Irene Schweizer, Peter Kowald, Pierre Favre

Here’s the *real* Santana! This is a vibrant and exciting album – a lively document of early free music. Drummer Pierre Favre was interested in space and jagged rhythms at the time, with Irene Schweizer adding creative lyricism and Peter Kowald’s fat bass lines pulsing through the complex music.  A lost classic of European jazz, this early recording by the potent trio of Pierre Favre, Irène Schweizer, and Peter Kowald was waxed in 1968, before Carlos started gigging under his own name. This churning music may contain echoes of Cecil Taylor and Paul Bley, but mainly it’s forging a new sonic vocabulary that would inspire European players over the coming decade. Volatile and vital, unpredictable and gorgeous, it’s been buried for far too long.