Search - Albert Ayler :: Lörrach, Paris 1966

Superb sonic upgrade-- 4.5 stars.

Michael Stack | North Chelmsford, MA USA | 09/20/2005

(4 out of 5 stars)

"A testament to the value of remastering, the 2002 reissue of "Lorrach, Paris 1966" is in many ways like night and day over the previous issue. And I really enjoyed that issue.



Albert Ayler, as part of the Newport Jazz Festival in Europe in November 1966, took a quintet consisting of himself on tenor sax, his brother Don on trumpet, classically trained violinist Michel Samson, bassist William Folwell, and in place of Sunny Murray (who wouldn't go), drummer Beaver Harris. This band was exciting and dynamic, with the Ayler brothers intertwining around each other on theme statements and counterpoint offered from the strings. Improv often consisted of theme variation rather than your typical free jazz style improv (although there was plenty of that too), and there was an odd balance struck between the horns and the strings. In Samson and Folwell, Ayler had two string players who were confident expressing themselves in arco or pizzicato, and everything from near-drones to scrapes and pyrotechnics came forth from them. Add to this his agressive tenor with its wide vibrato and Don Ayler's insistent, compulsive trumpet and the mix was superb. Harris, while not quite the stunning drummer that several other Ayler drums was, for his part maintains a more beat-focused sound than any of Ayler's other drummers used.



Both shows are brilliant, start to finish. With the remaster (which houses the CD in a digipack with a really nice cover photo), the sound is superb, clean, exciting and dynamic. It's not quite flawless (I suspect my unhappiness with the drumming has to do with that), but it's an incredible record. Recommended."