Jazz Articles

G. F. Fitz-Gerald & Lol Coxhill: The Poppy Seed Affair

by Nic Jones
December 23, 2011

Guitarist G.F. Fitz-Gerald has always mapped out musical territory every bit as distinct as that of Derek Bailey or Hans Reichel, while Lol Coxhill is one of the most distinctive soprano saxophonists on the planet. They've worked as a duo for decades and this one-DVD/two-CD set straddles those decades with rare aplomb. The DVD was shot in 1981 and depicts crimes of passion performed in a style simultaneously surreal and expressionist by members of the performance art ...

Dreamtime: Double Trouble

by Nic Jones
December 17, 2010

Reel Recordings has excelled in the business of audio restoration, as this 2CD/DVD set goes to show. On one level, Dreamtime is no more than a footnote in British jazz, but not only did the band feature some potent soloists, it was one of the few to bridge the divide between composed and free music with aplomb and depth of understanding.Of the CDs' two live sets, the 1984 Bracknell Jazz Festival recording from July, 1984, on the first ...

Radar Favourites: Radar Favourites

by Nic Jones
November 28, 2010

Full credit is due to Mike King and Reel Recordings for this exercise in historical reclamation. For a brief period back in the mid-1970s, Radar Favourites was a band with a pedigree. For one thing, it was saxophonist Geoff Leigh's first venture after his departure from Henry Cow, while guitarist G.F. Fitz-Gerald was responsible for the album Mouseproof (Sunbeam Records, 1970), a highly singular title from an era not lacking in singularities. Drummer Charles Hayward, a man who once played ...

Don Rendell Ian Carr Quintet: Live at the Union 1966

by John Kelman
May 11, 2010

During its five-year run, the Don Rendell Ian Carr Quintet was one of the UK's premiere small ensemble jazz groups. Five albums on Columbia didn't hurt either, from 1965's Shades of Blue through to 1969's Change Is, where dissention ultimately resulted in the band's dissolution. Sometimes it's for the best, though; saxophonist/flautist Rendell continued on in a relatively mainstream fashion, while trumpeter Carr created one of the UK's earliest fusion groups, Nucleus, featuring (at various times) guitarist Allan Holdsworth, drummer ...

Soft Machine: Live At Henie Onstad Arts Centre 1971

by Nic Jones
January 13, 2010

Soft Machine Live at Henie Onstad Arts Centre 1971 Reel Recordings 2009Here's some heady stuff from what in 2010 feels like a golden era, dubious though that notion might be in reality. There's already ample evidence that the Mike Ratledge / Elton Dean / Hugh Hopper / Robert Wyatt lineup of Soft Machine never played the same set the same way twice, and it's a tribute to the group's levels of interaction ...

Soft Machine: Live at Henie Onstad Arts Centre 1971

by John Kelman
November 11, 2009

Soft Machine Live at Henie Onstad Arts Centre 1971Reel Recordings2009 It's a curious thing, but live performances can be issued all the time in the jazz world without the suggestion that there are too many of them, while in the rock world the release of too many similar programs will be criticized as excessive. Pianist Keith Jarrett's last three releases with his longstanding Standards Trio--from The Out-of-Towners (ECM, 2004) through to Yesterdays (ECM, 2009)--have ...

Splinters: Split the Difference

by Andrey Henkin
October 3, 2009

One imagines that there must be literally thousands of sessions like this, live gigs by groups that only a small handful of people got to enjoy. The record industry being what it is, only the smallest percentage of musical interactions are documented and released. Reel Recordings, focusing its efforts on a particularly fruitful period in British jazz and progressive music, is trying to change that. Splinters is an illustrative name for this band. As was more common ...

Bob Downes Open Music: Crossing Borders

by Nic Jones
May 3, 2009

Here's another of Reel's exercises in twentieth century tape archaeology. Like earlier efforts, it has the practical effect of sealing another hole in the documented fabric of British jazz and improvised music from the last four decades of that century. It's highly worthwhile too, this labor of love, as on this occasion it yields a program of music every bit as inventive as that produced by bigger stars--the term is as good as meaningless in the circumstances--of the day. Recorded ...

Harry Miller's Isipingo: Full Steam Ahead

by Nic Jones
April 19, 2009

Such is the nature of the reviewing game that some reviews just flow out, taking the perennial word count with it. This is usually because the force of life running through the music under discussion is vibrant enough to make it so, and Full Steam Ahead is a case in point.

If the notion that the 15 years between 1965 and 1980--as arbitrary as that period may seem just like any other--amount to the most fertile period in ...

Command All Stars: Curiosities 1972

by Nic Jones
April 18, 2009

That infinite moment with which a lot of the music AAJ covers is preoccupied is amplified here, rife with a depth which far outstrips the casual manner in which the music came together. Afforded the relative luxury of three days of studio time in February 1972, some of that time's most creative individuals on the British scene came together to work both spontaneously and collectively. The results, even while inevitably reflective of that casual approach, demonstrate the primacy of that ...