By Robert Spencer

Twenty-five years ago, a young man named Werner X. Uehlinger happened upon the music of multi-instrumentalist extraordinaire Joe McPhee. With no bigger plans than making McPhee's marvelous music better known, Hat Hut Records was born.

Twenty-five years later, Hat Hut is one of the leading - if not the leading - labels for improvised music and new music from both the "jazz" and "classical" camps, and shows no signs of slowing down as it enters its second quarter century. Hat Hut recordings sound better than others. The packaging looks better. The music is always first-rate. Not bad for something that was never intended to be a label at all.

Uehlinger and Hat Hut over these twenty-five years have given the world some of the most significant music to have been created in that span. First there was just McPhee, who recorded a large number of ground-breaking albums: Tenor, Oleo, Linear B, and many more. Then came other lights shining just as brightly: Anthony Braxton, Steve Lacy, Cecil Taylor, Sun Ra - as well as giants of new classical music including John Cage, Karlheinz Stockhausen, and Morton Feldman.

But as impressive as Hat Hut's backlist is, its new releases are just as strong, with powerful recordings coming almost monthly from Ellery Eskelin, Matthew Shipp, Misha Mengelberg, and others.

It's virtually impossible to choose a "Best Hats" that would do justice to the enormous breadth and quality of their releases over the years. Thus the following ten recordings comprise a highly subjective listing of Hats that absolutely should not be missed. (They're presented here in chronological order.)

KlavierstÃŒcke, Karlheinz Stockhausen (hat ART 6142, 1958-9)

Stockhausen's KlavierstÃŒcke are ferocious, spiky, indeterminate pieces of a peculiarly affecting quality, which influenced Anthony Braxton and a host of other New Music practitioners. These historic recordings by David Tudor remain, even forty years after they were recorded, among the most fearless and convincing interpretations of these formidable works. Close listening reveals coherences unfathomed and undreamed, which lead the way to larger harmonies than one had previously imagined possible. Finally there is a great variety to these pieces, which Tudor brings out most startlingly in his four versions of KlavierstÃŒck XI: where is the thread? Can you find it? It is exhilarating to try.

The Long March Parts 1 and 2, Max Roach and Archie Shepp (hat ART 6041 and 6042, 1979)

Roach and Shepp may not spring to the mind as a famous duo a la Laurel and Hardy or John and Yoko, but the pairing is thrillingly apt. Both are power performers with great (although often underappreciated) adaptive powers. These two discs, recorded live at Willisau, are a no-holds barred attack that also encompasses tremendous intricacy, restraint, and nuance. "The Long March" is a 26-minute performance that builds to a terrific and inexorable intensity, working from a short motif that seems to encompass all the doggedness and refusal to capitulate of the original Long March. Shepp's solo "Sophisticated Lady" is a masterpiece of understatement.

It is in the Brewing Luminous, Cecil Taylor (hat ART 6012, 1980)

"It is in the Brewing Luminous" is one long (almost seventy-minute) piece, and although there is a lyrical and searching stretch in the middle, for the most part it is Mr. Taylor and his 88 tuned bongos with all the stops pulled out. Longtime partner Jimmy Lyons is on hand and ready to go the distance. Adding a special texture to the proceedings are violinist Ramsey Ameen and cellist/bassist Alan Silva, plus two drummer, one of whom is Sunny Murray. It's a wonder the roof didn't blow off the place, but it's a good thing it didn't, so that the sound was preserved on this recording of magical and mesmerizing power.

Sunrise in Different Dimensions, Sun Ra Arkestra (hat ART 6099, 1980)

This is not the big-band swing of the Sun Ra Arkestra's early Saturn years, or the all-out free-for-all of the man from Saturn's ESP discs. It is another Sun Ra altogether, playing (almost unrecognizably) "Round Midnight," along with Coleman Hawkins' "Queer Notions," Jelly Roll Morton's "King Porter Stomp," Noble Sissle's "Yeah Man!" "Take the A Train," and more - plus a few originals like the unforgettable "Disguised Gods in Skullduggery Rendez-Vous." The relatively small group gives lots of opportunity to hear Ra, tenorman John Gilmore, altoist Marshall Allen, and trumpeter Michael Ray, among others - and to hear them, for once, with good sound.

Live at Dreher Paris 1981, The Peak, Vol. 2, Mal Waldron & Steve Lacy (hat ART 6186, 1981)

Duets to end all duets. Especially the first disc's take of "Well You Needn't." Fueled by Waldron's power chording, Lacy reaches for the stratosphere, while never quite letting go of the chord structure. Waldron's urgently lyrical playing is on glorious display throughout these discs, and Lacy is caught up in it all enough to show a good bit less detachment than he ordinarily favors. (As he put it in his soprano saxophone instruction book, sax can moo.) The synchronicity between the two is overwhelming, making this a classic not to be missed. And volume one, issued with Lacy's name in front, is almost as good.

Oleo & A Future Retrospective, Joe McPhee Po Music (hat ART 6097, 1982)

When Raymond Boni's jet-engine guitar takes off near the beginning of a relatively straight-faced "Oleo," you know you're not in for an average bop date. The gorgeous McPhee compositions "Pablo," "Future Retrospective" and "Astral Spirits" establish that there is nothing average at all about this disc, which showcases McPhee's keening pocket trumpet and wildly impressionistic tenor saxophone. André Jaume's bass clarinet adds a piquant melodicism that is usually gently underscored - and gently undermined - by Boni. The CD release contains a four-part suite in honor of Eric Dolphy that moves resolutely beyond the notes to establish a rarer, more difficult, and more precious beauty.

The Minimalism of Erik Satie, Vienna Art Orchestra (hat ART 6024, 1983-4).

The Vienna Art Orchestra takes up, presents, and transmogrifies several of the better-known pieces of the eccentric French Impressionist composer, Erik Satie. In doing so, they show themselves to be master musicians; they show Satie's pieces to be excellent vehicles for improvisation, and they demonstrate that the "classical" and "jazz" camps are not, or need not be, all that far apart after all.

Concerto Grosso, Richard Teitelbaum (hat ART 6004, 1985)

Richard Teitelbaum plays keyboards and runs them through electronic whichwhats in order to produce unique and often quite affecting sound transmutations. Here he is joined by reed wizard (alto, sopranino, etc.) Anthony Braxton and trombonist George Lewis. Perhaps in keeping with the title of the piece, Teitelbaum sticks here for long periods to certain harpsichord-like sounds, which Braxton and Lewis accent with whirling baroque-like lines. This one won a prize for Computer Music at the Prix Ars Electronica 87, and deservedly so: while much electronic/acoustic music melding comes off rather undigested, this one is smooth and fluent from beginning to end.

Remains, Steve Lacy (hat ART 6102, 1991)

Virtually the polar opposite of the sprawling conceptions of his sextet music, Remains is the spare and deeply affecting solo soprano saxophone of Steve Lacy. Courtesy Hat Hut's Peter Pfister, Lacy's straight horn has never been better recorded. Seldom, also, has the master been in better form, although his recorded ouevre would span the shelves of several decent libraries. Here he records his entire Tao cycle, creating a fascinating counterpart to the sextet version on The Way (hat ART 6154). Tossing off high notes and higher than high notes with aplomb, Lacy's greatest achievement here may be the 18-minute title track, an enormously complex piece with roots in the dance. A hauntingly beautiful work.

Willisau (Quartet) 1991, Anthony Braxton (hat ART 61001-4, 1991)

This mammoth four-disc set is the best recorded example of the "classic quartet" of "free jazz": Anthony Braxton (reeds, compositions), Marilyn Crispell (piano), Mark Dresser (bass), and Gerry Hemingway (percussion). From the Schönberg-swing of Composition 40B to the brooding growls of Composition 161, the Braxton quartet explores with wild enthusiasm and breathtaking virtuosity all the possibilities of the jazz quartet - including a good many never previously imagined. Braxton's alto saxophone sings as lightly as ever, and his other instruments have rarely been so well-integrated or well-recorded. This set - two studio and two live discs - offers an attractive introduction to Braxton's "collage musics," and musicians playing different pieces at the same time have never sounded so outrageously in sync.