Formalibera

Compiling freshly unearthed, previously unreleased 1967 recordings from Fred Beckerlee's The Contemporary Jazz Quintet, 'Action A B C E' is another eye-opening free jazz set from Alga Marghen's new sub-label FormalIbera. RIYL Noah Howard's 'The Black Ark' or Peter Brötzmann's 'Machine Gun'. The Contemporary Jazz Quintet aren't exactly obscure - they were one of Denmark's first avant-garde jazz groups - but they still deserve more attention than they've historically received. Long-time favorites of the beardiest Discogs beards (1969's 'T.C.J.Q.' has been known to hit almost 2000 bones), the five piece made some significant technical leaps, pioneering electric jazz a year before Miles Davis. It was this revelation in fact that led sax player Beckerlee and his band - bassist Steffen Andersen, drummer Bo Thrige Andersen, trumpet player Hugh Steinmetz and multi-instrumentalist Niels Harrit - to scrap the 1967 studio recordings that were initially planned as a follow-up to their debut album 'Action'. These long-lost sessions have finally been dug up, and it provides a crucial bridge between their energetic earlier material and the fusion-tipped, studio-polished 'T.C.J.Q.'. Harrit plays musical saw on the opening jam, warbling next to Steffen Andersen's fictile bass prangs and Beckerlee's weeping horns. Bo Thrige Andersen's percussion is gentle at first, but he leads the charge in the second half, splattering unhinged rhythms that the rest of the players inevitably follow - even Harrit, who matches Beckerlee's manic blasts with sci-fi quivers. And on the flip, the five-piece take a more textural approach, mimicking tidal patterns with their non-hierarchal movements wherein the instruments swell and eddy rather than grandstanding. It's revelatory gear for fans of space-y second gen free jazz and another fine archeological excavation from FormalIbera.