13 Miniatures For Albert Ayler

by Various Artists

Would it be that when everything finishes that everything starts? Rather than a postlude or a coda, the five minutes a cappella by Joe McPhee on the tenor saxophone placed here in thirteenth position, sound like a song of love and hope coloured utopia which condenses the invisibility of lives which are here and then are no longer here. From the effervescence of an aviary where chirpings and warbling intersect (from Raphael Imbert, Urs Leimgruber, McPhee, Evan Parker and John Tchicai each sax seeming to seek its place in the mosaic puzzle of the memory) to promising flighty duels, then to a fine line drawn trio - of shivering brass (Cappozo), woody reed (Kassap) and simmering percussion (Rollet) - progressively repeating - pounding towards an exacerbation of a growling or a gentle explosion, a prelude to a dance of words like as many sparks (Dalachinsky) roped together con arco and solemn pizzicatos (Léandres, Phillips). Thundering alternations of the funeral echoes of the talking drums of Ramon Lopez and the deep melodies of a Portal who from 1976 (in Chateauvallon) paid homage to aylerian Angels - placed here, the trio of the basque musician with Lopez and Phillips seems to preface the outburst of husky lyricism of his instrumental counterpart (Avenel-Mcphee-Goubert ), then, as if to underline McPhee's multi-instrumental expertise, the latter was to engage with Cappozzo in a gay dialogue of trumpeters, a mixture of muffled pistons, effects of breathing and brass tirades with scents of a mini-fanfare. Logically it's a sort of "duo" that follows: a dialogue with himself, by the saxophonist Evan Parker by means of the virtuosity of circular breathing permitting as always this fascinating diphonism. As for the penultimate phases of this polyphonic hirsutism, fortified by explosions, whirlwinds, chants, howls, bubblings and very high pitched sounds, everything happens as if the last cry recalled, as in a trance, a certain aylerien spirit - did not Robert Schumann write "Music is what permits us to speak with the heavens". Philippe Carles, excerpt from the liner notes