Steve Lacy

Troubles is the 1979 Black Saint album of the Steve Lacy Quintet, a band of two saxophones, voice and strings over bass and drums. All five pieces are Lacy's. They range from the three-minute The Whammies! to Blues, almost thirteen minutes, a setting of love poems from the Manyōshū, the eighth-century Japanese anthology, in the French translation of René Sieffert. The cover uses a painting by Brion Gysin, in a design by Francesca Gregoricchio with a photograph by Isio Saba.

The quintet recorded the album at Barigozzi Studios in Milan on May 24 and 25, 1979, with Giancarlo Barigozzi engineering. The producer was Giovanni Bonandrini, who that same year started Black Saint's sister label, Soul Note. Lacy plays soprano saxophone and Steve Potts alto and soprano. Irene Aebi sings and plays violin and cello, Kent Carter is on bass and cello, and Oliver Johnson is on drums. The record opens with the title piece at six and a half minutes and the ten minutes of Wasted, then The Whammies! closes the first side of the original LP. Blues and the six-minute No Baby fill the second side, with Aebi's voice at the centre of Blues.

This is the Golden Gems CD BSGG005-2, a 2016 reissue in a gatefold card sleeve of the album first released by Black Saint in 1979 as BSR 0035.