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’.
Continue reading Cecil Taylor – Nuits De La Fondation Maeght Vol.2
Prolific debauchery & plenty of it! an edgy, intemperate leviathan casting a pall of threat as well as riotous wonder & technical brilliance Cecil Taylor’s splendour trails for fuckin’ decades & frequently clambers to unimaginable alcoves. so’ so much could be drafted, but this review will concentrate on the Nuits De La Fondation Maeght trilogy recordings (captured during live group performances in France in 1969), which for me has so far been his best work from a particularly enigmatic period. Taylor was playing sprawling immeasurably intense reckless refulgence & asymmetrical avant wizardry with the insane Andrew Cyrille, for me indubitably one of the most fantastic & original drummers ever. out of the many things that could be said, I would emphasise that Taylor & his unit redefined the elongated-outburst & prolonged-peaking coming with ceaseless surging’s of unparalleled clamour & volatility. frequently without intervals, extenuation or cessation they would dance an immensely detailed & dynamic squall within the singularity of remorseless & unforgiving outermost, fully-cyclic, hell-for-leather frenzy. a heteronomous hurricane & blitzing blizzard of ebullient fulmination Cyrille was able to maintain physically these momentous requirements but also inflect with a cycle of extensive improvisational embellishment & continually capricious contrasting.