Tiger Hatchery: Sun Worship

The Chicagoan power-jazz trio Tiger Hatchery debut mini- album is released on ESP-Disk, the label that was the most influential free jazz label in the mid-sixties. So it is no coincidence that Tiger Hatchery are influenced by Albert Ayler's seminal album Spiritual Unity, the first album that ESP-Disk released, as well as other high-octane trios like the recent ones of Peter Brötzmann—Full Blast and Trio Roma—or the Scandinavian trio The Thing, adding a noisy, rock edge to their sonic mayhem.

The trio—saxophonist Mike Forbes, drummer Ben Billington and bassist Andrew Scott Young—share equal leading roles, all contribute to the aggressive onslaught. The first piece, "Chieftain," is a slow- burning piece. Patiently, brief percussive moves, sax wails and electric bass fretting gel into a muscular mix, with Young as the one who anchors the trio attack. The second piece, "Sonic Bloom," is more rooted in the American free-jazz legacy, featuring Forbes in a series of climatic solos. The third, the last and longest, the 15-minutes "Grand Mal," is a fast and intense one. It begins with fractured rhythmic moves, spare sax shrieks that soon gain more volume and power, morphing into a dense and massive sound that keeps its uncompromising attack till its coda. There are with minor and brief interludes in its energetic course, mainly to feature solo parts, most impressively by Young on the electric bass.

Tiger Hatchery offer a similar experience of surrendering to a massive and unstoppable sonic tsunami, not yet as titanic as the one of Brötzmann or The Thing, but no doubt, very close to it.