condition (record/cover): NM / NM

Insert included. No obi.

The second helping from the 1971 London sessions: Anthony Braxton with Kenny Wheeler, Dave Holland and Barry Altschul, on a Japanese Trio pressing of the Freedom release. Early-seventies Braxton is a sweet spot in the discography and most collectors know it - the composition titles already diagrams, the playing still hot-wired to the free jazz mainline, the quartet concept that would define the coming decade taking shape in real time, session by session. Wheeler in particular deserves every flower he ever received for this work: few brass players of any school could have inhabited these structures with such warmth, and his presence keeps even the thorniest pieces singing. The rhythm team, fresh from Circle, treats complexity as a form of play.

For those assembling the early Braxton shelf, this volume is simply not optional - and the Japanese vinyl treatment, reliably quiet and solid, is the pleasant way to own it. Prime creative music from the year the seventies really started.