THE PETER BROTZMANN OCTET MACHINE GUN SERIES
THE PETER BROTZMANN OCTET MACHINE GUN FREE

THE PETER BROTZMANN OCTET MACHINE GUN FREE

Nefertiti is an introspective work, blurring the conventional distinctions between melody and improvisation, reflecting the influence of free jazz but still retaining a blues sensibility and structure вЂ“ best represented by its title track and вЂњFall,вЂќ both written by saxophonist Wayne Shorter. One was DavisвЂ™ growing dissatisfaction with the limitations of the head-solos-head format the other was the death of his former collaborator John Coltrane, which happened two days before the recording of the album, on June 17, 1967.

Two major factors helped shape the tone and atmosphere of Nefertiti, one of the most celebrated albums of Miles DavisвЂ™ second great quintet, and his last fully acoustic LP.

We hope you join us as we travel through the musicвЂ™s endlessly fascinating history, stopping every 12 months along the jazz timeline. вЂYear by YearвЂ™ is our attempt to bring you the most noteworthy albums of each year, complete with audio samples and fascinating backstories. Still challenging after almost forty years, Machine Gun stands tall as a high water mark of European free jazz.Jazz may not have an official yearbook, but it does have a vast and well-documented discography. BrГ¶tzmann and his front line of horn players trade caustic tirades over the bustling, thunderous palpitations of Han Bennink and Sven-Ake Johansson.Д¬onceiving brief melodies of an almost accessible nature one moment, only to savagely rend them to pieces in the next, the octet offers a revolutionary stance in their execution and intent. Opening with a staccato horn riff and stabbing percussive ostinato, the band sounds less like an acoustic jazz group than a feverishly overdriven machine, pistons shrieking, gears rattling. Still suffering from less than optimal audio, pianist Fred Van Hove and bassists Peter Kowald and Buschi Niebergall are barely audible in the chaotic mix, but emerge fully during unaccompanied solo sections ripe with squalling arco harmonics and pounding tone clusters. Recorded in a concrete basement studio and independently released on BrГ¶tzmann's own BRO imprint, the album became an underground classic. The Vietnam War, the American Civil Rights movement, Martin Luther King's assassination and the Paris student riots of 1968 all are subconsciously mirrored in the album's chaotic fury.

More calamitous, violent and willfully discordant than Ornette Coleman's Free Jazz (Atlantic, 1960), John Coltrane's Ascension (Impulse!, 1965) or the contemporaneous work of Albert Ayler and Cecil Taylor, BrГ¶tzmann's uproarious testament was a sign of the times.Д®mbroiled in revolution and protest, 1968 was a tumultuous time, and a fitting year for such a document to emerge. BrГ¶tzmann's assaultive 1968 octet recording set a precedent for all extreme improvised music that followed in its wake.

THE PETER BROTZMANN OCTET MACHINE GUN SERIES

The first major document of European free improvisation, Atavistic's Unheard Music Series reissue supplements the legendary session by bolstering the original album with two alternate takes and the only documented live performance of the furious title track.Д®nvisioned and organized by infamous German tenor saxophonist Peter BrГ¶tzmann (nicknamed Machine Gun by trumpeter Don Cherry), Machine Gun provided a blueprint for such riotous ensembles as Last Exit, Naked City and Massacre.

An essential recording, Machine Gun's rightful place in the pantheon of seminal free jazz recordings is uncontested.

The peter brotzmann octet machine gun