"Double album, double solos of two distinctive musicians, becoming duets in a relatively rare space between solo playing and ensemble. Reed and percussion start at different places, the working through breath, the other pulse of materials being struck, one typically characterised by line, the other by attack, producing in the first pitch configurations, in the second beat patterns (Prévost doesn't use the specifically pitched mallet instruments). Each player comes with a distinctive sonic identity, but they're frequently crossing. the main intersection is sonority. The saxophone can splutter, click and gesture, notably in the extreme registers and the rapid shifts between them, with just sound. Prévost makes long, sustained attackless sounds by bowing his cymbals and gong, and his invented string drum tosses up melodic fragments. Percussion drives and saxophone sings, Parker can drive just as hard and Prévost makes a singing sound. Sometimes you can't tell which of the two's sounds you're hearing." - Christian Wolff.
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Evan Parker / saxophones
Eddie Prévost / percussion
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Recorded at Gateway Studio, Kingston, England by Steve Lowe on February 23rd and April 13th 1997. Artwork 'Djebel Nefousa' by Brenda Mayo.
Available as a 320k MP3 or 16bit FLAC download.
Tracklisting:
1. Double Truth (or Reason and Revelation) - 19:51
2. Knowledge is Power - 13:36
3. Rejecting Simple Enumeration - 13:46
4. That More Might Have Beene Done, or Sooner - 29:00
5. Nil Novum - 12:01
6. Skill Gave Rise to Chance, and Chance to Skill - 9:26
7. Not so Much for the Sake of Arguing as for the Sake of Living - 12:24
8. Let us Attend to Present Business - 11:19
9. Chastise Me, But Listen - 16:42
Eddie Prévost began his life in music as a jazz drummer. A recurring interest in this form has been maintained, although always with an experimental ethos. Along the way he has maintained his fifty-year plus experimental credentials with AMM and numerous other improvisation projects, including his now twenty-year long weekly workshop. But drumming has generally been backgrounded to his experimental percussion work. More though, is to be expected of his drumming in 2020 on forthcoming multi-CD album: The Unexpected Alchemy. A part of this Krakow festival recording features the drums and saxophone trio of Ken Vandermark, Hamid Drake, and Eddie Prévost. His most recent released recordings include AMM’s: An Unintended Legacy, and a duo with John Butcher - Visionary Fantasies, both on Matchless Recordings. Also, a solo percussion LP on the Earshots label called Matching Mix. Later, in 2020 he meets with Jason Yarde and Nathan Moore, while in March concerts and recording will hear him drumming with US guitarist Henry Kaiser and saxophonist Binker Golding.
And, early 2020 should see the publication of his fourth book: An Uncommon Music for the Common Man: a polemical memoir.
“Prévost's free drumming flows superbly making use of his formidable technique. It’s as though there has never been an Elvin Jones or Max Roach.” - Melody Maker
“Relentlessly innovative yet full of swing and fire.” – Morning Star
"If you've ever been tempted by free improvisation, Parker is your gateway drug." - Stewart Lee
Evan Parker has been a consistently innovative presence in British free music since the 1960s. Parker played with John Stevens in the Spontaneous Music Ensemble, experimenting with new kinds of group improvisation and held a long-standing partnership with guitarist Derek Bailey. The two formed the Music Improvisation Company and later Incus Records. He also has tight associations with European free improvisations - playing on Peter Brötzmann's legendary 'Machine Gun' session (1968), with Alexander Von Schlippenbach and Paul Lovens (A trio that continues to this day), Globe Unity Orchestra, Chris McGregor's Brotherhood of Breath, and Barry Guy's London Jazz Composers Orchestra (LJCO).
Though he has worked extensively in both large and small ensembles, Parker is perhaps best known for his solo soprano saxophone music, a singular body of work that in recent years has centred around his continuing exploration of techniques such as circular breathing, split tonguing, overblowing, multiphonics and cross-pattern fingering. These are technical devices, yet Parker's use of them is, he says, less analytical than intuitive; he has likened performing his solo work to entering a kind of trance-state. The resulting music is certainly hypnotic, an uninterrupted flow of snaky, densely-textured sound that Parker has described as "the illusion of polyphony". Many listeners have indeed found it hard to credit that one man can create such intricate, complex music in real time.
