Jazz Articles about Peter Brötzmann

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Peter Br: More Nipples

by Derek Taylor
April 16, 2003

Something of a boon for Brötzophiles, the Unheard Music Series has reissued no less than a half dozen slices of his early oeuvre since its inception. A large chunk of the material dates from the German reed-splitter's Machine Gun phase when his anti-establishment urges found their zenith in that anti-establishment musical milestone for FMP. The contemporaneous Nipples was another shrapnel-laden pie in the face, and this new collection unearths even more music from that seminal session. An alternate take of ...

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Br: Balls

by Derek Taylor
January 5, 2003

Balls veritably screams Sixties-style counter-culture confrontationalism. Check Bennink's gaunt pale frame, shirtless and head shaven close, standing sternly with his mates on the front cover. Or Brötzmann's hunched visage on the reverse, tenor clutched tightly in vice-grip, caught in mid-renal shout. Then there's Van Hove, sleeves rolled up, bent over the innards of his piano, almost certainly up to some sort of nefarious deconstructionist doings. These three guys meant business when it came to disrupting the status quo, and they ...

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Peter Br: Balls

by Mark Corroto
December 1, 2002

Beauty, as they say, is in the eye of the beholder. So too, is delicacy. One man's swirling maelstrom of free jazz is another's meditative moment. For Peter Brötzmann, the saxophonist often at the center of that whirlpool of sound, serenity can be found in and between the surges of energy.

In the late 1960s his core trio was made up of pianist Fred Van Hove and drummer Han Bennink. Together they stirred the European free jazz scene. ...

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Peter Br: Short Visit to Nowhere & Broken English

by Derek Taylor
August 13, 2002

To the unaccustomed ear large-scale free jazz can easily sound like wanton noise. The very nature of free interplay, where close and rapid-fire listening on the part of the participants is a necessity, seems counterintuitive to settings populous with players. Perhaps that's why so much of the music is the province of smaller ensembles. Considering the niche within a niche market that the music has historically had to contend with another factor contributing to the dominance of compact aggregations is ...

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Peter Br: For Adolphe Sax

by Derek Taylor
August 1, 2002

Contrary to its attendant acclaim, Peter Brötzmann's seminal Machine Gun was not the German's debut recording as a leader. That historic honor belongs to what many perhaps still consider a perverse homage to his principle instrument's inventor, also originally circulated on the FMP imprint. Both the Panzer intensity and stentorian belligerence are securely in place on this earlier outing and judging from the generous photos that line the reissue's notes the Wuppertalian populace wasn't sure what to make of these ...

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Peter Br: For Adolphe Sax

by Mark Corroto
July 4, 2002

With all the historical references to the 1967 recording For Adolphe Sax aside, this session burns with a passion for life and indefatigalbe vigor for musicmaking, as fresh as any working unit in jazz today. The systematic rediscovery and rerelease of long out-of-print free jazz by Atavistic's Unheard Music Series reassembles a roadway linking creative musicians of today with their sometimes lost roots.

Then again, saxophonist Peter Brötzmann's music has never been lost. His ceaseless enthusiasm since this ...

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Peter Br: Fuck De Boere

by Ludwig vanTrikt
August 1, 2001

I am hoping that German saxophonist Peter Brötzmann will be given his just due one day as an avant-garde Godhead. Maybe, just maybe, in the same fashion that saw the late mainstream hornman, Joe Henderson, become a reluctant icon, although past his prime playing. This two concert CD documents Peter Brötzmann in the malestorm of like-minded European improvisors. Fuck De Boere is equal parts justified political diatribe and historical relic of the then burgeoning European outcat scene. “Machine Gun" is ...