Anthony Braxton: Quartet (England) 1985

Though Leo Records has previously documented Quartet (London) 1985 (1988); Quartet (Birmingham) 1985 (1991); and Quartet (Coventry) 1985 (1993), Burning Ambulance Music is proud to celebrate the 40th anniversary of the tour with this set of previously unreleased recordings from Liverpool, Sheffield, Leicester, Bristol, Southampton, Leeds, and Huddersfield. Set to be digitally released exclusively on Bandcamp on what would have been Braxton's 80th birthday, (June 4, 2025), Quartet England (1985) is an unhinged glory from start to finish.

With a brazen logic all its own, Quartet England (1985) is not, by any means or definition, for those whose algorithms prescribe soothing puppy and kitten videos or languorous spa music. Maniacal, undaunted, unflinching, Quartet England (1985) place the brave listener in the eye of the cacophonous tornado fury that was Anthony Braxton, pianist Marilyn Crispell, bassist Mark Dresser and drummer/percussionist Gerry Hemingway during the tumultuous November of 1985. 

Crashing symphonies. Madcap reveries. Exhortations. exulatations.  "Composition 69B," "Composition 60 (+108C)," "Composition 110A (+108B)" and "Composition 34" or, one might say, Sheffield, Set 1 is a brutal, yet welcome opening assault. An assault that stays brutal and then feeds on itself and everything around it until everything gets brutal. Then cooler heads prevail. But, in the cruel reflection of all of us, the fighting quartet gets back to brawling. And so goes blazingly into Sheffield, Set 2: "Composition 105A," "Composition 69N," "Composition 40M," and "Bass solo (from Composition 96)."

An un-contained hell fire whirlwind, Quartet (England) 1985 then careens north on the M1 to Leicester, Set 1: "Composition 85 (+108D)," "Composition 69F," "Composition 122 (+108A)," and Set 2: "Composition 69C, "Composition 69O," "Composition 116," "Composition 40N." It is Braxton and his comrade combatants warning us of an approaching threat: The Cold War. AIDS. Reagan, Thatcher, Gorbachev. Mitterrand bombs Greenpeace. A world of chaotic movement in which we all will have to find our center to survive.

Equivalent to a nine CD set, digitally corrected and restored from original mono cassette audience recordings made by fellow traveler and noted author Graham Lock (Forces In Motion: Anthony Braxton and the Meta-Reality of Creative Music), Quartet (England) 1985is a mind-sweeping, heraldic experience. Crispell jackhammers, Dresser thunders, Hemingway battles, and Braxton, creating a music only he could make reality, leads the charge, kicking out the jams and kicking up dust from every nook and cranny of the stale collective. Quartet (England) 1985 a true monument to the warrior spirit.

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