Rabshakeh

Wow. Were you involved in the Atlantic records as well as the others?

Art Ensemble of Chicago - Fanfare for the Warriors (Atlantic, 1974) Weird cover on this release, but it sounds great. Weird cover on this release, but it sounds great.

Free Jazz Collective's menu du jour. Four and a half stars well earned?

I had the pleasure of introducing a friend to this recently.

I love that record. Thank you for the reminder.

Yep. Can you hear the improvement?

Good one, and a narrow choice, but I think that, despite the ever so very slightly smaller recorded output, Mitchell has greater depth and a wider vision. Soprano saxophone or Baritone saxophone?

Herbie Hancock - Sound System (Columbia, 1984) Bizarrely, I see that Toshinori Kondo and Hamid Drake are on this record. It's a shame that Brötzmann wasn't available.

Hum Dono (Columbia, 1969) by Joe Harriott & Amancio D'Silva Quartet

Ahem, yes. Derek Humble.

Listening to the Jimmy Deuchar Dexter's Opus de Funk (Tempo, 1958), with some good Tubby Hayes and Nick Humble on it.

Happens you are right. Cut at 45rpm on two LPs for supposedly better SQ (although I can't say I can hear it, even on the new system) and for added inconvenience and cost. Reminds me of this classic: Anyway, thank you for letting me know, as I would not have figured it out otherwise, being a bear of small brain. I had wondered why the peppy female singer on the version I had heard had become a man singing legato on the vinyl, but had thought nothing of it.

Lee Konitz Meets Warne Marsh Again (Pausa, 1984) A real gem, recorded in 1976, around the same time as Marsh's 70s revival on record with All Music and Tenor Gladness. Konitz is also at his angular 70s peak. It features the late Peter Ind. With thanks to whoever it was who recommended it in the Blow Brother Konitz thread back in May (possibly JS).

Okay, George Lewis or George Lewis?

Noah Howard - Live at Judson Hall (ESP, 1966) I am very impressed at how forward thinking Noah Howard's shirt is here. Clearly hugely influential on the early 90s scene.

Oliver Nelson - Straight Ahead (New Jazz, 1961) I feel like this one should be more famous among Dolphy fans. It's my first time listening to it and it's absolutely great. Nelson lets him run the shop. Perhaps people get out off by the incredibly ugly cover.

Motohiko Hino - First Album (Columbia, 1971) I'm coming to the conclusion that Kosuke Mine never appeared on a bad album. He, Hideo Ichikawa, Masabumi Kikuchi and the rest of that set were on fire in the early 1970s.

Anna Webber's Simple Trio - Binary

Chicago Ra sometimes gets billed as the easy point of access, but I think it is actually the most expert-level of all his periods.

He'll break. Give him a week or two on that schedule and he'll break.

Szwed has a long passage on Sun Ra's use of afrocentric freemasonic / protestant books and pamphlets. He also links it back to the prevalence of freemasonry in the American south in the first half of the 20th century, including in the African American parts of Birmingham in Alabama. Again, it is interesting to find that Anthony Braxton refers to some of the same books that Szwed says inspired Sun Ra in his interviews with Graham Lock.

I was thinking that specifically in relation to the poem on the second side. Some of the same imagery from it then recurs in the poem on the opening track of Fanfare for the Warriors, which I think is by Malachi Favors. I was a kid when Nas and Wu Tang were in their original pomp, and spent a lot of time as a teenager obsessing over what the 5% references meant, and this has the same "feel" as you say. Query the Hebrew too - it looks like someone who does not know Hebrew has tried to transliterate the English name "Cain" back into Hebrew, without knowing the original spelling and using a non-final letter for the last letter by mistake. Then again, it could be anything.

I'd avoided them until now, because I thought they were a bit Pitchfork. Stupid prejudgement to make, which will be corrected.

I don't know Neuringer at all. I will definitely check this out. Thank you.