Quartet (England) 1985, Anthony Braxton Quartet (Burning Ambulance Music)
Back in 1985 there was a real buzz about the Anthony Braxton Quartet (Braxton with Marilyn Crispell, Gerry Hemingway and Mark Dresser) on tour in the UK. Having been part of Chicago’s AACM (Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians) in the 1960s, Braxton received critical attention for his double album For Alto, the first entirely solo saxophone record to be released, and was later signed to Arista Records, where he released a number of LPs by different groups, and two orchestral albums, one the astonishing and ambitious For Four Orchestras.
Ultimately, Arista didn’t quite know how to market such an individual and eclectic musician and composer and Braxton moved on, continuing to record improvised music alongside his compositions, some of which are visual scores, others in traditional musical notation. He developed his own theories and ideas of music, which retrospectively gathered up and indexed previous work as well as his ongoing material. He would call the results of his composition techniques Language Music, and subdivide it into language types, making use of these to write compositions as musical prompts, open to interpretation and improvisation, as well as more formalized material.
Later this would evolve into other new compositional series such as Ghost Trance Music and Falling River Musics, involving complex layers of sound, polyphony and varying volume and rhythm. Back in the 1980s, however, the Anthony Braxton Quartet was busy exploring musical collages of various compositions (with primary and secondary source material) with the addition of pulse tracks for the rhythm section, who could underpin the musical explorations of others. Many regarded the band, both then and now, as one of Braxton’s best, a fantastic small group who were somehow able to channel ideas, compositions and musical interplay into fluid, enjoyable live sets.
The Quartet toured England with Arts Council backing, and author Graham Lock accompanied them, eventually combining travelogue, musical criticism, concert reviews and interviews into the 1988 book Forces in Motion: Anthony Braxton and the meta-reality of creative music: interviews and tour notes, England 1985. The American edition’s subtitle, The Music and Thought of Anthony Braxton, was less of a mouthful, but either way the book remains a key text about jazz and musical composition in general, and the book on Anthony Braxton. (It was reissued with a new final chapter, in 2018.)
Several concerts from this tour were recorded and issued on albums, whether officially or in the ‘grey area’ that live jazz often seems to inhabit. What few people knew, however, was that Graham Lock had recorded some of the concerts, with permission and for his own use and held on to the tapes. Now that technology has moved on it has been possible to digitise and enhance the recordings, and allowed Burning Ambulance to issue the equivalent of a nine CD box set: the concerts from Bristol, Leicester, Sheffield and Southampton (two CDs and two sets each) and a ‘bonus’ disc of the group playing John Coltrane and Miles Davis covers during soundchecks.
It’s a marvellous addition to the Braxton discography, and an exciting piece of sound restoration and musical history. Lock describes the music as ‘pulsating [with] life, full of the fire and tenderness and magic that I remember from 1985’. He is, of course, not wrong. Whilst this is most definitely not middle-of-the-road cocktail jazz or some reversioning of Bop, it is exciting, complex and intriguing music, full of twists and turns, lyrical interludes (especially by Marilyn Crispell on piano), percussive explorations (drones and rustles, drums and cymbals, askew rhythms and driving beats) and saxophones and double bass stretched to the limits of sonic possibility.
The magic comes from the musical interactions of the quartet, who seem to be able to support each other, allowing room for individual travel and also able to come together for driving ensemble playing. Braxton’s writings and composition notes can be difficult to understand, but the music isn’t. Despite all expectations (and sometimes criticism from older jazz critics) this music swings, flows and dances as it goes awandering. It’s a delight to revisit this astonishing music, to find it still as revelatory and new as it was back then.
Rupert Loydell
Quartet (England) 1985 is available from Burning Ambulance via Bandcamp here.
Details about the 30th Anniversary Edition of Forces in Motion can be found here. .
The Tri-Centric Foundation, a not-for-profit organization that supports the ongoing work and legacy of Anthony Braxton, are online here.
The Anthony Braxton Quartet, Stonehenge, 1985. Photo © Nick White
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