The 360 Degree Music Experience

In:Sanity is the double album that The 360 Degree Music Experience, the group led by drummer Beaver Harris and pianist Dave Burrell, recorded in New York in March 1976 for Black Saint. It is one of the first releases of the Milan label, and it stretches a free jazz band towards Caribbean steel drums, Indian sitar and African percussion. Harris, born in Pittsburgh, had worked regularly with Archie Shepp from 1966 and toured Europe with Albert Ayler. He formed the 360 Degree Music Experience in 1969 as a cooperative with trombonist Grachan Moncur III.

The sessions took place on 8 and 9 March 1976 at Generation Sound Studios, produced by Giacomo Pellicciotti with Timothy Marquand as associate producer and Tony May as engineer. Around Harris and Burrell, who also plays organ and celesta, are baritone saxophonist Hamiet Bluiett, tenor saxophonist Azar Lawrence, bassist Cecil McBee, sitarist Sunil Garg, conga player Titos Sompa and others. Francis Haynes plays soprano steel drum and leads a seven-piece steel band. Burrell's Tradewinds, six and a half minutes long, opens the record. Harris's In: Sanity Suite follows in three parts, the last of them, Complete Operation, close to nineteen minutes long. Open (For James Garrison), credited to Harris, Burrell and Bluiett, fills a whole side at over twenty-one minutes. Side four pairs Bluiett's Full, Deep and Mellow with Haynes's Sahara, where the steel band plays with the jazz group. Marquand also wrote the liner notes.

Black Saint CD 120006-2, a reissue of the album first released in 1976 as the double LP BSR 0006/7.