Peter Brötzmann Trio : For Adolphe Sax

Having just heard of the late June death of Peter Brötzmann, the "free jazz" titan whose uncompromising and often blistering music emerged from mid-1960s Germany and blazed a fiery, formidable path for some decades. it just seemed clear that this post should feature his debut trio record, For Adolphe Sax (inventor of that instrument class), recorded in June 1967 with bassist Peter Kowald and drummer Sven Ake Johansson and released on the leader's infant label, Brö and reissued on FMP (Free Music Production) Records, which has put out much of Brötzmann's output over the years.

To say that this music is bracing, blunt and bursting with blasts of sheer intensity and power seems like an understatement because it can't really be adequately described, only experienced.  It is clear that Brötzmann was heavily influenced by the great Albert Ayler, whose incredible music has been featured on this blog before, but he also spoke of the environment of part of his childhood lived during World War II and then the postwar period and the desire for total musical freedom of expression.  This is largely unrelenting in its focus on primal energy, excepting a brief respite on "Sanity," and there is a nearly 10-minute bonus track for the CD reissue called "Everything" that includes pianist Fred Van Hove and which was recorded by Radio Bremen.

Obviously, in the absence of virtually any structure, including an introduction, statement of a theme or melody, bridges, and restatement, not to mention the almost overpowering wall of sound generated, what holds the attention of this listener is that there is strong interplay here between the three musicians with Johannson displaying a strong command of dynamics and technique in polyrhythms in working with his colleagues and Kowald employing both arco/bowed and plucking techniques very effectively as the rhythm section undergirds Brötzmann's eager explorations.  On the added piece, Van Hove adds a welcome variation in timbre, while also demonstrating his ability to use his Cecil Taylor-like accompaniment and soloing to great effect.

Understanding that this difficult music to listen to, it's always good to recall what Ayler and his brother Donald once suggested in an interview about the best way to hear what they were doing not long before For Adolph Sax was recorded and released:  try to follow the sound, not the notes.  Sometimes tracking what the rhythm section does can also be helpful in navigating the often extremely turbulent trip on which Brötzmann and his colleagues are leading the listener.

Lastly, it is recommended that anyone interested in this pivotal figure in jazz listen to some of his later work, including the Die Like a Dog Quartet, to hear how his music evolved over the decades—though this blogger is also going to go back now and sample some of the (barely) controlled chaos of Last Exit with Ronald Shannon Jackson (drums), Bill Laswell (electric bass) and Sonny Sharrock (guitar) to remember the greatness of Peter Brötzmann.

Last Exit: Last Exit

The life of a non-commercial musician is nearly always one of struggle and any success, however well-deserved, can obviously be suddenly transitory.  Since 1990, Bill Laswell has been a great inspiration to this blogger because of his unerring commitment to presenting music in ways that challenge, provoke and move in ways outside (often far beyond) the mainstream.

An early discovery was the incredible and oft-chaotic four-piece Last Exit, which Laswell created by bringing together three forces of nature in guitarist Sonny Sharrock, saxophonist Peter Brötzmann and drummer Ronald Shannon Jackson, while the producer and bassist was truly the glue that held the center during the raging cataclysms these masters brought to the ensemble.

The debut live recording from Paris in February 1986 literally involved the quartet arriving for the gig, without rehearsals, a set list or any pieces and just totally going for broke in a fully improvised and incendiary environment.  The results can be unsettling for a listener not knowing anything about the project, but it is also bracing, cathartic and amazing to hear Sharrock and Brötzmann play their instruments to what seems like their absolute limits, while Jackson provides almost illimitable rhythmic accompaniment and Laswell keeping everything (well, almost) grounded.

Last Exit is an astounding recording as Laswell has had an amazing, diverse career as a musician and producer.  Which leads to a request:  please consider contributing to a Go Fund Me fundraiser set up by friends of Laswell to help with expenses because his health issues, the loss of his longtime home, and the costs of maintaining his studio.  Given his absolute dedication to music and what he has given to it, he deserves as much support as he can get.

Peter Brötzmann/Die Like a Dog Quartet: Little Birds Have Fast Hearts, Nos 1-2

Though it appears neither was aware of the other's work at the time, the parallels between the "free jazz" saxophonists American Albert Ayler and German Peter Brötzmann, are striking.  Both gloried in the sheer joy of expression in ecstatic sound when they emerged in the mid-1960s as "free jazz" exploded.  Not that their music sounded exactly the same and Ayler definitely had a heavily spiritual motivation that Brötzmann did not seem to have, but the unbridled energy that blared from their instruments definitely had some sort of kinship in the exploration of pure sound.

Ayler blazed trails and infuriated purists during his brief, but bracing peak blasts of powerful live and studio recordings from 1964 to 1967 before ill-advised attempts to reach a more popular audience through albums on Impulse Records failed badly.  There was a late attempt to regain his footing with some recorded live performances in Europe in summer 1970.  Then, in November, the great saxophonist disappeared after an argument with his girlfriend and his body was found floating in the East River near a pier in Brooklyn.  His drowning death remains a mystery and adds to the legend of the man called "Little Bird," in homage to his skills and comparisons to Charlie Parker.

Brötzmann, when he learned of Ayler's music became a devoted fan, and nearly thirty years after Ayler's death, formed a quartet called Die Like a Dog, an apparent reference to Ayler's passing.  A series of performances in November 1997 at a festival in Berlin yielded two volumes of stunning improvised music released first by FMP (Free Music Productions) and then by Jazzwerkstatt in a Die Like a Dog box set as Little Birds Have Fast Hearts, an encomium to Ayler.

From his ragged, wild and utterly intense early recordings like Machine Gun, For Adolphe Sax, and Nipples, among others, Brötzmann's career is still defined by his refusal to record much in the studio and his preference for the total spontaneity and freedom of live performance, though some of that sheer power has morphed into some reflective and introspective music.

Little Birds Have Fast Hearts has plenty of wild, careening and bracing moments over its 126 minutes in six parts, but there are also lots of moments where the music slows and thoughtful passages break up the intensity.  Fortunately, Brötzmann assembled an ensemble that could provide him the sensitive and near-telepathic accompaniment that make these recording so spectacular.

Toshinori Kondo is a perfect complement and foil, being known for his electronic treatments of his trimpet as well as his medium and slower tempo ruminations on this most emotive of wind instruments.  Kondo, a frequent collaborator like Brötzmann of Bill Laswell, makes the most of his style here, tempering the intensity of Brötamann's tenor, clairnet, and taogato with a consistent flow of bubbling and moderated energy.

The rhythm section is vital, because bassist William Parker and drummer Hamid Drake, know how to hold down the bottom and yet work fluidly and with lightning quick reactions to the playing of the lead horns.  Their superb accompaniment never seeks to take the forefront, but keeps everything together perfectly, so that Brötzmann and Kondo can give flight to their fancies.  This makes Little Birds Have Fast Hearts a classic of free improvisation and worth repeated listenings, guaranteed to reveal more depth, nuance and excitement each time.

Last Exit: Headfirst into the Flames, Live in Europe

Ronald Shannon Jackson, a masterful drummer who played with Cecil Taylor, Ornette Coleman and others and who fronted such bands as The Decoding Society, passed away on 19 October at age 73.  Jackson also had a long association with the omnipresent Bill Laswell, including holding down the rhythm section with the bassist in the stunning "free jazz" supergroup, Last Exit.

From their debut in 1986, Last Exit was devoted to completely improvised, live music with as much sonic firepower and as little political correctness as possible.  Jackson and Laswell had a formidable job trying to hold down the bottom while Peter Brötzmann on reeds and the sublime guitarist Sonny Sharrock were a formidable front line of screams, cries and other generally generous forms of musical mayhem.

A particularly interesting recording of the band is Headfirst into the Flames, recorded in 1989 in Munich and Stockholm and featuring the group in all of their wild and woolly glory.  Nine pieces stretching over an hour represent the epitome of Last Exit's fearsome power, masterful playing, sense of humor and perhaps among the purest forms of musical democracy one will find anywhere. 

An extra bonus is the adaptation of quotations by the American poet and novelist Kenneth Patchen from his experimental novel, The Journal of Albion Moonlight.  Titles include "Don't Be a Cry Baby, Whatever You Do;" "A Knight of Ghosts and Shadows;" "Hanged Man Are Always Naked;" "I Must Confess I'm a Cannibal;" and a favorite of this listener, "Jesus!  What Gorgeous Monkeys We Are."  Given Last Exit's free association live work (there was one studio album, the interesting Iron Path, which is utterly tame and almost melodic compared to the five live releases--Brötzmann, in particular, tends to shun the studio for the immediacy and connectivity of the stage), these titles are truly meaningless, but they sure are fun to read.

In any case, listening to any Last Exit album is an experience not to be found anywhere else in the wide panoply of music generally labeled "free jazz" and the chaos is held together by the amazing musicianship and, again, the able work of Laswell and Jackson.  The latter may not be a name many folks recognize, but his body of work from the mid-1960s onward is truly impressive.  His time with Last Exit and his playing on Headfirst into the Flames are an excellent testament to his abilities.  May Ronald Shannon Jackson rest in peace!

Last Exit:  Headfirst into the Flames, Live in Europe (Downtown Music Gallery, 2008/Muworks Records, 1993)

1.  Lizard Eyes  5:30
2.  Don't Be a Cry Baby, Whatever You Do  6:35
3.  So Small, So Weak, This Bloody Sweat of Loving  4:25
4.  Headfirst into the Flames  3:00
5.  A Knight of Ghosts and Shadows  6:25
6.  Jesus!  What Gorgeous Monkeys We Are  11:01
7.  Hanged Man Are Always Naked  10:05
8.  No One Knows Anything  5:15
9.  I Must Confess I'm a Cannibal 10:40

Peter Brötzmann Octet: Machine Gun

As an expression of pure energy music in what is generally called "free jazz," there is nothing quite like the bracing blasts of Machine Gun, the landmark May 1968 recording by the German saxophonist Peter Brötzmann and seven colleagues.

To those who enjoy so-called "free jazz," emanating, perhaps, with the 1960 Ornette Coleman album of that name and the post-1961 work of Cecil Taylor and the 1965 Ascension recording by John Coltrane and just about anything put out by the powerful Albert Ayler between 1964 and 1967, this album seems to have something of a lineage.  Yet, it has its own distinctiveness, coming during the politically and socially-charged world of Europe in that first half of 1968 by musicians who were jettisoning the more imitative work of most European jazz musicians to that point.

The title Machine Gun was bestowed on Brötzmann by the American trumpeter Don Cherry, who worked with Coleman on those essential early Contemporary and Atlantic recordings in the late 1950s and early 1960s and then went off to Europe, where he made memorable recordings with Ayler and on his own.  Cherry found an apt metaphor for Brötzmann's particularly rough and brutal sound, one clearly informed by Ayler's style of playing, but with its own determined intensity and sound.  Brötzmann had a few hundred copies of the vinyl LP pressed for sale at shows and, some four years later, Gost Jebers released the record with his new and highly-influential Free Music Production label.

Joining with the leader in the horn section was Willem Breuker, who became far better known later for music that was in a very different place than his early free work, and Englishman Evan Parker.  A glorious noise it was that this trio made with melody virtually absent, starting with staccato blasts that sound much like what Ayler and Coltrane (especially in his opening movement on Meditations from 1966) were doing, before launching into sheer blasts of noise including the relentless pounding from Han Bennink and Sven-Ake Johansson.  There is a relatively mellow section featuring bowing from the two bassists Peter Kowald and Buschi Niebergall and it's a wonder that pianist Fred Van Hove could even find a way to play amidst much of the cacophony, but his playing does leaven the frenetic activity to a significant extent.  Finally, towards the end there is a strange R & B like section that the horns play that completely changes the nature of the tune, which concludes with the staccato riff that opened the piece.

For those who just can't get enough of the 15-minute version (and second take) of this magnum opus, the album includes the third take that spans over 17-minutes.  Those entranced, as this blogger was, by the feast of pure noise found in these versions can also seek out the sole recorded live version, which, coming from a March 1968 festival date, predates the studio work, and which was released with the mesmerizing "Fuck de Boere" [a crude politicized statement about the horrors of South African apartheid] in 1970.

With the two takes of Van Hove's "Responsible," there is a greater variety of dynamics, including samba-like rhythms, Carribean-inflected melodies, quiet free interludes and the like that are a nice change of pace from the unyielding intensity of the title tune and a reminder that free jazz players are often perfectly capable of melody and more reflective sounds.

Then, there is Breuker's "Music for Han Bennink," which has a crazy short intro head arrangement before allowing the drummers a little interlude and then back to the wild "melody" which then subsides before launching into another barrage that seems a variation on that opening head.  Bennink follows with a solo that shows his great talent (a much later duet with the great Cecil Taylor in the landmark 1988 series of recordings that pianist did in Germany will be featured here at some point) for a wide variety of dynamics on his apparently basic kit.  After some more thrashing, there is a very mellow and melodic section about half way through lasting a few seconds before more screeching and screaming and general mayhem resumes.  Van Hove gets a chance to end the piece with a solo, sounding a little like Taylor, but without quite the density and the percussiveness of the latter, and it is a memorable performance, only briefly accompanied by some percussion effects.

Machine Gun is probably only slightly less jarring now than it was 45 years ago.  While Brötzmann has continued to be very active and committed to exploring variations of the noisy, atonal pallette of sounds found on this recording, especially in the sublime quartet Last Exit, which will soon be featured here, he has also pursued some less abrasive, rapid and pounding styles of music that still feature his truly iconoclastic sound and determined disinterest in studio recording.

This recording will, however, be his signature—a determined and purposeful clarion call to a turbulent Europe that, in 1968, was consumed with war, riots and other examples of disorder and change.  Anyone interested in "free jazz" and its manifestations in Europe really ought to start with this seminal and bracing record.

Peter Brötzmann Octet:  Machine Gun (Free Music Production, 1968)

1.  Machine Gun (Second Take)  14:57
2.  Machine Gun (Third Take)  17:13
3.  Responsible (For Jan Van de Ven)  (First Take)  10:00
4.  Responsible (For Jan Van de Ven) (Second Take)  8:12
5.  Music for Han Bennink 1  11:22