Frank Lowe - Black Beings

ESP 3013

As much as the reissue market is saturated with re-packagings, often for the umpteenth time, of previously issued material to encourage followers of the music to purchase the same thing twice, there are those rare birds that render the original obsolete. Tenorman Frank Lowe’s debut LP as a leader, Black Beings, issued in 1973, was never a record that left one wanting for more. Sure, the recording was a bit muddy and the original vinyl pressing not that hot, but the music contained therein always felt prime, either a last gasp of post-Coltrane fire music or the first sweaty exhortations of “loft jazz.” Joined by Joseph Jarman on alto and sopranino saxophones, violinist The Wizard (Raymond Cheng), and the rhythm section of bassist William Parker and drummer Rashid Sinan, it offered something between movements and utterly sedimental on two full band cuts and one solo tenor piece. ESP sourced the original concert tapes, adding over fifteen minutes of material to what was originally issued. Not only that, but the remastering job is first-rate, lending the date an auditory power that goes beyond its creative significance.

The opening “In Trane’s Name” is a throaty call to arms from buzzing, gruff tenor and acrid, tart alto, violin clawing at the reaches of the upper register. As Lowe blows in contorted squeals and fire-and-brimstone blasts from the pit of his horn, Sinan is a many-limbed storm of bricks and pavement keeping tenor afloat in a dialogue that seems fit to lift an entire city. There’s an entirely different urban structure to Jarman’s alto, as he begins his solo in delicate sprawl and builds to obsessive repetition and extroverted peals over a crashing field of gongs, toms, wood and strings. Jarman moved to New York in the early ‘70s, and though he was far less the stereotypical Chicagoan in the architecture of his improvisations than Roscoe Mitchell, it’s clear that his feral-ness found a home in the lower Manhattan of Lowe’s band.

Part of Jarman’s solo was cut out of the original LP release to fit a side; more importantly, all of Cheng’s electric violin madness was excised. To say it’s a revelation is an understatement – less Leroy Jenkins and more Masayuki Takayanagi by way of Ornette, as his wide-interval leaps, seasick multiple-stops and torqued tones reach a frenzy that even Sinan’s stew can’t match. This is free string playing for the ages, and it’s a shame that more people didn’t experience it when the record was released. Cheng and Parker spar fiercely, the bassist’s levitational harmonics already in full force (this was his first appearance on record). Parker’s thrum is audible throughout the disc, though, and the newfound crispness of Sinan’s tubwork makes their tandem truly glorious. The drum choir that pipes up at around the twenty-minute mark is a perfect upping and altering of the ante from string solos (Sinan and Parker also hold court on Seikatsu Kojyo Iinkai, a corker of a session led by Japanese altoist “Kappo” Umezu for the SKI imprint). The front line engages in a high-register cutting contest of sorts over mallets and toms before the theme’s incantational blues takes the tune home.

There’s something to be said for vinyl, though – after a set this intense, a rest before flipping the side is important. Unfortunately, ESP didn’t figure out a way to give the disc a little mid-performance breather.

~ Clifford Allen