Circle

Featuring: Anthony Braxton, Dave Holland, Barry Altschul, Chick Corea

condition (record/cover): NM / NM (in shrink)

Insert and obi included.

The second Japanese CBS/Sony volume of Circle - Chick Corea, Anthony Braxton, Dave Holland and Barry Altschul in the studio-facing complement to the live document. Gathering shows the band's chamber side: textures assembled with jeweler's care, improvisation and composition trading masks so fluidly the seams disappear, the collective ideal taken seriously by four players who could each have dominated the room and consciously chose not to - which was, in 1971, its own kind of radical statement. Holland's bass work throughout is a quiet marvel, the hinge everything else swings on.

The Circle discography is small, scattered across labels and countries, and famously frustrating to assemble; Japan-only editions like this are prime quarry for those doing the assembling, and they reward the effort with pressing quality to match the rarity. A band that lasted barely two years and left questions the music is still answering half a century later. Japanese pressing, clean and quiet.