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.

Michel Dintrich / Philippe Drogoz ‎– 'La Guitare Au-Delà...' (Classic)

The acoustic guitar is hereby reinvented; played in totality, an osteopathic approach to a sound instrument. Side A finds Dintrich tapping, wobbling, and breathing through his guitar. The strings are an essential component of a guitar, sure, but here they are not the only one. I'm reminded of Tetuzi Akiyama, who shares a similar sparse, minimal approach, but Dintrich is more woody, earthy; with deep reverb and bending harmonics, he stakes out a language of his own. On the flip is a collaboration, I think - it appears to be Dintrich on a 10-string guitar, performing a composition by Philippe Drogoz, though Drogoz is not credited on the front of the record and the whole thing confuses me. Here is some true dark yoga; Drogoz's tape work is sometimes screeching, sometimes plotting, and always a thick counter to Dintrich. In the middle of it all, things decelerate to nothing and then slowly build up again, based around an ever-so-creeping Drogoz drone. Dintrich here is going mad - thrusting backhands against the stringboard, scraping, bending, plucking errant notes out of the air and then receding back to nothing. It's a duo interplay unlike any other, a battle royale, but Drogoz's whirring wins out. Or does it? This was recorded in 1970 which is freaking amazing to think about, as it's so contemporary (or maybe contemporary is just so retro). An eBay search turns up some other work that seems to be straight classical guitar pieces, which I'd love to hear after this gem.

Chris Corsano - 'Another Dull Dawn' (Ultra Eczema)

Coincidence and circumstances places two Ultra Eczema LPs back-to-back here, this one being #71 in the label's run and showcasing Chris Corsano's personal, idiosyncratic brand of percussive noisemaking. These were recorded in Edinburgh when Chris was living there and seem to reflect the manic-depressive nature of Scottish temprement while reflecting the uniquely bleak weather of the region. For someone as powerful at pounding things, there's an equal amount of scraping and breath here. The 15 short pieces, all recorded in a wooly, murky manner, run the gamut from drumset freakout to toy gamelan (the beautiful 'Kittenish Gnawing pt 2' is a particularly highlight), with a lot of wind instrument mouthpieces, often modified with plastic pipes. There's a primitive, guttural feel t stuff like 'The Misread Altimeter', which is a searing, sharp wave of human breath often redlining into gutbucket territory, only with a skiffle-band aesthetic. The pieces flow; it's a really coherent statement of one man's energy, simultaneously referencing all the solo free drum classics by Milton Graves and Andrew Cyrille while also trying to stake out something new. The speedy drumset work is certainly remarkable - 'The Wreck' is a total explosion, and the full kit parts of the closing track ('The Chair Dustless in the Tiled Room') are practically blast beats. Said closing track swings between these energetic bursts and pot lid/gong melodies, which unfold into a really loose expression of rhythm. Eclectic, yes - expressive, even more so. This style of solo Corsano - also exhibited in his Cricketer album - seems to perfectly bridge the gap between the noise underground's focus on dense, textural material and his own passion for free jazz/improv. What's remarkable is how natural it feels, and how flowing and introspective it manages to be despite carving out an original, singular language. Though I think this maybe flew under the radar a bit (due to the limited nature of the pressing) this might be a high water mark for the genre, if the genre could be defined.