(Free Jazz, Free Improvisation, Avant-Garde Jazz) Peter Brotzmann Chicago Tentet plus Two - Short Visit to Nowhere - 2002, FLAC (tracks+.cue), lossless

EAC extraction logfile from 20. September 2007, 11:58 for CD
Peter Brotzmann Chicago Tentet Plus Two / Short Visit to Nowhere
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Biography by Chris Kelsey
Three decades after his death, the legacy of Albert Ayler is plain -- a plethora of reed-biting aural contortionists bent on exploiting the saxophone's propensity for making sounds that resemble a human scream. Many such players, unable to play anything resembling a coherent melody, rely instead on the extreme manifestations of the Ayler technique; their playing is more often than not a randomly executed wall of energy and emotion-driven white noise. Peter Brotzmann, on the other hand, is the rare Ayler-influenced saxophonist capable (like Ayler) of producing improvised lines of depth and sensitivity while informing them with enough raw power to make a lesser saxophonist wilt. Brotzmann's playing has little of the arbitrariness one associates with other similar tenor saxophonists like Charles Gayle or Ivo Perelman; Brotzmann possesses a surety of tone and a melodic center characteristic of a focused musical conception. While there's no lack of spontaneity in his music, Brotzmann's concern with motivic and melodic reiteration gives his playing a palpable sense of direction. Indeed, Brotzmann's obsession often serves as a pivot upon which an ensemble turns, making him a consummate team player, in addition to being an affecting soloist.
Brotzmann was first a visual artist, attending the Art Academy of Wuppertal. A self-taught saxophonist, he began playing with Dixieland bands beginning in 1959. In the early '60s he became involved with the avant-garde Fluxus movement. He began plying free jazz around 1964; in 1965 he played in a group with the virtuoso bassist Peter Kowald and the Swedish drummer Sven-Ã…ke Johansson. The next year he played with Mike Mantler and Carla Bley's band and became associated with Alexander Schlippenbach's Globe Unity Orchestra. In 1969 Brotzmann helped form FMP, a long-lived free jazz label and presenter that issues recordings and sponsors live performances. In the '70s, Brotzmann would play and record with pianist Fred van Hove, drummer Han Bennink, trumpeter Don Cherry, and trombonist Albert Mangelsdorff, among others. His circle of associates would continue to widen; in 1986 he would play (with drummer Ronald Shannon Jackson, guitarist Sonny Sharrock, and electric bassist/producer Bill Laswell) in Last Exit, a metal/free jazz group that enjoyed brief success. By the late '90s one would be hard-pressed to name a prominent free jazz musician with whom Brotzmann had not played. The strength of his personality is matched by his adaptability; as evidence, hear Eight by Three, his 1997 recording with the pianist Borah Bergman and multi-reedist Anthony Braxton. While one might expect Brotzmann's incendiary nature to overwhelm the more blithe Braxton, he instead manages to parry and complement effectively. With Bergman's percussive intensity, the record becomes one of the more unusual and compelling free jazz artifacts of the era.
Review by Brian Olewnick
Short Visit to Nowhere is the companion disc to Broken English, recorded by Peter Brötzmann's tentet on the same dates in 2000. This release contains four pieces, more or less alternating between riff-oriented, driving works and more abstract pieces. Mars Williams' "Hold That Thought" has a North African feel in its sinuous primary theme before giving way to a wonderfully driving secondary structure that serves as a fine underpinning for some raucous free soloing. It's rather reminiscent of Willem Breuker's band at their wildest, but with fiercer soloists. The band switches gears entirely for the wryly titled "Ellington," a composition by Mats Gustafsson that begins in a flurry of key clickings and breath sounds before exploding into various areas, including percussion duets and massed reed formations. Brötzmann's title track is a brutish, lumbering thing, very dark and harsh but powerful for all that. Lonberg-Holm has a strong turn on electrified cello, summoning Hendrix-like ghosts, but the piece sputters a bit out of breath to its conclusion. "Lightbox," the Lonberg-Holm conduction that closes the disc, begins as a well-measured and almost delicate affair before giving way to some amazing work by Mats Gustafsson on baritone and extreme blowing by the entire wind section. Capturing all the brilliance and ferocity of the Brötzmann tentet in the studio and on disc is a thankless task. That this album comes within shouting distance is reason enough to recommend hearing it.