Concert performance by Taylor with Thurman Barker, William Parker, Carlos Ward and Leroy Jenkins. Remaster of the original double LP. --- William Parker / bassThurman Barker / marimba, drumsCecil Taylor / pianoCarlos Ward / reedsLeroy Jenkins / violin --- Remastered by Alan Mosley.

This is some mysterious, cosmic, brooding music like nothing you've heard before. Wadada Leo Smith plays his great trumpet, Walter Quintus - computer & processing, Katya Quintus - voice, Miroslav Tadic - classical & baritone guitar, and Mark Nauseef - percussion & live electronics Of all the avant-garde players from his generation, Wadada Leo Smith easily ranks among the most insightful collaborators with electronic musicians. His willingness to include electrified lexicon in his musical language now yields Snakish, a surprising soundscape created with a band culled from the Cal/Arts faculty, including guitarist Miroslav Tadic and electrician Walter Quintus, as well as vocliast Katya Quintus and Mark Nauseef on percussion and electronics. The guitar, trumpet, and percussion juxtapose the electronic environments to create rainbows of color and textures, leading down surprising avenues of 21st Century music. As with much of Smith's work, space and silence share in importance with sounds generated. The fourteen concise aural haiku begin with the dreamy "Uncoiling, which features Smith muted and musing with Tadic's understated guitar in a shimmering soundscape. Quintus quietly recites (in German?) as sparks rise. Nauseef's bell awakens "Cosmoil, Tadic runs muted strings through electro mist and processed Smith flares. The short atmospheric "Disembodyism gives way to "Over the Influence, with its ghostly train sounds and Smith's pointed declarations. "Yopo also begins with a bell, and Smith plays carefully chosen notes over the frothy hum around him. Black Bell Mother utilizes many bells and gongs; Tadic contributes muted sound from a his prepared guitar. Tadic and Smith quietly converse on "Majounish, while "Kawami Wama sounds cinematic behind the recitation. Jagged electronics scrape Smith's blunted horn then overgrow the garden. A sputtering electro raspberry introduces Tadic's guitar on "Speeds Per Coil, Smith's warm sparse phrases a safe place in roaring whoosh. Smith bites into low gritty growly notes on "Neither Liquid Nor Gaseous, Torn among singing bowls, undermixed prepared guitar, and vining cloudy sound. Opening with sounds like a Martian gamelan, "Green Gold Melt grows spidery with slide guitar and Smith's smoky long tones curling upward. The solo electronic satellite song "Gangah Wallah leads into the moody "Rivers of Swans. Sweet small prepared guitar chords join Smith's muted playing over shifting tectonic plates. A searching trumpet and prepared guitar poke through the kilowatt wind on "Coiling. With Quintus' ambient sounds crackling and rushing around them, Wadada Leo Smith and the Snakish band have tapped into the music of wonder. --- Walter Quintus / computer, effectMiroslav Tadic / guitarMark Nauseef / percussion, electronicsWadada Leo Smith / trumpet Katya Quintus / voice --- Recorded during 2003 and 2004 in Zerkall and in Los Angeles by Miriam Kolar and Walter Quintus. Mixed and mastered by Walter Quintus

Live in Zurich is Crispell's second trio recording, successor to the highly acclaimed Gaia, and comprises the second of three concerts which the group gave at Switzerland's Taklos Festival. Live in Zurich marks the recording debut of Crispell as a vocalist. The haunting, chant-like singing with which she opens 'Areas' is something she's been doing more and more in concert, although she confesses that she's "been (and still am) very shy to put it on a recording since it's in a very raw state. But anyway, it sets up a special feeling for the rest of the music to grow out of. It's a ritual, a beginning." - Graham Lock, 1990. --- Marilyn Crispell / piano, voice Reggie Workman / bass Paul Motian / drums --- Recorded 14 April, 1989. Remastered by Alan Mosley.

A studio live recording of Evan Parker playing soprano and tenor saxophones, and Ned Rothenberg on bass clarinet and alto saxophone.  --- Evan Parker / saxophones Ned Rothenberg / bass clarinet, saxophone --- Tracklisting: 1. For Ximenes - 15:062. For Araucaria - 5:043. For Bynthorne - 7:064. For Afrit - 2:525. For Dinmut - 15:226. For Custos - 3:347. For Rufus - 4:088. For Chifonie - 6:13 --- Recorded May 17, 1997 at Gateway Studio by Steve Lowe.

This record of zany duets is among Eugene Chadbourne's wildest and dearest recordings, featuring selections from over two decades. These duets with Han Bennink, Derek Bailey, the late Charles Tyler, John Zorn, and others, showcase the woolliest side of Chadbourne's woolly playing and his dodging all over the musical and historical map. The first track is an acoustic version of John Lee Hooker's "Whiskey and Women," accompanied by Bennink playing a pizza box with brushes, a giant bass autoharp played with drumsticks, and, of course, a drum kit. Chadbourne plays the tune straight (for him) at the beginning, even getting all the words right, but then veers off his National Steel onto a "communist" five-string banjo, and he and Bennink run the course, carrying the off-meter 12-bar blues as off-world as they can go, laughing all the way. Next up is Derek Bailey and Chadbourne on two selections. The first, "In Search of Carl La Fong," is filled with commentary by both men. Bailey's guitar and Chadbourne's electric rake and electrified banjo trip and slip all over one another here, with respect and purpose, of course, but nonetheless sloppily. It's a rousing series of musical maneuvers at over nine minutes. When Bennink and Chadbourne reunite, it's a darker, more percussive show: feedback from rhythm and lead instruments becomes the M.O. by which they create something resembling a melodic idea from the wreckage. And it's quite beautiful, as Gershwin's songbook comes through as the melodic framework for the improvisation. The work with Tyler, "In Between Comme C and Come Saw," is balls-out space improv, though the master saxist uses his baritone in striking ways not usually becoming of the instrument itself. It becomes a kind of clogged, scraped, razor-voiced bell in the tower of noise. Tyler draws microtones out of the instrument we have literally never heard before, and Chadbourne is content to lend idiomatic support to this gracious unfolding. "Red Lightning, Pt. 1" by Chadbourne and Zorn is hilarious. This is more in line with Zorn's Classic Guide to Strategy than anything else, in both spirit and execution -- though there are no duck calls credited on this recording. There is space here, sometimes long periods of it, where what is happening between the pair is not readily apparent; there is plenty of trickery and tomfoolery as well, leaving the listener guffawing in more than a few places.