Bob James Trio, Gordon Mumma, Robert Ashley

Probably the first recording (1965!) of improvised jazz combined with electronic music, as well as playing inside the piano and other new music techniques. Bob James (piano); Barre Philips (bass); Robert Pozar (percussion). Also including Bob Ashley and Gordon Mumma (electronic tape collage). The recording is made of an assembly of estranging electronic sound effects, trite sports commentaries, and the music of a beautifully improvising jazz trio. Bob James has, through this convulsion of out-of-context sound elements and music of a trio, tried to emphasize the strange acoustic complex of modern man in his city, in his world, in his cosmos. "Bob James, a recent college graduate, brought ESP a master of a session he had produced, featuring Barre Phillips and Bob Pozar. He chose for the front cover a torn poster he had photographed on a visit to Australia. In 1974, having garnered several gold records, he returned to visit ESP on the ground floor at 290 West End Avenue, in New York City. Lounging in a swing back leather chair, he commented that he thought his ESP album was the best one he had ever made." -- Bernard Stollman