Sunny Murray

2025 stock Sunny Murray is widely credited with being the first drummer to fully liberate the kit, developing a form of omni-directional accompaniment that dissolved the distinction between supporting and leading and helped spark the free jazz revolution that took place in the early 60s. Indeed, Murray spent time with most of the new music's major theorists, including both Cecil Taylor and Albert Ayler. But in recent years he hasn't seemed like quite the drummer he was, lacking the focus and (perhaps more inevitably) some of the power of his earlier performances. Both volumes of Perles Noires, then, come as a real slap around the head. Both discs document the core duo of Murray and saxophonist Sabir Mateen, best known as a member of NY guerrilla jazz outfit Test, alone and in the company of various guests, including pianists Dave Burrell and John Blum, saxophonist Louis Belogenis and bassist Alan Silva. Murray is on fierce, articulate form and he makes with some wild solo statements, building compulsive tattoos from associative percussive strategies, as well as moments of pure, straight-ahead thump. Mateen's formulations are just as spontaneously charged, roaring out of the gate with a screaming, vocalised sound before dropping to moonbeams of late-night melody. A beauty. --David Kennan, Scotland Sunday Herald