Alongside David S Ware’s quartet and Charles Gayle’s Parker/Ali trio, Joe McPhee’s Trio X are one of the great contemporary small groups in free jazz. This beautifully presented set – with both discs cut to play at 45rpm for maximum fidelity – documents McPhee, bassist Dominic Duval and drummer Jay Rosen at an intuitive peak, recorded live in Vilnius in 2006. The set is divided between originals, inspired re-settings (“My Funny Valentine” into Edwin Star’s “War”) and readings of material by Ornette Coleman (an exquisite “Lonely Woman”, “Law Years”), Billie Holiday, Thelonious Monk and Dvorak (a starkly beautiful reading of the first movement from Symphony #9 that connects Ayler-ised jazz to European folk/orchestral traditions). McPhee’s playing is gorgeous, with bold, fluid lines bisecting Duval’s uncanny, vocalized bass work and Rosen’s precise feel for time and space. This is a great free jazz record, one with a huge umbilical to the post-Coltrane tradition but with two fists pointing towards the future. Another excellent release from this new label. Highly recommended.

Third in a great run of solo recordings, following on from Tenor and Soprano, from saxophonist Joe McPhee. It’s easy to forget that McPhee comes from the same generation as Archie Shepp and Albert Ayler, an original fire musician, even if he didn’t fully come to prominence till the 1990s. Alto was recorded live on May 4^th 2009 in NYC and further emphasises McPhee’s connection to the source, with a series of solo alto saxophone and alto clarinet performances that are perfectly poised between post-tongue ecstasy and soft, bruising blues, from boppy Ornette-ish tone-poems through Alyerised heavy metal gospel. Hand-numbered edition of 524 copies on 180g vinyl with silkscreen print on rice paper covers. 

Stellar live recording from one of the greatest living free jazz saxophonists, Joe McPhee, and percussionist Michael Zerang. The range of McPhee’s thought at this point is fairly staggering, exposing himself to playing situations that range from the Chicago underground through Chris Corsano, Peter Brotzmann’s big band and LAFMS fugitives Smegma. But then McPhee has always been a radical thinker, incorporating tapes and electronics early on as part of his Survival Unit. Indeed, I would say that he has never sounded better, bucking the trend for fire musicians to tame the flames as they age and pushing himself headlong into new situations that keep his thinking and playing sharp. Which brings us to this gorgeous new LP from a label that has established itself as one of the premier free jazz imprints, Lithuania’s NoBusiness Records. Recorded live in New Orleans, with titles and themes that reference the city, McPhee’s playing here is so lucid, so beautifully ‘out’, that at points it feels like a compendium of alla the aspects of the saxophonist’s personality that have illuminated his back catalogue reduced to the space of a single set. Zerang gives him plenty of room to spread out, whether playing spare rhythmic tattoos beneath his beautiful pocket trumpet work or chasing the trails of his obsessively raging saxophone. It’s a fucking doozer, is what I’m trying to say. Highly recommended.

Second duo album on Roaratorio from this inspired hook-up between veteran free jazz saxophonist Joe McPhee and drummer Chris Corsano: this is a major kick out the jams bomb, with a buncha titles dedicated to fellow heavy-hitters like Paul Flaherty, Kidd Jordan, Han Bennink, Muhammad Ali and Fred Anderson. McPhee moves between pocket trumpet, tenor and soprano saxophone throughout. The trumpet blats are particularly effective, pushing Corsano into a weird martial Don Ayler/Don Cherry vibe that he responds to by marching the whole damn deal to the edge of the precipice. But it’s McPhee’s tenor that really grounds the music, playing with a breadth of tone and the kind of interstellar logic of the late-Coltrane ensembles while making lightning strikes on the saxophone’s most phantom registers. A great, great side, one that could have sat as comfortably on Centre Of The World or ESP Disk back in the day while playing with the kinda fiery no-prisoners assault that is truly post-Noise. Comes with a download, highly recommended. 

Edition of only 250 copies trio LP from saxophonist Joe McPhee and guitarists Thurston Moore (Sonic Youth) and Bill Nace (Body/Head): nothing like the noise/blurt fest you might have been led to believe from some of the ‘reviews’ or even a cursory look at the personnel involved, instead this is a beautiful, majestic, darkly atmospheric recording that goes deep into devotional/fire music traditions while using twelve electric strings to generate deep-field drones and eerie off-kilter melodies that are deeply meditative. It has to be said, McPhee sounds amazing on this, with a honey-thick tone that comes straight out of the Coltrane songbook while Nace and Moore’s playing is very subtle and measured, playing clanging Evol-isms and slow atonal/whammy bar ascensions that are as dramatically sustained as your favourite Sonic Youth ‘between song’ jam with an extended avant classical feel that is truly more sophisticated and more minimally crude than anything you might’ve imagined. This is one of these rare improvised sets where it feels like there isn’t a second wasted, not a stray note or tone, with the whole deal mainlining the kinda third-eye quaking atmosphere of Om, say, while simultaneously reformulating notions of avant jazz. Beautifully recorded live at Roulette NYC in 2012, this is a peerless example of avant rock/free jazz synthesis and stands tall alongside classics of the form – Borbetomagus/Blue Humans/Last Exit/Barefoot In The Head – while sounding approximately like none of them. Cover art from Joshua Burkett, immediately sold out at source, very highly recommended!