Elton Dean's Ninesense - Happy Daze + Oh! For The Edge (2009)
XLD Rip | FLAC (tracks, cue, log) - 456 MB | MP3 CBR 320 kbps - 174 MB
1:15:55 | Free Jazz, Fusion | Label: Ogun
In London in the late 1970s, punters leaning on the bar at jazz gigs could be heard speculating that if there was any justice, Ninesense would be as much of a draw in New York as in London. This collection of 70s material from the late Soft Machine saxophonist's best band is more than a nostalgia trip it's a remarkable pan across the British contemporary jazz scene of that era. The nine-piece featured the mercurial free-piano of Keith Tippett, the seismic South African rhythm team of bassist Harry Miller and drummer Louis Moholo, the powerful postbop horn-players Alan Skidmore and Harry Beckett, and the eclectic Dean himself. Their optimistic free-improv bordered on mayhem at times, but Dean's charts sounding like anything from Thus Spake Zarathustra to a Salvation Army brass band with Carla Bley's Escalator Over the Hill or Mike Gibbs in the middle are blearily majestic. The hotly ascending melody of Seven for Lee is a standout, as is the tumult of piano, bass and drums under Three for All, and Tippett's astonishing piano shadowing of Skidmore on Sweet FA and the South African-inflected Dance. FOUR STARS –Guardian