Gunter Hampel

Before Globe Unity, before the Schoof Quintet's Voices, there was this. Gunter Hampel, from Göttingen, trained as an architect and playing vibraphone and flute, formed a quintet in 1964 with Manfred Schoof on trumpet, Alexander von Schlippenbach on piano, Buschi Niebergall on bass and Pierre Courbois on drums. Heartplants, on SABA in 1965, was its first record and Hampel's. Down Beat gave it five stars.

The writer Randolph Braumann, in the liner notes, wrote that each piece aims to eat itself up in the course of being played, and that the thread between listeners and band is never broken. A recent essay on the record makes the same point: inspired by Ayler and Dolphy, Hampel stopped short of the screaming, pulling back when the music got too aggressive, mixing old ideas and new. The Wikipedia entry on Niebergall calls this and Voices the two clearest examples of an independent European free jazz emerging.

Dusty Groove, expecting the usual Hampel, says this one is different, a great early session. It is where the German free jazz of the late 1960s starts on record, a year before Schlippenbach wrote Globe Unity for the same players.

Japanese CD edition from Solid's MPS series.