condition (record/cover): EX- (marks not affecting play) / VG (tape repair on top seam and corner and general wear)

Two men out of the Charles Mingus workshop who learned there that a band can be violent and gorgeous in the same bar. George Adams plays tenor like a preacher losing his temper, Don Pullen attacks the piano with the backs of his hands and then drops into the most tender voicings imaginable, and behind them Cameron Brown and Dannie Richmond hold a groove that never once feels like a compromise. Life Line catches this quartet in its first flush, when the mix of gospel, hard bop and outright free playing still felt genuinely dangerous. Nothing here is polite. Everything here swings.

Original Dutch Timeless pressing from 1981. One of the great working bands of the late twentieth century, documented before anyone had decided what to call it.