Cecil Taylor

Featuring: Jimmy Lyons

condition (record/cover): NM / NM

Insert and obi included.

1978, Germany: Cecil Taylor's late-seventies Unit on MPS - Jimmy Lyons, Raphé Malik, Ramsey Ameen's violin, Sirone and Ronald Shannon Jackson, one of the most exciting ensembles Taylor ever fielded, caught live by the label with the famous ears and the famous Black Forest address. Ameen's strings add a whole new register to the Unit sound - keening above the horns, sawing inside the rhythm - while Jackson drums like a man conducting three bands at once, the pre-Decoding Society fire already fully lit; and the leader responds to all that density with some of his most exultant playing of the decade, the joy in the violence unmistakable. The 1978 group's few records are all treasures, documenting a peak ensemble that dissolved too soon, as Taylor's peaks tended to.

Japanese MPS pressing, which stacks pressing quality on recording quality in the usual happy arithmetic. Late-seventies Taylor: fire, fully orchestrated, properly taped. What more does an evening need.