Monday, January 29, 2018
NOAH HOWARD – Patterns Altsax Rec – AMC 1000 LP 1973
NOAH HOWARD – Patterns Altsax Rec – AMC 1000 LP 1973
Label: Altsax � AMC 1000
Format: Vinyl, LP, Album / Country: US / Released: 1973
Style: Free Jazz, Free Improvisation
Recorded in Hilversum, Holland, October 1971.
Design at Photography � Chas. Baum and Daphne Warburg
Mastered At � Sadler Recording Service
Lacquer Cut At � Bell Sound Studios
Matrix / Runout (Side A, hand-etched): AMC?1000?A Bre 6 - 4 - 73
Matrix / Runout (Side B, hand-etched): AMC.1000?B Bre 6 - 4 - 73
A - Patterns ..........................................................................................18:41
B - Patterns (continued)....................................................................... 18:45
Composition by Noah Howard
Noah Howard � alto saxophone, bells, tambourine, timpani
Misha Mengelberg � piano
Earl Freeman � bass
Jaap Schoonhoven � electric guitar
Steve Boston � congas
Han Bennink � percussion
A nice obscure one from Noah Howard, recorded in Holland during his time in Europe, and featuring a great lineup that includes Misha Mengelberg and Han Bennink. The album is one long track � "Patterns" � in which Howard solos in a fairly free, post-Coltrane kind of way, although the other players retain more of their own styles. (Dusty Groove, Inc.)
Originally issued on his own AltSax label in 1971, the "Patterns" session is one of the great mystery spots in the Noah Howard canon... The blasted opening sequence, which we seem to enter whilst already in-process, is a space duet for conga & electric guitar unprecedented in the annals of jazz & new music. When the rest of the musicians enter there is a heavy attempt to africanize Dutch architecture, a proposition which Mr. Mengelberg seems reluctant to accept. What eventually occurs is a primitivist aerial slugfest that invokes a world of shared experience, then negates its substantiality with hammers of nihilist beauty. Emblematic of the end of Europes open arms policy towards Americas expatriate improvisers, "Patterns" remains a nobly ferocious, confounding ghost.
_Review by Byron Coley
If you find it, buy this album!
