Peter Brötzmann

s, never before released on vinyl from Peter Brötzmann Octet's Machine Gun (1968). As Brötzmann has said: 'It was the feeling, the very naive feeling that we could take a little part in changing the world.' Adopting its title from Don Cherry's nickname for Brötzmann, 'Machine Gun' drew on the huge horn section of Lionel Hampton's 'Flying Home' for inspiration, translating the hilarious saxophonic power of the jump blues and Illinois Jacquet's booting and hollering into an abstraction painted with a flame-thrower, a la Alberto Burri. 'Machine Gun' was a watershed -- and even if it has taken four decades to find its appreciative audience, it is now an essential recording, both in terms of the development of free music in Europe and taken on its own merits, outside of the context of its creation.

Personnel: Peter Brötzmann - baritone saxophone, tenor saxophone; Peter Kowald - acoustic bass; Buschi Niebergall - acoustic bass; Sven-Ake Johansson - drums; Han Bennink - drums; Fred Van Hove - piano; Evan Parker - tenor saxophone; Willem Breuker - tenor saxophone.