Steve Lacy: Estilhacos: Steve Lacy Live in Lisbon

Avant Jazz / Free Improvisation / Avant-Garde
premiera polska: 2012-04-04
kontynent: Ameryka Północna
kraj: USA
opakowanie: kartonowe etui
opis:
freejazzblog.org * * * * *
Estilhacos is a 1972 concert performance that is an absolute masterpiece of collective improvisation, easily the equal - if not the better - of any free jazz warhorse you care to mention. I will rave like a complete lunatic about this later.
Estilhacos is an absolute Mount Olympus of volcanic proportions. As in “The Wage,” it begins with a recording – this time of a man’s voice. The group begins playing an angular figure. A woman’s voice rises in the right channel. Again the band becomes unified, as if being attacked by the recording. The track ends with the same angular figure that was played at the beginning. This is the preface for everything that will follow.
“Chips” starts off in the same manner, as an angular melodic figure repeats and gradually distorts until glorious calamity ensues. The only misstep is that someone (Aebi, I think) blows and sucks on a harmonica in a way that sounds like a 10-year-old making a mockery of the proceedings. Obviously, one man’s music is another man’s noise – and I feel more than a little hypocritical drawing the line at a harmonica’s presence – but everyone has his preferences, right? Thankfully it doesn’t go on for too long and eventually the clamor becomes spacious, with the collective sounds approximating a walk through the jungle(s of Vietnam?).
“No Baby” opens with another angular line that sounds like the cadence of the title. Aebi saws mercilessly away at the cello in one channel while Lacy has a soprano conniption in the other. Noel McGhee and Kent Carter keep the whole thing in continuous momentum creating wave after wave of perfection for Lacy and Aebi to ride. Then “no baby” is sounded again to signal the end of the piece.
Long single note drones from the bass and cello introduce “The Highway,” before a two-note melody line from Steve Potts enters, with Lacy shrieking a one-note Morse code signal above. Crashing cymbals enter and Potts starts playing counterpoint around Lacy, who refuses to give up that note. The tension is incredible as one car horn after another screams by. Finally it breaks with the alto rising out of the traffic. Six minutes in, the music is so intense that the crowd erupts in applause. Another minute later, they cheer again. And again! As the band rises to unfathomable heights, the soprano and alto merge and collide with such intensity that for a few seconds you’d swear you were listening to an electric guitar feeding back. The crowd erupts. You can hear the normally conservative and reserved Lacy’s voice actually beaming as he hastily introduces the band and thanks the audience. Some of the band members aren’t quite sure if they’re finished yet as they continue to crash, bang and skronk randomly behind him, as if they’re searching through the wreckage for salvageable parts. Good Lord, this is how it’s done!
By Tom Burris

Editor's info:
This is a very special work for all Portuguese jazz fans, not only because of historical reasons, but also emotional ones. At the end of the dictatorship, "Estilhaços" had the emblematic power to represent freedom in music: it was recorded live during a Lisbon concert in the beginning of 1972 (the revolution happened two years later, in 1974), being the first jazz record released in Portugal. What can seem strange is easily explainable: for the authorities, jazz was a decadent black music. An iniciative of the radialist and critic José Duarte, produced by the former jazz drummer and also critic Manuel Jorge Veloso, it shows us the Steve Lacy Quintet, with Steve Potts, Irene Aebi, Kent Carter and Noel McGhie, at the top of its qualities. The original vinyl had only one CD reedition before, in 1996, but an opportunity to be distributed worldwide never aroused. Justice is now provided. For the non-Portuguese Lacy's followers, this 40 year old recording may be another reminder of a well-documented period of the soprano saxophonist's music, but take in consideration that it's also an unique and very special symbol.

muzycy:
Steve Lacy: soprano saxophone
Steve Pots: alto saxophone
Irene Aebi: cello, transistor radio, harmonica
Kent Carter: bass
Noel McGhie: drums, percussions

utwory:
1. Presentation
2. Stations
3. Chips / Moon / Dreams
4. No Baby
5. The High Way

total time - 39:10
wydano: 2012
more info: www.cleanfeed-records.com
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