Amassed

Amazon.com
Starting with 2001's Masses, an all-star effort featuring Matthew Shipp and a cast of downtown jazz luminaries, Spring Heel Jack's Ashley Wales and John Coxon have sculpted free-jazz source material into sometimes brilliant, but always interesting, sound collages. With Amassed, the duo use Shipp again, but lean heavily on European players like drummer Han Bennink and saxophonist Evan Parker, as well as guitarist Jason Pierce, leader of the space-rock band Spiritualized. The music is often surprisingly subdued and sometimes downright lovely--on "Lit," Kenny Wheeler plays a soulful trumpet over slowly shifting organ chords until the sound of a crumpling can finishes off the song. Things are their most cacophonous on "Duel," when Parker and Bennink go toe to toe as other sounds slowly move in and surround the two players, finally drowning them out for a time. Dynamic, imaginative, and overwhelming, Amassed defines this new fusion genre by realizing many of the possibilities of both electronic production advances and avant-garde jazz. --Tad Hendrickson

Product Description
Featuring Jason Pierce (Spiritualized), the all stars of British Jazz, including such luminaries as Evan Parker, Kenny Wheeler, Han Bennick and Paul Rutherford. Nominated for innovative jazz recording of the year (BBC). Thirsty Ear. 2002.

Tracks:

Double Cross
Amassed
Wormwood
Lit
Maroc
100 Years Before
Duel
Obscured

Amazon.com

Starting with 2001's Masses, an all-star effort featuring Matthew Shipp and a cast of downtown jazz luminaries, Spring Heel Jack's Ashley Wales and John Coxon have sculpted free-jazz source material into sometimes brilliant, but always interesting, sound collages. With Amassed, the duo use Shipp again, but lean heavily on European players like drummer Han Bennink and saxophonist Evan Parker, as well as guitarist Jason Pierce, leader of the space-rock band Spiritualized. The music is often surprisingly subdued and sometimes downright lovely--on "Lit," Kenny Wheeler plays a soulful trumpet over slowly shifting organ chords until the sound of a crumpling can finishes off the song. Things are their most cacophonous on "Duel," when Parker and Bennink go toe to toe as other sounds slowly move in and surround the two players, finally drowning them out for a time. Dynamic, imaginative, and overwhelming, Amassed defines this new fusion genre by realizing many of the possibilities of both electronic production advances and avant-garde jazz. --Tad Hendrickson

Album Description

Featuring Jason Pierce (Spiritualized), the all stars of British Jazz, including such luminaries as Evan Parker, Kenny Wheeler, Han Bennick and Paul Rutherford. Nominated for innovative jazz recording of the year (BBC). Thirsty Ear. 2002.

Customer Reviews:

Free jazz has been done already.......2005-10-18

OK, so I'm the one at fault-- I bought this because it was one of the few Spring Heel CDs my local store had. I had no idea their musical style had changed so much since their first album. In fact, I am now going to buy their first album on Amazon, because it sounds like what I'm looking for.

This disc is a lot of moody noise which you could use for background to your party, if you want everyone slumped over staring at the icecubes in their drinks. If you want real free jazz, listen to the stuff Ornette Coleman did in the 60s-- it has more fire and beat.

improvisation and force override electronics.......2003-08-08

Sometimes I think that music sellers believe that we net-surfers are stupid, or that its is more important for us what we read on the Internet than what we hear. Please don't misunderstand me: this is an excellent record, but it is not drum n'bass at all. Electronics are one more free instrument (it reminds me in many places the mid '70s pieces by Braxton and Teitelbaum), and acoustic instruments this wild cannot surrender to an athmospheric, steady tempo, similar to what Nils Petter Molvaer or Jon Hassel do. This is free jazz at its best!