Get Me More Into Free Jazz
 

Up until now I've only heard free jazz filtered through secondary sources like the stooges funhouse, cpatain beefheart and old time relijun. I got an Albert Ayler album (Spiritual Unity) and adore it. I really like it and want to know this genre better.

Could you guys give a list of what you think the top must hear free jazz albusm are? Also reccomend some good Ayler if you know some.

Yeah, and reccomend me some more avant-jazz while you're at it, sweeties.

Start off with these:

Ornette Coleman - The Shape of Jazz to Come
Ornette Coleman - Free Jazz (duh)
Cecil Taylor - Unit Structures
Sun Ra - The Heliocentric Worlds of Sun Ra
John Coltrane - Ascension
Pharoah Sanders - Karma
Peter Brötzmann Octet - Machine Gun
Alice Coltrane - Journey in Satchidananda

some names:
don cherry,
steve lacy,
derek bailey,
anthony braxton,
evan parker,
peter brötzmann....

Not purely free-jazz, but hugely influenced by it:

Tim Buckley - Starsailor

albert ayler's album
new york eye and ear control is pretty great.
as already has been stated
ornette coleman
late john coletrane
sun ra
cecil tayler

if you can get your hands on it, an album that i particulary love is
maurice mcintyre-humility in the light of creation
sam rivers
another gem is
SME-challenge
if you want just crazy avant noise with saxes then
borbetomagus
peter brotzmann-nipples
machine gun
anything with evan parker.

more subtle british free music
amm
derek bailey
john stevens
two albums that i like in particular
are
anthony braxton and derek bailey-first duo 72
and derek bailey john stevens and another guys- one time (i think its called that.

no really FREE JAZZ, but since AMM & Borbetomagus are poping up, here is something more on EAI (electro-acoustic improvisation):
Axel Dörner, Andrea Neumann, Thomas Lehn, Toshimaru Nakamura, Sachiko M
Nmperign (Bhob Rainey & Greg Kelley), Voice Crack (Norbert Möslang & Andy Guhl)...

it is another big scene over there.

on free jazz (further ahead), check this big group formed in 60s:
Globe Unity Orchestra,
London Improvisers Orchestra,
Art Ensemble Of Chicago

not mentioned yet but amazing:

kaoru abe
anthony braxton

anthony braxton has been mentioned twice i believe

and
i only mentioned borbetomagus and amm cause atsonicpark asked for avant jazz. and i took the more avant side o' things...

masayuki takayanagi new direction unit!
iskra 1903 (derek bailey, barry guy, paul rutherford)

Test!

http://www.aumfidelity.com/home.htm

borbetomagus is more free jazz than avant jazz.

ace band, didn't see anthony, saw borbeto, left them alone.

some guitar free/ avant jazz:
James Blood Ulmer,
Sonny Sharrock,

and a "new" free jazz band from japan:
Otomo Yoshihide's New Jazz Orchestra

whats the actual difference betwenn free jazzz and avant jazz?

That's definitely a list I would get behind. He nailed all of the artists I would want to include with a great sampling of essential albums.

As Sun Ra goes, Heliocentric is definitely one of the "Free"-er sounding records, though the Arkestra never quite fit the Free model all of the way since Ra would grill his band with 12 hour rehearsals and surprisingly specific compositional structure (not that there wasn't improvisation, just far less than most people think). If I was going to suggest a record for somebody trying to get into Ra I'd go with Space is the Place first (either the "album" or the "movie soundtrack" which is actually more like an alternate album).

I'd also add Miles Davis at Filmore West to the list, though it is also not considered canon among many Free Jazz purists. It's just a phenomenal set though of a musician at his peak taking on the best of the genres of the day and throwing any precepts about how it was supposed to be done out the window. With remarkably beautiful playing to pull it all together.

free jazz is more of a in the rejection of notes and rhythms in a jazz idiom and (at least since the 70's) has a tradition of sorts based on the seminal recordings of trane, ornette, cecil, etc. (even though this tradition is a sort of oxymoron since the original free jazz rejected tradition).

avant jazz is music that's artier and a more educated kind of improv that are based on textures and have a purpose or might even include notes and other elements of established music like notes or rhythms, done with jazz instrumention primarly. its origins are more in the 20th century classical music but it also has origins in free jazz and have many other styles of music mixed in (like ambient, drone, etc.).

examples:

peter brötzmann - machine gun = free jazz
otomo yoshihide's new jazz orchestra - out to lunch = avant jazz


avant jazz: check out nihilist spasm band!!!

i have a nihalist spasm band-what about me
its excellent.
i see what you're saying, but i think that all these terms are so loosly placed that what some see as avant others as free and yadda yadda yadda. but i see what you mean
thanks

My understanding is that Avant Jazz is a broader term for any non-conventional jazz including fusion and classical music composition crossover material (such as Ornette's awesome Forms and Sounds album from the late '60s). Free Jazz is a term that gets used really widely, but to many people specifically implies improvisational based music that deliberately breaks with the traditions of Bebop and Modal Jazz.

Of course, as with any genre, you get this general vs. specific ways of looking at things that create endless arguments about what qualifies. Like how "Techno" music was specifically this particular branch of Chicago post-house electronic music, but then the term gets used as a catch all for every type of sequenced beat music ever created.

Archie Shepp
Arthur Doyle