Steve Lacy - 'Moon' (BYG Actuel/Get Back)

This is a far cry from The Straight Horn of Steve Lacy, as it's anything but straight. Moon hails from a period where he was immersed in the Italian free jazz scene (recorded in Rome, 1969) and features a bunch of European musicians who I'm not really familiar with. His wife, Irene Aebi, appears on cello and does vocals on 'Note', which is one of the more memorable cuts not just because of the staccato, one-word lyrics but cause of its whirlwind start-stop madcap nature. Jacques Thollot is on the drums - I only know him from Sharrock's Monkey-Pockie-Boo record and otherwise more as a name – and he clatters and whoops throughout. The overall momentum of this feels closer to the scratchy bending and hacking of the Spontaneous Music Ensemble than much American free jazz going on at the time. The front line being clarinet and soprano sax means we're locked firmly into the upper register, and the bass and drums are fluid enough that it feels like a lot is missing from the centre. Aebi's cello isn't always so present, or it's played in such a way that it's hard to distinguish from the bass. There's generally a thump-thump bassline behind most cuts, probably most melodically on closing cut 'The Breath', but the whole record feels pretty scrappy. 'Moon' is where things get a little loopier, and the swirls of breath and string start to bend and form a parallax effect. The whole thing goes by rather quickly, and it's absolutely uncompromising in its style. Not a full-breath blowout by any means, but maybe that's just due to the limits of the instrumentation and the way that Thollot plays. Drummers can have a huge effect on these matters. Lacy is front and centre on the cover photo but in the mix he's all over the place, darting through the corners of the soundstage and coming to the forefront furtively, only to slip away as he pleases. This is music that plays against itself continually, twisting against a centre that keeps escaping. I'm not sure what this record's reputation is but it's a demanding listen, despite having a light touch. Somehow it feels unique from other Euro-free records of the period, but maybe that's just because Lacy is such a singular player.