The Squid's Ear Magazine


Sprawl (Parker / Brotzmann / Wittwer / Wertmuller / Buess): Sprawl [VINYL] (Trost Records)

Intense and beautifully harsh improvisation from drummer Michael Wertmuller (16-17, Alboth!, Full Blast) with Peter Brotzmann (reeds), Stephan Wittwer (guitar), Alex Buess (reeds & electronics), and William Parker (bass), originally released on CD in 1997.
 

Price: $22.95


Quantity:

Out of Stock

Quantity in Basket: None

Log In to use our Wish List
Shipping Weight: 24.00 units

Sample The Album:



product information:

Personnel:



William Parker-bass

Peter Brotzmann-reeds

Stephan Wittwer-guitar

Michael Wertmuller-drums

Alex Buess -reeds, electronics


Click an artist name above to see in-stock items for that artist.




UPC: 9120036681804

Label: Trost Records
Catalog ID: TROST 070LP
Squidco Product Code: 20506

Format: LP
Condition: New
Released: 2015
Country: Austria
Packaging: LP
Recorded at The Selve in Thun, Switzerland, in August 1996 by Christoph Ali and Manuel Liebeskind.

Descriptions, Reviews, &c.

"Trost presents the first vinyl edition of Sprawl, the intense and beautifully harsh collaborative project of drummer Michael Wertmuller (16-17, Alboth!, Full Blast), originally released on CD in 1997. Remastered and re-cut by Wertmuller and Alex Buess. The original release of this work marked the beginning of Trost's cooperation with Peter Brotzmann, after they organized an Alboth! show with Wertmuller. Wertmuller's intention for Sprawl was to gather the musicians he appreciates most and has worked with in various contexts for a special one-time recording project. The main idea was to create an album that incorporates the rough energy of "Machine Gun" based on improvisation, the electricity of 16-17, and the application of experimental recording techniques that give the album its own, very special feeling."-Trost


Artist Biographies

"William Parker is a bassist, improviser, composer, writer, and educator from New York City, heralded by The Village Voice as, "the most consistently brilliant free jazz bassist of all time."

In addition to recording over 150 albums, he has published six books and taught and mentored hundreds of young musicians and artists.

Parker's current bands include the Little Huey Creative Music Orchestra, In Order to Survive, Raining on the Moon, Stan's Hat Flapping in the Wind, and the Cosmic Mountain Quartet with Hamid Drake, Kidd Jordan, and Cooper-Moore. Throughout his career he has performed with Cecil Taylor, Don Cherry, Milford Graves, and David S. Ware, among others."

-William Parker Website (http://www.williamparker.net/)
3/27/2024

Have a better biography or biography source? Please Contact Us so that we can update this biography.

"Born Remscheid, Germany on 6 March 1941; soprano, alto, tenor, baritone and bass saxophones, a-clarinet, e-flat clarinet; bass clarinet, tarogato.

Peter Brötzmann's early interest was in painting and he attended the art academy in Wuppertal. Being very dissatisfied with the gallery/exhibition situation in art he found greater satisfaction playing with semi-professional musicians, though continued to paint (as well as retaining a level of control over his own records, particularly in record sleeve/CD booklet design). In late 2005 he had a major retrospective exhibition jointly with Han Bennink - two separate buildings separated by an inter-connecting glass corridor - in Brötzmann's home town of Remscheid.

Self-taught on clarinets, he soon moved to saxophones and began playing swing/bebop, before meeting Peter Kowald. During 1962/63 Brötzmann, Kowald and various drummers played regularly - Mingus, Ornette Coleman, etc. - while experiencing freedoms from a different perspective via Stockhausen, Nam June Paik, David Tudor and John Cage. In the mid 1960s, he played with American musicians such as Don Cherry and Steve Lacy and, following a sojourn in Paris with Don Cherry, returned to Germany for his unorthodox approach to be accepted by local musicians like Alex von Schlippenbach and Manfred Schoof.

The trio of Peter Brötzmann, Peter Kowald and Sven-Ake Johansson began playing in 1965/66 and it was a combination of this and the Schoof/Schlippenbach Quintet that gave rise to the first Globe Unity Orchestra. Following the self-production of his first two LPs, For Adolphe Sax and Machine gun for his private label, BRÖ, a recording for Manfred Eicher's 'Jazz by Post' (JAPO) [Nipples], and a number of concert recordings with different sized groups, Brötzmann worked with Jost Gebers and started the FMP label. He also began to work more regularly with Dutch musicians, forming a trio briefly with Willem Breuker and Han Bennink before the long-lasting group with Han Bennink and Fred Van Hove. As a trio, and augmented with other musicians who could stand the pace (e.g. Albert Mangelsdorff on, for example, The Berlin concert), this lasted until the mid-1970s though Brötzmann and Bennink continued to play and record as a duo, and in other combinations, after this time. A group with Harry Miller and Louis Moholo continued the trio format though was cut short by Miller's early death.

The thirty-plus years of playing and recording free jazz and improvised music have produced, even on just recorded evidence, a list of associates and one-off combinations that include just about all the major figures in this genre: Derek Bailey (including performances with Company (e.g. Incus 51), Cecil Taylor, Fred Hopkins, Rashied Ali, Evan Parker, Keiji Haino, Misha Mengelberg, Anthony Braxton, Marilyn Crispell, Andrew Cyrille, Phil Minton, Alfred 23 Harth, Tony Oxley. Always characterised as an energy player - and the power-rock setting of Last Exit with Ronald Shannon Jackson, Sonny Sharock and Bill Laswell, or his duo performances with his son, Casper, did little to disperse this conviction - his sound is one of the most distinctive, life-affirming and joyous in all music. But the variety of Brötzmann's playing and projects is less recognised: his range of solo performances; his medium-to-large groups and, in spite of much ad hoc work, a stability brought about from a corpus of like- minded musicians: the group Ruf der Heimat; pianist Borah Bergman; percussionist Hamid Drake; and Die like a dog, his continuing tribute to Albert Ayler, with Drake, William Parker and Toshinori Kondo. Peter Brötzmann continues a heavy touring schedule which, since 1996 has seen annual visits to Japan and semi-annual visits to the thriving Chicago scene where he has played in various combinations from solo through duo (including one, in 1997, with Mats Gustafsson) to large groups such as the Chicago Octet/Tentet, described below. He has also released a number of CDs on the Chicago-based Okka Disk label, including the excellent trio with Hamid Drake and the Moroccan Mahmoud Gania, at times sounding like some distant muezzin calling the faithful to become lost in the rhythm and power of the music.

The "Chicago Tentet" was first organized by Brötzmann with the assistance of writer/presenter John Corbett in January 1997 as an idea for a one-time octet performance that included Hamid Drake and Michael Zerang (drums), Kent Kessler (bass) and Fred Lomberg-Holm (cello), Ken Vandermark and Mars Williams (reeds), and Jeb Bishop (trombone). The first meeting was extremely strong and warranted making the group an ongoing concern and in September of that same year the band was expanded to include Mats Gustafsson (reeds) and Joe McPhee (brass) as permanent members (with guest appearances by William Parker (bass), Toshinori Kondo (trumpet/electronics), and Roy Campbell (trumpet) during its tenure) - all in all a veritable who's who of the contemporary improvising scene's cutting edge. Though the Tentet is clearly led by Brötzmann and guided by his aesthetics, he has been committed to utilizing the compositions of other members in the ensemble since the beginning. This has allowed the band to explore an large range of structural and improvising tactics: from the conductions of Mats Gustafsson and Fred Lonberg-Holm, to the vamp pieces of Michael Zerang and Hamid Drake, to compositions using conventional notation by Ken Vandermark and Mars Williams, to Brötzmann's graphic scores - the group employs almost every contemporary approach to composing for an improvising unit. This diversity in compositional style, plus the variety in individualistic approaches to improvisation, allows the Tentet to play extremely multifaceted music. As the band moves from piece to piece, it explores intensities that range from spare introspection to all out walls of sound, and rhythms that are open or free from a steady pulse to those of a heavy hitting groove. It is clear that the difficult economics of running a large band hasn't prevented the group from continuing to work together since its first meeting. Through their effort they've been able to develop an ensemble sound and depth of communication hard to find in a band of any size or style currently playing on the contemporary music scene."

-EFI (European Free Improvisation Pages) (http://www.efi.group.shef.ac.uk/mbrotzm.html)
3/27/2024

Have a better biography or biography source? Please Contact Us so that we can update this biography.

Michael Wertmuller: "Born in 1966 in Thun (Switzerland), the composer and drummer completed his studies at the Swiss Jazz School, at the Bern University of the Arts and at the Sweelinck-Konservatorium Amsterdam. From 1995 to 1999 he was a student of Dieter Schnebel at the Berlin University of the Arts. Wertmüller was a member of the Berner Sinfonieorchester as well as a guest at the Concertgebouw Orkest Amsterdam. He played in addition to his solo concerts with various chamber music ensembles and was involved in numerous radio recordings and world premieres.

His works will be performed at the Donaueschinger Musiktage, MaerzMusik Berlin, the Lucerne Festival, musica viva München, the Ultraschall Festival of the Akademie der Künste Berlin, the Biennale Tel Aviv, the JazzFest Berlin, Wien Modern, the Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival or the London Jazz Festival listed. Wertmüller composed for Christoph Schlingensief as well as the Cologne Theater, the Schauspiel Stuttgart and the Schauspielhaus Zürich. The opera "Anschlag" (Libretto Lukas Bärfuss) premiered in 2013 at the Lucerne Festival, the opera "Do not cry, sing" (Libretto Dea Loher) 2015 at the Hamburg State Opera. The comic opera "Valentin" with director Herbert Fritsch was premiered at the Deutsches Schauspielhaus Hamburg in 2017.

For the past 25 years, he has toured hundreds of concerts with the band Alboth, the trio Full Blast (together with Peter Brötzmann and Marino Pliakas) and various other combinations around the world for tours and festivals. He combines collaboration in various contexts with authors such as Dea Loher, Peter Weber, Monika Rinck, Michael Lentz, Reinhard Jirgl, Lukas Bärfuss or Wolfgang Hilbig.

Since 2005 he has been a visiting lecturer at the Humboldt University in Berlin, the Academy of Arts and at the University of the Arts, Berlin."

-Michael Wertmuller Website (Translated by Google) (michaelwertmueller.com/biografie)
3/27/2024

Have a better biography or biography source? Please Contact Us so that we can update this biography.


Track Listing:



SIDE A



1. Marter Der Metalle



SIDE B



1. Dunkel-Zeiten

2. Erstes Purgatorium

Related Categories of Interest:


Vinyl Recordings
Improvised Music
Jazz
European Improvisation, Composition and Experimental Forms
NY Downtown & Metropolitan Jazz/Improv
Quintet Recordings
Parker, William
Peter Brotzmann
Staff Picks & Recommended Items

Search for other titles on the label:
Trost Records.


Recommended & Related Releases:
Other Recommended Releases:
Brotzmann / Van Hove / Bennink
Outspan No 2 [VINYL]
(Cien Fuegos)
Recorded a month after Outspan No 1, this album was captured live at 1974 Ost-West-Festival in Nurnberg, Germany from the legendary, masterfully amusing and absolutely serious trio of Peter Brötzmann on alto saxophone, tenor saxophone, clarinet, Fred Van Hove on piano, Han Bennink on drums, clarinet, homemade junk, everything, anything.
Brotzmann / Van Hove / Bennink / Albert Mangelsdorff
Outspan No 1 [VINYL]
(Cien Fuegos)
Recorded a month after Outspan No 1, this album was captured live at 1974 Ost-West-Festival in Nurnberg, Germany from the legendary, masterfully amusing and absolutely serious trio of Peter Brötzmann on alto saxophone, tenor saxophone & clarinet, Fred Van Hove on piano, and Han Bennink on drums, clarinet, homemade junk, everything & anything.



Customers Who Bought This Item Also Bought:
DDK Trio (Jacques Demierre / Axel Dorner / Jonas Kocher)
A Right to Silence [3 CDs]
(Meenna)
The trio of pianist Jacques Demierre, trumpeter Axel Dorner and accordionist Jonas Kocher recorded these live improvisations at Theatre Le Colombier in Les Cabannes, France, each performer then assembling a complete album selecting from the fourteen recordings, unique to each performer's aesthetic selection, sequencing and length, creating three distinct yet deeply attached albums.
Brotzmann / Toyozumi
TRIANGLE, Live at OHM, 1987
(NoBusiness)
Never before issued, this stunning concert between long-time collaborators, Japanese drummer Sabu Toyozumi and German multi-reedist Peter Brötzmann performing on tenor saxophone and tarogato, was captured live at OHM, in Koiwa, Tokyo in 1987, in an energetic and enthusiastic free concert of impressive skill and expression, a vital addition to the discography of both.
Great Sakata Quintet (Sakata / Schwedt / Eckhardt / Borghini / Lillinger)
Circus [3'' CD]
(Euphorium)
After three Luten and two Brotzmann quintets, pianist Oliver Schwerdt, drummer Christian Lillinger and two double bassists--John Eckhardt and Antonio Borghini--invite Japanese multi-reedist and vocal improviser Akira Sakata to join them in concert at naTo, in Leipzig for a wild concert, releasing a monumental improvisation in a full length CD and a 2nd set on 3" CD.
Parker, Evan / Matthew Wright Trance Map + Peter Evans / Mark Nauseef
Etching the Ether
(Intakt)
Evan Parker and Matthew Wright are the core of Trance Map, the soprano saxophonist and live electronics duo expanding on their original 2011 concept with Trance Map+, adding guest musicians to their unique approach to electroacoustic improvisation, here in an exceptional quartet configuration with Peter Evans on trumpet & piccolo trumpet, and Mark Nauseff on percussion.
Aboulkheir, Eve / Lasse Marhaug
22/12/2017 Guilin Synthetic Daydream / How to Avoid Ants [VINYL]
(Portraits GRM)
A split LP from two electroacoustic composers: from France, Eve Aboulkheir presents a work inspired by an experience of perceptive disorientation, using modified, mutated and layered field recordings; and Norwegian sound composer Lasse Marhaug presents a work for modified tabletop guitar, field recordings, electronics & objects evoking a path through a forest avoiding large anthills.
Hautzinger, Franz / Eric Normand
Unbelievably Late
(Tour de Bras / Inexhaustible Editions )
Having originally met in 2016 when Viennese trumpeter Franz Hautzinger and Quebec electric bassist Éric Normand formed Torche! with Michel F Cote, Philippe Lauzier and Xavier Charles, the two improvisers developed this collage during the pandemic from asynchronous recordings, creating six dramatic and explorative compositions of incredible and unusual technique.
Schlippenbach, Alexander von
Globe Unity [VINYL]
(Corbett vs. Dempsey)
Wild, nearly unprecedented and an exhilarating direction in European Free Improvisation heard in the 1st recordings from 1966 of pianist Alexander von Schlippenbach's Globe Unity band, a 14-piece ensemble that included young saxophonists Peter Brötzmann, Gerd Dudek & Kris Wanders, bassist Peter Kowald, bass clarinetist Willem Breuker, trumpeter Manfred Schoof, &c.
Dorner, Axel
Untitled [3''CD]
(Euphorium)
A companion of sorts to the Euphorium release from Leimgruber/Turner/Dorner/da Boff/Flesh, London/Leipzig/Luzern, trumpeter Axel Dörner breaks off solo for an extended improvisation recorded at the same studio on the same day in Leipzig, employing his unique approach to the instrument in an 18-minute exploration of tone, timbre, and unexpected brass utterance.
Leimgruber, Urs
Untitled [3'' CD]
(Euphorium)
A companion of sorts to the Euphorium release from Leimgruber/Turner/Dorner/da Boff/Flesh, London/Leipzig/Luzern, soprano saxophone Urs Leimgruber breaks off solo for an extended improvisation recorded at the same studio on the same day in Leipzig.
Gjerstad, Frode / Kent Carter / John Stevens
Detail-90 [VINYL]
(NoBusiness)
The second incarnation of the Detail trio of saxophonist Frode Gjerstad and drummer John Stevens with Kent Cart taking the role of double bass, is heard in this studio recording from 1990 at NRK-studio in Stavanger, Norway, a superb example of the nearly telepathic freedom four years of playing together afforded them, as heard in two extended, energetic improvisations.
Brotzmann, Peter
Along The Way [BOOK]
(Corbett vs. Dempsey)
A beautiful 228 page limited edition hardcover book chronicling the last decade of artwork by saxophonist Peter Brotzmann, created spontaneously while on the road or between tours using materials at hand; featuring essays by Brotzmann, Thomas Milroth, John Corbett, Markus Muller, Sotiris Kontos, Stephen O'Malley, Heather Leigh and Karl Lippegaus.
Taylor, Cecil Quintet (feat. Harri Sjostrom / Tristan Honsinger / Teppo Hauta-aho / Paul Lovens)
Lifting The Bandstand
(Listen! Foundation (Fundacja Sluchaj!))
Though not well documented, free jazz legendary pianist Cecil Taylor's working band for 3 years in the late nineties was this quintet of Harri Sjostrom on soprano saxophone, Tristan Honsinger on cello, Teppo Hauta-aho on double bass, and Paul Lovens on drums, cymbals & gongs, heard in this energetic concert at Tampere Jazz Happening in Finland, 2018.
Graves, Milford / Don Pullen
The Complete Yale Concert, 1966
(Corbett vs. Dempsey)
Originally issued in two volumes on their own SRP Records in 1966 & 67 as In Concert At Yale University and Nommo, the duo of drummer/percussionist Milford Graves and pianist Don Pullen are heard live in in this excitingly energetic and revelatory concert at Yale University, redefining the roles of their instruments during the most exploratory period of free jazz.
London Jazz Composers Orchestra
That Time
(Not Two)
Released for their 50th anniversary, The LJCO, in configurations of up to 21 musicians including Derek Bailey, Trevor Watts, Evan Parker, Peter Brotzmann, &c., perform works by Kenny Wheeler, Barry Guy, Paul Rutherford and Howard Riley, captured live at the Berliner Jazztage in 1972; at Donaueschingen Musiktage in 1972; in the studio in 1980; and London's Round House in 1980.
Harris, Beaver / Don Pullen 360-degree Experience
A Well-Kept Secret
(Corbett vs. Dempsey)
Released in 1984 on Hal Wilner's Shemp records, this is the 1st reissue for late drummer Beaver Harris' 360-degree Experience with pianist Don Pullen on piano, in a stellar band with saxophonists Ricky Ford, Hamiet Bluiett, bassist Buster Williams, percussion from Candido & steel drummer Francis Haynes, and four french horn players, a truly forward-thinking jazz album.
Parker, Evan / Barry Guy / Paul Lytton
Live at Maya Recordings Festival [VINYL 2 LPs]
(NoBusiness)
Superb improvisation from three masters - Evan Parker on sax, Barry Guy on bass and Paul Lytton on drums - performing at the Maya Recordings Festival, September 23 - 25, 2011 at Theater am Gleis, Winterthur, Switzerland.
Butcher / Buck / Mayas / Stangl
Plume
(Unsounds)
Drummer/percussionist Tony Buck and saxophonist John Butcher are the common elements in these two trios, one with guitarist Burkhard Stangl, and one with pianist Magda Mayas, using imaginative and unusual approaches to improvisation.



The Squid's Ear Magazine

The Squid's Ear Magazine

© 2002-, Squidco LLC