Release date: 10-09-2007

2007 UK 16-track 2-LP set pressed on Heavyweight Vinyl - Obliquity is a free jazz record, if you'll forgive the use of such a hoary, old fashioned phrase. Its scorching, heads-down momentum, rhythm and drive places it in direct line of descent from the fierce originators of the genre: Ayler, Sanders, Graves, Frank Wright. - presented in a gatefold picture sleeve with picture inners!

Tracks:
01. Obliquity  
02. Drag Head
03. South of 4
04. Cuttin' the P nut 
05. Kwakm'bababli Stomp

In recent years free jazz has been heavily reappropriated by the American underground community, with recordings by the likes of Flaherty/Corsano/Yeh bringing a refreshing new slant to the field. It's similarly refreshing to hear a group of musicians taking avant-garde jazz back to its origins, referencing the kind of '60s, virtuoso stream of consciousness approach with a swinging verve often absent from contemporary improvised music. "Obiquity" is no time capsule however: the abstract percussion interludes that interrupt the free flow of music bear the hallmarks of modern experimentation, as does Alan Wilkinson's screeching tirade of wordless vocal utterances on 'Kwakm'bababli Stomp'. Perhaps the key to this release is John Edwards' exemplary double bass work, which simultaneously sounds like the anchor holding everything together, whilst remaining loose, and where necessary, extravagant. Amazing stuff.

 It also swings. At times it dances. Obliquity is a free jazz record through the prism of the improvisational movement in Europe, though. This is no attempt at polite revivalism or looking back/up to the 1960s. Wilkinson/Edwards/Noble are producing new, vital music of and for now. You need form to work at this level of spontaneity and certainty and any frequenter of the outer limits of the European music scene could vouch for the jazz porridge these three have put away.