I found this while looking for some more info on Hazel Miller. Ogun, was the most important independent label for British Free Jazz in the 70's with every LP being something of a minor classic. The Website didn't give the guy's name but he knows his stuff and it's a nice article.

K

The Naked Maja
Four a.m. and six feet down, already up with the larks

Friday, April 30, 2004
ALL ABOUT OGUN

Another longer text, this time in the form of a small tribute to my favourite record label, Ogun Records. Formed in 1973 by the great expatriate South African bassist Harry Miller and his then wife Hazel after the major record companies’ tax loss honeymoon with contemporary/free British jazz/improv had ended, its purpose was to record as comprehensively as possible the music from the small circle of musicians who had formed around the nucleus of what were the Blue Notes, with major additional input from the Keith Tippett/Elton Dean axis of musicians and the various alumni of Mike Westbrook’s bands.

It formed a couple of years after Incus, whose output it paralleled throughout the ‘70s. But while many of these musicians recorded for both labels, they were in nature very different. Incus had been formed by Derek Bailey, Evan Parker and Tony Oxley with a view to documenting developments in the hardcore improv scene. Incus, to put it very facilely, was the head of Brit improv, but Ogun was its South African heart. I loved the label for its distinctive look, its reliability – with very few exceptions, an Ogun logo presupposed music of the highest quality – and because it seemed to unite the elements of music which I, as a young teenager growing up in Glasgow, found most attractive; the danceability and melodicism of the music coupled with its uncompromising advances into more abstract and – yes, noisy – areas. Such amazing tunes, such a bloody blessed racket.

The following words concentrate on the albums issued by Ogun in its heyday, spanning the years 1973-79. By the end of the ‘70s Harry Miller had separated from his wife and relocated to Holland, where he tragically died at the end of 1983 from severe injuries sustained in a road accident, driving in treacherous conditions on the way home from a gig, aged just 42. Of the nucleus of South African musicians, only drummer Louis Moholo is still with us today, all the others having passed on at absurdly early ages, haunted and perhaps cursed by the legacy of what Moholo once described as “the divine hellhole that is South Africa.”

Consequently Ogun was put on pause until the mid-‘80s, since when Hazel Miller has continued, as perilous finances allow, to put out new issues by the likes of Moholo’s Viva La Black and the Dedication Orchestra as well as periodically reissuing old favourites. Sadly much of this catalogue remains out of print, and the average cost of second-hand vinyl copies is now likely to send a chill through your bank balance; regrettably, until an enterprising philanthropist materialises to finance a full-scale CD reissue programme, this is likely to remain the case. Nevertheless, as I say, here is my little tribute to a label whose music roared with love.

OG 100
CHRIS McGREGOR’S BROTHERHOOD OF BREATH
Live At Willisau
(date of release: 1974)
McGregor (piano); Harry Beckett, Marc Charig, Mongezi Feza (trumpets); Nick Evans, Radu Malfatti (trombones); Dudu Pukwana (alto sax); Evan Parker, Gary Windo (tenor saxes); Harry Miller (bass); Louis Moholo (drums).

The original derivation of the term “kwela” for the form of South African township music previously known as “penny whistle music” comes from the exclamations of the policemen who would periodically come to arrest, take away, beat up and/or kill various township residents who had the temerity to be black. As they were being rounded up and cattle-prodded into the police vans they would exclaim “Kwela! Kwela!” meaning “Get up! Move it!” Thus a symbol of oppression was turned into a symbol of defiant celebration – the words “Get up! Move it!” now meaning “let’s dance.”

With the Brotherhood of Breath, Chris McGregor was able to marry his love of kwela music, the Protestant hymns with which he had grown up as a child and post-Ornette all-comers free jazz in a large, sprawling band with a South African core and involving, at various times, virtually everyone of consequence on the British modern jazz and improv scene. They were capable of producing the most atonal and demonic of improvisations, yet the imperturbable rhythm section of Louis Moholo and Harry Miller anchored their explorations at all times, such that you were dancing as you flew into post-Sun Ra outer space. Frequently, in concert the “traffic jam” syndrome would make itself apparent, with all of the dozen or so horn players queuing up to solo, or just storming in anyway; often musicians would wander around the stage at their own free will, or jam the bells of their horns into microphones to produce overtones. Somehow it all held together and gave us the most glorious group of musicians of any genre ever to exist, a band who seemed to provide everything I wanted in music, post-Ellington in make-up and yet also strangely proto-punk in attitude.

Their two studio albums for RCA were generally well-behaved affairs, even if the second was somewhat looser than their Joe Boyd-produced debut. But their three live albums from the ‘70s – and there’s another double CD package due shortly from Cuneiform Records, comprising more newly-found tapes of gigs from 1971 and 1975 – present a far more raucous and anarchic assemblage.

Live In Willisau was recorded in Switzerland in January 1973 on the same tour which also produced the Radio Bremen broadcasts reissued in 2001 as Travelling Somewhere, and both should be heard in tandem if possible. The Radio Bremen gig has a slightly different line-up – Mike Osborne, who was too ill to perform at the Willisau gig, appears on second alto, and Malcolm Griffiths deps for Malfatti on second trombone – but both sets of music are equally wild.

Live At Willisau, even with CD remastering, still sounds as though it were recorded at the back of a bus queue, and while this necessarily means that some of the finer details of the improvised ensembles are lost – the trumpets and saxes seem a distant blur, while the two trombonists are in your face – the rawness of the music seems to be a good match for the basic sonics. Those still trying to figure out what Evan Parker was doing in that duo with Paul Lytton would do well to listen to his contributions here – his tenor feature on “Do It” is, however abstract it becomes, still fundamentally relevant to the rhythmic and melodic momentum of the piece. The breakneck pace of the Brotherhood compels Parker towards emotional directness, and his retention of the latter while still utilising his jaw-dropping technique is brilliantly achieved. Malfatti provides a suitably droll commentary on the mock march of “Kongi’s Theme” while Evans blows suitably mournfully on “Ismite Is Might.”

Hovering above all of this, however, is the ghost of Mongezi Feza, a musician who would have been a core regular on Ogun albums had he lived; as it turned out, this is the only Ogun album on which he appeared in his lifetime, and his main feature on “Tungi’s Song” is perhaps the best solo he ever recorded, full of casually astonishing technical brilliance and a goodly portion of sheer cheek and deep emotion.

Happily this album is one of the few which have been reissued on CD, in this case with over half an hour of extra material from the gig. Interestingly the performance of the ballad “Davashe’s Dream” is more restrained than the explosive take recorded for the band’s debut, while the version of “Andromeda” gets a little too messy (you can hear an audibly vexed McGregor trying to cue the horns back in halfway through), but nonetheless this is an absolutely vital record.

OG 200
HARRY MILLER
Children At Play
(1975)
Miller (multitracked bass, with occasional flute and percussion effects)

Recorded at the edge of a cliff (well, almost) in Hastings on a dark and stormy autumn night in 1974 - Miller was playing on one side of a wall, engineer Keith Beal was on the other side, Miller had to rap on the wall to signify that he was ready to record – this was only the second solo album by a bassist, the first being 1969’s Unaccompanied Barre: Journal Violone by his sometime co-bassist in the larger Westbrook bands, Barre Phillips. Indeed, throughout the ‘70s the solo bass album remained a rarity, the only other two examples which spring to mind being Barry Guy’s mindblowing Statements for Double Bass and Violone (Incus, 1977) and Dave Holland’s Emerald Tears (ECM, 1978).

Miller overcame the potential risk of sonic monotony by overdubbing his bass to enable intricate improvisations on his wandering tunes. The general air is heavy and rather oppressive, light only really shining forth on the charming kwela tribute “Homeboy” where he adds a wonderfully naďve flute line to his bass riffing. It was reissued as part of the 1999 3CD Miller boxset tribute, which sadly was only a limited edition – copies do occasionally turn up in Ray’s Jazz Shop on the first floor of Foyle’s, so keep your eyes open – together with reissues of OG 310, 320 and 523 (see below) and the 1983 Vara Jazz recording Down South.

OG 300
MIKE OSBORNE TRIO
Border Crossing
(1975)
Osborne (alto sax), Harry Miller (bass), Louis Moholo (drums).

Although having retired from the music scene for well-documented health-related reasons over 20 years ago, Osborne is still the greatest alto saxophonist ever to come out of Britain (that of course being separate and distinct from all the great alto players who came into Britain, such as Bertie King, Joe Harriott, Dudu Pukwana, Bernie Living, Ray Warleigh and Ntshuks Bonga) and this album of highlights from one of the trio’s many continuous performances at Stockwell’s Peanuts Club of the early-to-mid ‘70s is the unassailable proof of that assertion. He came out of Jackie McLean and Eric Dolphy via Ornette, but Osborne quickly found and established his own level of intensity, never better documented than here. As the three musicians move from tune to tune, the intensity of the music is stoked up to such a degree that side two of this album in particular is an emotionally exhausting adrenalin rush of music, easily up there with Ornette at the Golden Circle, Osborne, Miller and Moholo existing in absolute and blissful telepathy as they threaten to break all manner of sound and space barriers. This record, more than most in the Ogun catalogue, is urgently in need of reissue. Anyone fancy putting up the cash for an Ossie boxset tribute?

OG 400
S.O.S.
S.O.S.
(1975)
John Surman (baritone & soprano saxes, bass clarinet, synths), Mike Osborne (alto sax, percussion), Alan Skidmore (tenor sax, drums, percussion).

Before WSQ or Rova, there was SOS, one of the most startlingly original and certainly one of the most popular acts to appear on Ogun. Surman, Osborne and Skidmore had long since contrived to work together in each other’s respective musical environments, and when hired for big bands (Brotherhood, Westbrook, Gibbs) they always came as a unit. They worked brilliantly and naturally together.

While much of this album is naturally given over to ruminations and explosions by the three saxophones – as tender as Ellington on “Where’s Junior?” – Surman also uses liberal doses of his then new electronica, and Skidmore takes a rare turn behind the drumkit, such that the awesome “Goliath” virtually invents prog-improv, Osborne’s alto howling over Surman’s stately synth chords, like ELP, only good. And the closing, lengthy “Calypso” investigates an area of candidly troubled electronic music which would not be properly followed up until Autechre two decades later.

OG 500
SCHWEIZER/CARL/MALFATTI/MILLER/LOVENS
Ramifications
(1976)
Irene Schweizer (piano), Rudiger Carl (tenor sax), Radu Malfatti (trombone), Harry Miller (bass), Paul Lovens (percussion).

I guess that only Miller’s presence qualifies this as an Ogun release, as otherwise it seems to be a misplaced FMP session, and not a very productive one at that. Schweizer I have always found to be an acquired taste which I’ve never quite acquired, and as far as I’m concerned Rudiger Carl is the Reg Varney to Brotzmann’s Tony Hancock. He is very noisy and cliched throughout this record, and the frustrating intelligence of the contributions of Malfatti, Miller and Lovens makes one regret that this wasn’t a trio session.

OG 600
OVARY LODGE
Ovary Lodge
(1976)
Keith Tippett (piano, recorder, zither, maracas, vocals), Julie Tippetts (vocals, sopranino recorder, er-hu), Harry Miller (bass), Frank Perry (percussion, hsiao, sheng, vocals).

And this is a visionary classic, perhaps the best and most concentrated music that the Tippetts have yet made. You have to love a record whose track titles include “A Man Carrying A Drop Of Water On A Leaf During A Thunderstorm,” of course, but this is proto-New Age improvisation (Frank Perry in particular was doing New Age for at least two decades before anyone else) which makes mincemeat out of all offal released under the banner of New Age; limpid, beautiful and genuinely transcendental music which isn’t afraid to raise the temperature/passion when required – the closing sequence of side one constitutes some of the most violent music you are likely to hear on any Ogun release, Julie screaming, Keith hammering, Harry throbbing and Frank pounding his sacred Tibetan gong into the next universe.

OG 700
MIKE OSBORNE TRIO
All Night Long
(1976)
Same personnel as OG 300.

Recorded live in Willisau and therefore considerably lower-fi than Border Crossing, this album isn’t quite as intense as its predecessor – few albums are – but still worthwhile to hear what Ossie does with the venerable “Round Midnight” without ever suggesting Dolphy.

OG 800
HARRY BECKETT’S JOY UNLIMITED
Memories Of Bacares
(1976)
Beckett (trumpet, flugelhorn), Ray Russell (guitar), Brian Miller (electric piano), Daryl Runswick (electric bass), John Webb (drums), Robin Jones (percussion).

Interesting but rather frustrating record. Of course, this group with a couple of differences in personnel also constituted the Ray Russell group, and it’s something of a quantum leap from the scalding intensity of Russell’s Live At The ICA to the comparatively polite and bland jazz-funk of this record, enlivened mainly by Russell, then on the cusp of ceasing his Sharrock-ish noise torrents and turning towards quieter musical waters, but here still relatively unshackled, as is keyboardist Miller. “Can’t Think About Now” does work up a fair amount of steam, but when you consider what Miles was doing with the same basic elements at the same time it’s all a bit flat.

OG 900
ELTON DEAN’S NINESENSE
Oh! For The Edge
(1976)
Dean (alto sax, saxello), Harry Beckett (trumpet, flugelhorn), Marc Charig (trumpet, tenor horn), Nick Evans (trombone), Alan Skidmore (tenor sax), Keith Tippett (piano), Harry Miller (bass), Louis Moholo (drums).

Strictly speaking, Eightsense, as second trombonist Radu Malfatti was down with the ‘flu and couldn’t make the 100 Club gig recorded here (one possibly apocryphal story goes that the various possible deps – Rutherford, Griffiths, Nieman – were contacted, but all had a prior engagement across the road the same night - as part of the orchestra backing Shirley Bassey at the London Palladium) which is sadly characteristic of the gulf between the awesome power of this group witnessed in concert and their unsatisfactory legacy on record. Only “Forsoothe” with Dean’s saxello speaking in its own tongues and the rest of the band teetering on the abyss of chaos behind him goes any way towards indicating how powerful the band could be. The second side is understandably given over to an extended tribute to the recently deceased Mongezi Feza, one of the band’s original trumpeters (after his death he was replaced by Beckett), mostly in the form of a leisurely and elegant stroll through Feza’s tune “Friday Night Blues” with fine solos from Dean (on alto), Beckett and Charig (on tenor horn). Don’t get me wrong; it’s a good record with a superb Dick Whitbread cover – but I have the feeling that they were capable of much better.

OGD 001/002
BLUE NOTES
Blue Notes For Mongezi
(1977)
Dudu Pukwana (alto sax, whistle, percussion, vocals), Chris McGregor (piano, percussion), Johnny Dyani (bass, bell, lead vocals “and most of the words”), Louis Moholo (drums, percussion, vocals).

This, however, is one of the greatest of all records, and one of the hardest to listen to, for it comprises four sides of an improvised lament for the fifth Blue Note, Mongezi Feza – following his memorial service, the surviving band members immediately went into the studio, picked up their instruments, switched on the tape and just started playing. It is one of the rawest and most honest expressions of grief and bereavement ever articulated in musical form. Feza was just 30 when he died in December 1975 of double pneumonia, neglected and unattended to in a distant corner of a ward of a hospital in southwest London, where he had been admitted following a violent nervous breakdown in the back of a taxi. His lifespan was almost exactly that of Steve Biko, and many people still feel that he died in a not entirely dissimilar fashion.

So the four musicians pluck, pound and blow their grief. Side one in particular is near unbearable in its emotional candour; Dyani throwing out monstrous basslines, chanting Mongezi’s name, improvising reminiscences and expressing uncensored emotions, Dudu’s alto sounding on the point of collapse – when Dyani takes a Hadenesque bass solo near the end of side one I would challenge anyone’s eyes to still be dry.

And yet, in the gruelling arena of this music, hope does eventually reassert itself, so much so that Dudu briefly visits the tune of “Yellow Rose Of Texas” halfway through side three, and by the end of side four we have reached the “acknowledgement” stage of this musical Kobler-Ross cycle, and the work ends with a simple, major key kwela melody to confirm that life, somehow, will continue.

OG 010
NICRA
Listen/Hear
(1977)
Nick Evans, Radu Malfatti (trombones), Keith Tippett (piano), Buschi Niebergall (bass), Makaya Ntshoko (drums).

In his Melody Maker review of this album, Richard Williams approvingly referred to Evans and Malfatti as “the bootboys of the trombone.” And they were a terrific team. Those frustrated by Malfatti’s recent vow of silence (well, it might as well be, eh? I am aware of Ad Reinhardt) are frustrated because they remember just how mischievously powerful and romantic a musician he once was, especially when paired with Evans, who always seems to have drawn the short straw in terms of graduates of the Keith Tippett school – Elton Dean is venerated, Marc Charig is doing fine in Holland, but Evans has been somewhat neglected (and indeed is now practically retired from the scene).

Anyway, the pair worked wonders in the Brotherhood of Breath, Ninesense and Moholo’s Spirits Rejoice!, and here they team up with an international rhythm section for a radio session recorded in Innsbruck. Terrific stuff it is too, from its hilarious sleevenote by fellow ‘boneman Paul Rutherford, detailing how the lads just missed getting on Des O’Connor Tonight (yes, right) to the music itself – starting with an ominous low-key modal drone, the music quickly blossoms into a highly entertaining freeform romp, Malfatti’s charmed insolence nicely balanced by Evans’ relatively straightahead post-bop approach.

OG 110
VOICE
Voice
(1977)
Brian Eley, Phil Minton, Maggie Nicols, Julie Tippetts (vocals).

Much played on Derek Jewell’s Sounds Interesting programme on Radio 3 at the time, as I recall, the pedigree of this quartet is unarguable but the music never really connects. The eternal problem with improv vocalese is how to prevent it descending into comedy or mind-numbing scat, and all these musicians do their best here, but have proved their undoubted brilliance in better environments elsewhere.

OG 210
MIKE OSBORNE/STAN TRACEY
Tandem
(1977)
Osborne (alto sax), Tracey (piano).
Mainly comprising their live set at the Bracknell Jazz Festival in 1976, annotator Steve Lake gets it right when he compares Tracey’s opening reveille of stabbing piano chords with an alarm clock awakening the sleepy crowd from their Ralph Towner-induced torpor. And the 30-minute “Ballad Forms” is duo improvisation of as high a quality as I have ever heard anywhere; the intensity of the interaction is astonishing, but the music is always approachable, even if obliquely. The piece’s final minutes, where Osborne’s alto meditates mournfully over Mingus’ “Goodbye Pork Pie Hat,” will move the listener to awestruck worship.

OG 310
HARRY MILLER’S ISIPINGO
Family Affair
(1977)
Miller (bass), Marc Charig (trumpet), Malcolm Griffiths (trombone), Mike Osborne (alto), Keith Tippett (piano), Louis Moholo (drums).

South African bassist Miller’s group Isipingo – named after a South African berry – had been in intermittent existence since 1973, but Miller was so busy with commitments to other groups, notably Chris McGregor’s Brotherhood of Breath and the Mike Osborne Trio as well as the various ensembles of Keith Tippett, Bob Downes, Elton Dean, etc. – not to mention his running of the Ogun label, a full-time job in itself – that he scarcely had any time left for his own music. The rhythm section of Tippett, Miller and Moholo – certainly the finest in Britain, and one of the finest in Europe, throughout the ‘70s – was in place, but innumerable combinations of horn players were tried before Miller finally hit on a compatible line-up, which struck a fine stylistic balance not only with Tippett and Osborne’s own groups (and of course the Osborne Trio exists here as a group within a group) but also those of McGregor and Miller’s previous employer, Mike Westbrook (Miller, Osborne and Griffiths were all members of Westbrook’s groundbreaking ‘60s sextet which launched John Surman’s career).

Although the above line-up existed for two years, they only ever had one opportunity to record; a concert at Battersea Arts Centre on a freezing snowdrift of a winter evening in early 1977, less than a fortnight after the Buzzcocks had recorded their Spiral Scratch EP. The BAC piano available on the evening was very audibly a glorified and slightly out-of-tune pub piano. And yet, despite, or maybe because of, these risk factors, something special happened on that Thursday evening. Family Affair is one of these jazz albums which just magically clicked into place; the personnel and chemistry were absolutely right, and it’s one of the highlights of recorded British jazz/improv in the last 30 years.

Much of this is down to the pub pianist himself, Keith Tippett. Although on the title track he comps absolutely deadpan behind Griffiths’ and Charig’s solos, you can hear Miller and Moholo slowly but surely turning up the heat behind him and gradually increasing the tension, which by the time of Osborne’s exuberant entry has become almost unbearable. All of a sudden the tension snaps, and Tippett careers away into rhythmic and harmonic adventure while Miller and Moholo hang on right behind him.

But the undoubted highlight of this album is its 15-minute centrepiece “Jumpin’.” Beginning with a straightforward post-Ornette boppish theme, Osborne begins his solo, Tippett ceaselessly nagging at him from the piano. And then there is revealed an awful, unspecified pain in Osborne’s playing. The exuberance turns into franticity; Osborne is literally blowing as though someone is holding a gun at his head. His figures become harsher and more abstract. Finally he screams out a top C on his alto. Tippett echoes it immediately and develops it into a devastating out-of-tempo modal lament on top of which Osborne’s alto sounds as grief-stricken as Dolphy on George Russell’s setting of “Round Midnight” but somehow more English – a barely remembered folk song motif which Tippett’s cascading sustained harmonics will not leave alone. It is one of the most shattering and devastating moments in all of improvised music, and ends with Tippett’s curlicues (decension?) streaming around Osborne like the fires of heaven, before Tippett lays off the sustained pedal and turns the same notes into a jittery pointillistic sequence to accommodate Griffiths’ quickfire contorted trombone solo. Tippett’s own solo is full of endless ideas; the procedural development of motifs, the lower register staccato sequences oddly reminiscent of Balinese music – one can only concur with Richard Williams that as a display of creative piano playing on a British jazz/improv record, its only peer is Chris McGregor’s epic solo on “Joyful Noises Of The Lord” from the second Brotherhood of Breath album.

“Eli’s Song” is a brief, mournful waltz which again spotlights a terrible grief on the part of Osborne. In his almost barbaric honks and screams his solo conveys something very dreadful indeed, as though he were blowing himself out of existence, a prophecy of the subsequent complete mental and physical collapse which necessitated his early retirement from the jazz/improv scene in 1982.

OG 400
EDQ (ELTON DEAN QUARTET)
They All Be On This Old Road
(1977)
Dean (alto sax, saxello), Keith Tippett (piano), Chris Laurence (bass), Louis Moholo (drums).

Why is Paul Morley my favourite music writer? Might have something to do with the second review that he did for the NME, which was of the Elton Dean Quartet live at Manchester’s Band On The Wall, back in early 1977. In his review he enthusiastically argued that the likes of Dean, Tippett, Trevor Watts, Derek Bailey, etc. were as punk as the punks, if not more so, in their quiet radicalism. As an extremely impressionable 13-year-old reader, I reckoned that if Morley could be so right about improv, then he must be equally right about the subject of his first review for NME – the Buzzcocks. Thus are new doors opened.

This particular album was recorded at the Seven Dials pub in Covent Garden and might be subtitled The Popular Elton Dean. Side one is given over to a 20-minute take on Coltrane’s then untouchable “Naima,” with which the quartet manage to do remarkable things. But the wild card here is Chris Laurence, depping for Harry Miller, as he brings something of a new perspective to the group’s music. Laurence really plays on career-peak form here, forever seeking out unexpected harmonies and accents, and the other three musicians are noticeably affected by his imagination.

Side two sees the quartet tackling some standards, including “Easy Living” and “Nancy With The Laughing Face,” but the highlight is a storming version of Dean’s own “Dede-Bup-Bup” where Tippett plays with such intensity in his solo that it’s a surprise that he didn’t demolish the piano. Amazing stuff.

OG 510
LOL COXHILL
Diverse
(1977)
Coxhill (soprano sax) – solo on side 1, and accompanied by Colin Wood (cello), Dave Green (bass) and John Mitchell (percussion) on side 2

This has been reissued on a two-for-one Ogun CD which also includes all of Coxhill’s second Ogun album, The Joy Of Paranoia (OG 525), but it’s very much a record of two halves. The solo recital on side one is typically intelligent and concentrated improvising, but the improv quartet on side two never really gets going – embarrassingly, there’s a point about halfway through side two where Wood, Green and Mitchell grind to a halt and Coxhill has to blow manfully to get them going again – SME man Wood being the only one of the three even trying to engage in a meaningful dialogue with the saxman.

OG 610
DEAN/WHEELER/GALLIVAN
The Cheque Is In The Mail
(1977)
Elton Dean (alto sax, saxello), Kenny Wheeler (trumpet, flugelhorn), Joe Gallivan (drums, percussion, synths).

An exceptionally strange record, one which if released on Warp Records next week would cause quite a few feathers to ruffle; despite the sleeve billing, Gallivan – he of the extraordinary trio Love Cry Want with the enigmatic guitarist Nicholas and the great Larry Young on organ, and also a key member of Gil Evans’ band on There Comes A Time – is very much the dominant voice here. Ten three-minute (or so) episodes of dislocated electronica, where Dean and Wheeler circle rather forlornly around Gallivan’s drones and loops like reluctant moths. Strangely compelling, however, and probably more in tune with contemporary electronica now.

OG 710
MARC CHARIG
Pipedream
(1977)
Charig (cornet, tenor horn), Keith Tippett (church organ, piano, zither, bell, voice), Ann Winter (voice, bell).

Recorded at St Stephen’s Church, Southmead, Bristol, just over a week after OG 310, this is perhaps the most sheerly beautiful record Ogun ever released, comparable with Beaver and Krause’s Gandharva in terms of unhurried and deeply spiritual improvisation. Charig at his fieriest is a trumpet innovator to rival Lester Bowie, at his quietest conveys a gorgeous lyricism worthy of Miles. Here his cornet intertwines brilliantly with Tippett’s ruminative, stately organ meditations – imagine the little duet coda which closes Centipede’s Septober Energy extended and magnified to 40 minutes. If this had been on ECM everyone would hail it as a classic. This demands reissue.

OG 810
MIKE OSBORNE QUINTET
Marcel’s Muse
(1977)
Osborne (alto sax), Marc Charig (trumpet), Jeff Green (guitar), Harry Miller (bass), Peter Nykyruj (drums).

Osborne’s final album – there is a BBC Jazz In Britain session from 1980 with a quartet featuring old Westbrook colleague Dave Holdsworth on trumpet, Tony Marsh on drums and (I think?) Chris Laurence on bass (though it might have been a very young Paul Rogers), but it’s never been commercially released – this finds him expanding his sonic palette somewhat. It doesn’t have the directness and immediacy of his trio recordings, nor the all-hands-on-deck franticity of the 1970 Outback quintet sessions (with Beckett, McGregor, Miller and Moholo), but by 2004 standards it’s a remarkably sprightly and discursive session, most notable perhaps for the endlessly inventive commentary throughout by the under-recorded and undervalued guitarist Jeff Green – at some points his comping/soloing interface is worthy of comparison with Ray Crawford on Gil Evans’ “La Nevada.”

OG 910
ELTON DEAN’S NINESENSE
Happy Daze
(1977)
Same personnel as OG 900 but add Radu Malfatti (trombone); Charig is credited with playing cornet rather than trumpet (though to these ears he has only ever played the cornet!).

The second Ninesense album, a studio recording of a suite commissioned for the 1977 Bracknell Jazz Festival, and sadly rather frustrating. Not sure how much of recorded British jazz has been scuppered by the sometimes overbearing need to compose “suites” (as this is the only way musicians or bandleaders seem to be able to get an Arts Council grant to fund recordings and performances), but this session never really catches fire, weighed down perhaps by its “suiteness.” “Nicrotto,” a feature for the ‘bone bootboys highly reminiscent of the introductory minutes of OG 010, is a noticeably damp squib when compared to the torrential version released on last year’s Live At The BBC compilation, but Tippett gets the man of the match award yet again for his intelligent piano commentary on the lovely ballad “Sweet F.A.”

OG 020
HARRY BECKETT’S JOY UNLIMITED
Got It Made
(1978)
Beckett (trumpet, flugelhorn), Ray Russell (guitar), Peter Lemer (keyboards), Roy Babbington (bass), Alan Jackson (drums), Martyn David (percussion).

On the cover Beckett is pictured leaning against a drawing of a Cadillac. That kind of sums it up. Russell is the only band member retained from OG 800, and in the interim seems to have undergone his Damascene conversion. No more atonal passion; now his guitar is depressing in its politesse, as though he’d been lobotomised, and the music generally is the blandest and most MoR stuff Ogun ever put out. Guess those royalties from Rock Follies must have had their effect.

OG 120
JOHN STEVENS/EVAN PARKER
The Longest Night Vol 1
(1978)
Stevens (percussion, cornet), Parker (soprano sax).

Recorded on 21 December 1976 – the longest night, as it were – this session represents a major reconciliation. In the late ‘60s the SME had briefly been ideologically stripped down to a duo of Stevens and Parker; then there were further ideological arguments, with the result that the two musicians essentially didn’t speak to each other for about five or six years. This session represents the first time they played together in an open context since the Karyobin sessions of 1968 (though Parker did appear in the expanded ranks of the SMO for 1973’s SMO +/= SME set, whose line-up also included future ‘80s pop star Stephen Luscombe – one half of Blancmange - among the violinists). It’s a typically terse and concentrated set which, over its two volumes, seems to offer a dozen or so variations on the same initial melodic/rhythmic fragment.

OG 220
BLUE NOTES
Blue Notes In Concert Vol 1
(1978)
Same personnel as OGD OO1 / 002, though credited only on their principal instruments.

Sadly Vol 2 seems never to have materialised. Still this set finds the surviving quartet on demon form at the 100 Club, gleefully abseiling between different tunes and explosive interplay. Worth comparing with 1968’s Very Urgent (and will someone at Polygram please GET OFF THEIR ARSE AND REISSUE THE LATTER ON CD????) to note the progressive deformalisation of the group’s musical model over the intervening decade.

OG 320
HARRY MILLER/RADU MALFATTI
Bracknell Breakdown
(1978)
Miller (bass, etc.), Malfatti (trombone, etc.).

A sly and oddly sensuous improv session with the South African and the Austrian (they were occasionally billed on gigs as “Twice”) interweaving at very low frequencies and not a little humour. The use of silence throughout is of course an interesting pointer to the philosophy which Malfatti subsequently went on to develop(/invent?).

OG 420
JOHN STEVENS/EVAN PARKER
The Longest Night Vol 2
(1978)
Personnel as OG 120.

The final track of Vol 2 is perhaps the most spellbinding of these performances; beginning with a long drone improvisation (Stevens providing the bass continuo on his cornet!), the duo then devolve into a slower, more considered, almost balladic improvisation. Of this final track Max Harrison once wrote, memorably: “at times the music hovers beautifully on the verge of existence.”

OG 520
LOUIS MOHOLO OCTET
Spirits Rejoice!
(1978)
Moholo (drums), Kenny Wheeler (trumpet), Nick Evans, Radu Malfatti (trombones), Evan Parker (tenor sax), Keith Tippett (piano), Johnny Dyani, Harry Miller (basses).

My favourite Ogun release (although OGD 003/004 runs it to a very close finish), recorded the day before my 14th birthday, this record, as with things like Blues And The Abstract Truth, is one of these rare records where everything just went right. Recorded while the band was on a high from a reportedly devastatingly euphoric gig at the 100 Club, this is possibly the quintessential Ogun line-up, a perfect balance of musicians, including both of the great South African bassists, finally together. Large enough to sound like a big band when needed, small enough to dovetail into micro-improvisation when required.

Everyone’s game seems to have been upped for this session. Parker delivers some of his most explicitly emotional improvising on record with his solos on “Khanya Apho Ukhona” (ecstatic tongues) and “Tears Of Sorrow” (surprisingly conventionally boppish until the horns drop out and Tippett prods him into freer territories); the trombonists have a field day generally – Malfatti declaiming in best Roswell Rudd style over Feza’s immortal tune “You Ain’t Gonna Know Me ‘Cos You Think You Know Me” - maybe the best-loved of all the Blue Notes-penned tunes, it certainly got the biggest cheer at the Dedication Orchestra gig at the 100 Club on Ne’erday 1992 – Evans and Malfatti swooping round each other like pacifist falcons on Dyani’s “Ithi-gqi,” Wheeler’s typically beautifully poised ballad moods on “Wedding Hymn” and Tippett’s astonishing piano solo on the same track, wherein he seems to invent a new tune altogether (you can hear the bassists scratching their heads momentarily, trying to keep up), although the solo itself seems to have been rather abruptly truncated – perhaps we could have the full version when the record gets a CD release?

OG 521
CHRIS McGREGOR
In His Good Time
(1978)
McGregor (piano).

There are also two volumes of Piano Song, on the long-defunct Musica label, but here we get a rare chance to hear the great composer and bandleader improvising as intelligently and passionately as he can on a number of old favourites. Note especially his conversion of Pukwana’s “The Bride” into a stately hymn.

OG 522
AUSTIN/BABBINGTON/GALLIVAN
Home From Home
(1978)
Charles Austin (saxes, flutes, oboe), Roy Babbington (bass), Joe Gallivan (drums, percussion, synths).

Austin and Gallivan were a regular working duo in the ‘70s. This session is considerably earthier and more jazz-based than the ethereal OG 610, but weighed down somewhat by Babbington’s rather unnecessary bass.

OG 523
HARRY MILLER QUINTET
In Conference
(1978)
Miller (bass), Willem Brueker (tenor & soprano saxes, bass clarinet), Trevor Watts (alto & soprano saxes), Keith Tippett (piano) and Louis Moholo (drums), with Julie Tippetts (guest vocals on side 2).

Recorded just three days after OG 520, this album demonstrates a long-standing ambition of Miller’s; to develop Ogun into a platform for international improvisers. He talked of getting Brotzmann or Mangelsdorff or even Braxton to come and record for the label, but before any of that could happen, life changes happened and he ended up moving to Holland – practically the first thing he did when he got there was to help form the wonderful trio with Brotzmann and Moholo which ended up recording for FMP.

Here, however, he brought together two notable saxophonists who had never previously played together – and by previously, that included before the tapes started rolling on this session – the explosive Dutchman Brueker and the more considered Englishman Watts. And the fusion worked brilliantly. “Traumatic Experience” sees both men on soprano, snaking and howling around each other as the unbeatable rhythm section spurs them on to do so; “Orange Grove” is a fantastic kwela groove which Brueker, on tenor, does his best to deconstruct as Watts’ alto yodels towards the stratosphere. “Dancing Damon” (named after Miller’s son) finds Brueker’s bass clarinet underscoring and flirting with Julie Tippetts’ voice in a very Gunter Hampel/Jeanne Lee fashion; while on “New Baby,” with Breuker back on tenor, we could almost be listening to Billie Holiday and Ben Webster waking up in a spaceship. Watts in particular takes to the South African/free interface environment effortlessly throughout.

OG 524
CHRIS McGREGOR’S BROTHERHOOD OF BREATH
Procession
(1978)
McGregor (piano), Harry Beckett, Marc Charig (trumpets), Radu Malfatti (trombone), Mike Osborne, Dudu Pukwana (alto saxes), Evan Parker (tenor sax), Bruce Grant (baritone sax, flute), Johnny Dyani, Harry Miller (basses), Louis Moholo (drums).

Recorded live in Toulouse in May 1977, the absence of Feza from the line-up was palpably evident – though check the band’s glorious freewheeling take on Feza’s “Sonia,” which you would like to go on forever – but, perhaps because of this, the band concentrate ferociously on the music at hand and deliver a blistering performance (Dyani finally agreed to play with the Brotherhood on this particular tour, and Miller kept his place in the band to provide a two-bass hit). Parker again provides some of the highlights – his passionate tenor outburst on “Sunrise On The Sun” (as Osborne’s alto comments in tandem) and his sudden explosion in the midst of the systematically repeating motifs of “Kwhalo.” Malfatti also performs his most passionate solo on record, multiphonics and all, on “Sunrise,” while the 18 minutes of Pukwana’s “Kwhalo” – a tune also known, and recorded, as “Diamond Express” – might be the band’s finest moment on record. Is it pop? Is it minimalism? Is it kwela? It’s all those things and far, far more. On his sleevenote Keith Beal observes how, by the track’s end, every instrument in the band is a drum – it’s astonishing, fiercely danceable and the finest of testaments to this greatest of all bands.

OG 525
LOL COXHILL
The Joy Of Paranoia
(1978)
Coxhill (soprano sax) solo (multitracked), in a quartet with Ken Shaw (electric guitar), Richard Wright (acoustic guitar) and Paul Mitchell-Davidson (bass guitar), and in duos with Veryan Weston (piano) and Michael Garrick (electric piano).

A kind of Coxhill miscellany; side one is devoted to a long, fairly funky workout with various guitarists, while on side two we find bleak, spacious duets with the then up-and-coming Weston, a brief spell of multitracked soprano Dixieland minimalism (the title track) and finally typically considered improvisations on “Perdido” and “Lover Man” with Garrick, live at his local.

OG 526
TREVOR WATTS STRING ENSEMBLE
Cynosure
(1978)
Watts (alto & soprano saxes), Dave Cole, Steve Hayton (guitars), Steve Danachie (violin), Sandy Spencer (cello), Lindsey Cooper (bass), Colin McKenzie (bass guitar), Liam Genockey (drums).

Indifferently recorded, but an absolutely phenomenal record which seems to have been criminally overlooked in the rush towards Prime Time (which this record, among other things, seems to anticipate directly). A sort of expanded version of Watts’ jazz-rockish band Amalgam and also a kind of prototype for his later Moire Music ensemble, this record, if you’ll pardon the unpardonable linguistic lapse, rocks like a muthafucka. Particularly noteworthy are “No Waiting,” which develops and evolves a Charlie Christian figure (the intro to his famous solo on Goodman’s “Waiting For Benny”) into total ecstasy, and the devolution swing of “We’ll Talk About It Later” which MUST be listened to in conjunction with Ornette’s Dancing In Your Head. Someone remaster this and get this out again quicksnap!

OG 527
DEAN/GOWEN/HOPPER/SHEEN
Rogue Element
Elton Dean (alto sax, saxello), Alan Gowen (keyboards), Hugh Hopper (bass), Dave Sheen (drums).
(1979)

Evidently one of the most popular of Ogun releases, as this has made it onto CD. Good, fruitful fusion/free improvising from the quartet – and good to hear the late Gowen in any context – but…I dunno, maybe I was still missing Robert Wyatt; it doesn’t quite get to me.

OG 528
TREVOR WATTS’ AMALGAM
Closer To You
(1979)
Watts (alto & soprano saxes), Colin McKenzie (bass), Liam Genockey (drums).
Finally, Amalgam itself got to record for Ogun. Although 1984’s devastating four-LP Fall Out set, which added Keith Rowe’s tabletop guitar to the line-up to astounding effect and acknowledged that some of these improv chaps had been listening to punk, is the definitive Amalgam statement, this trio session is pretty choppy and compelling in itself – especially the lengthy threnody “Dear Roland” (for the then recently-deceased Rahsaan Roland Kirk) in which Watts’ alto achieves puncta of passion comparable with Gato Barbieri at his least nonsensical and perhaps even within touching distance of Ayler.

OGD 003/004
KEITH TIPPETT’S ARK
Frames – Music For An Imaginary Film
(1978)
Tippett (piano, harmonium), Stan Tracey (piano), Marc Charig (trumpets, tenor horn, Kenyan thumb piano), Henry Lowther (trumpet), Dave Amis, Nick Evans (trombones), Elton Dean, Trevor Watts (alto & soprano saxes), Brian Smith, Larry Stabbins (tenor & soprano saxes, flutes – in the case of Smith, alto flute), Phil Wachsmann (violin, electronics), Steve Levine, Rod Skeaping, Geoffrey Wharton (violins), Tim Kramer, Alexandra Robinson (cellos), Harry Miller (bass), Peter Kowald (bass, tuba), Louis Moholo (drums), Frank Perry (percussion), Julie Tippetts (vocals, lyrics), Maggie Nicols (vocals). In one sequence all the musicians except for the saxophonists are heard dragging their fingers around wine glasses, while in the closing sequence everyone attends to flutes, whistles, percussion, game calls, etc.

Thankfully this is available on CD, remastered by Steve Beresford from Hugh Hopper’s original production. And it’s Tippett’s greatest artistic statement. His previous big band experiments with Centipede have been consolidated, and here he scales down the band from 55 to 22 musicians without any loss of power and considerably more concentration – here there aren’t three thrashing drummers cancelling each other out, for example, and the instrumental pairings (hence the name Ark) are inspired, for example Miller’s bass with Kowald’s tuba, and the sacred (Perry’s proto-New Age percussion) with the holy profane (Moholo’s drums). As with Centipede, it brings together all of the regular groupings with which Tippett was then working, at the core of which is Ovary Lodge (see OG 600 above) – everything radiates out from the central quartet.

The double album’s highlight is the brilliant fusion of Guilliaume de Machaut and Mingus which constitutes the opening half of side three – over a drone (almost a Dowland-esque continuo), Julie Tippetts sings of a new dawn, a new hope, rising to face the world. Then Keith Tippett’s piano enters sadly to harmonise the melody. Nicols then returns with the string drone to sing the second verse, following which Tracey essays a mysterious (“Mysterioso”?) and beyond-enigmatic piano commentary, ending emphatically at the bottom end of the keyboard as though he’s closing a tomb.

The awakening of Blake’s Jerusalem in England? An alternative soundtrack to Penda’s Fen? It could be. Slowly, each pair of instruments enters to state the melody and improvise briefly on it. As more pairs join in the improvising becomes more animated and the mood more deeply pronounced. As with Mingus, intonation seems to be deliberately loose (NOT sloppy) to emphasise the underlying humanity. Finally, as the trumpets climax over the now passionate, slowly-detonating explosion of the orchestra, we are left with an ecstatic climax every bit the equal of Coltrane’s Ascension. Miller and Moholo subtly introduce a steady 4/4 beat as the musicians scream and swoon above, below and around them. It numbed me and stunned me to the core when I first heard it at teatime on Charles Fox’s Jazz Today programme on Radio 3 in the late autumn of 1978; when I got hold of a copy of the record, with its brilliant Dick Whitbread collage of unforeseen tentacles swallowing up a panoramic view of North London – the natural reclaiming the manmade – on its cover, I thought it was the greatest record I had ever heard. Sometimes when listening to it, and many of the other masterpieces released on Ogun, I still do.

// posted by Marcello @ 2:58 AM