning 70's big band.

Humanizing the hard stuff

Over at Four on the Floor Jon McCaslin has posted several great duo videos featuring Max Roach, including clips with Dizzy Gillespie, Randy Weston, and this with Cecil Taylor:




Max really warms up Cecil's thing, doesn't he? This reminded me of Momentum Space, with Cecil alongside Elvin Jones and Dewey Redman, which gave a similar feeling; and the Tony Williams/Cecil duet on Joy of Flying. And Gary Peacock on Albert Ayler's Spiritual Unity. I guess it shouldn't be a huge mystery- you put someone with the greatest drummers in the world and they're going to sound good. But his music is so impenetrable it's hard to imagine Max being able to do anything with it at all...