PREFACE INFO FLASH! : dammit! i wrote this over a year ago & have just resurrected it with new additions. these notes were jotted whilst listening/spinning th record with maximum attention (obviously after many listening’s). going back to it again now (and re-listening as I write) i realize that i have mixed up descriptives rather than having a progressing cogent assessment of each side from start to finish. ta’ hell with it! it’s totally jumbled but so is th music, & yu can see it as random speculation on these immense energies/scenes/sections encapsulated on th recording.
B-syd: this syd emerges from where the last digressed. things finally relent, Cyrille is prodding & skittering on th rims of his drums, Rivers is howling distended maledictions, Taylor is spuming gibberish infantile lallation. messing around with vowels, i don’t know what the guy is doing, probably he doesn’t either? unsettling, awesome. a strange five minute phase of pacified but louring Avant-Garde ensues, with th musicians all contributing then detracting around Taylor, casting off sonic motifs to a totem-pole or sumthin’.
Rivers starts spazzing out with those rapid oscillating flutters, testing the joints for the inevitable onslaught.
Taylor holding back whilst Cyrille gets increasingly agitated, stabbing, butting, ramming, with those uneven foot manoeuvres, crashing all over the kit with highly energetic abject off-road Tumble Weed,
Taylor starts gibbering & falls further into hysterics & speed mostly on the high notes of the piano
Rivers enters but takes a while before he is audible, he effuses with wild strangulations & alacrity, Cyrille not letting up for shit, smoking the kit. Cyrille recedes & Rivers drops out war on all fronts, Lyons cuts out as the rest manhandle the listener through a series of tumble dryers, Rivers really throttling that sax & making it squeal & billow, Taylor present & rowdy but not at full austerity, you have to hand it to Cyrille for his extremity, indomitable stamina, sentinel-power & constant multifariousness, the guy is one of the best drummers that ever was & to think that this is 69? Lyons comes in at full force & throws down with Rivers, both just ripping your sinews in the process & ringing your guts out through your arse, total madness. they then turn Rivers volume down, who is smouldering, Lyons sounds out of breath. i love Lyons & he is class, but he cant fuck with Rivers at any angle, that’s just the truth of it (I suspect that this is so unfortunately why Rivers stint with Taylor was so brief).
Lyons subsides then Cyrille relents the avalanche queuing the solo piano, Taylor now presumably being fully riled starts ripping the keys to fucking bits with ineligible free-form. also, the guys gibbering. gibbering like a freak man. like they dragged someone out of the secure wing of the mental home & stuck a mike in front of him. it’s not musical, it’s not stylish or sensible, it’s a mad man spilling his dementia verbally. Cyrille re-enters at full force & the tambourine palpitations resume. more maelstrom as Crylle punishes those drums *__* Taylors gibbering grows ever more deranged, perhaps a spume of spittle all over that massive tash & his eyes turgescent out there orbits, I mean this guy is OUT of it. Cyrille I think is now blasting (certainly his foot is battering the bass head) with Sunny Murray style cymbal blur the track then cuts out, bringing this absolute monster to a stand-still. phenomenal forces fuming in existential ardour…like, just unbelievable shit kid!!!
LABEL: Shandar/Prestige
REKD: 1969