King Alcohol

Based on what I'd heard before this, when granted my tastes were very different, I couldn't figure out what the big deal was about Rudiger Carl. I thought he was an ok sax player, nothing special, and a quirky accordion player and occasional singer. I picked this up because I'm trying to listen to everything released on the now defunct FMP label. When I first heard FMPs concurrently to when they were released, quite a while after this disc first came out on LP, they were all too intense for me to appreciate. Through time my tastes changed and now I can't get enough of everything on the label. So I'm on a quest to listen to everything on the label chronologically and this was the sixth release, now available on the Corbett vs Dempsey label.From the first notes, ironically enough by trombonist Gunter Christmann and drummer Detlef Schonenberg, I knew this was something special. Then when Carl entered on tenor sax I thought "so this is what everyone was talking about". He has a very aggressive Brotzmann like approach but expressing a different musical personality. And the other two band members are at an equal level. Frankly this is music I can listen to for a long time and still hear new things; particularly because in addition to the replica of the original LP of the first disc, there's a second disc of over 70 minutes of unreleased music from the trio, I assume from the same recording session, although oddly on one cut the trombone and sax reverse the stereo channels from where they were previously and afterward. This is highly recommended to any fans of European free jazz in the early 70s that existed as a primal scream of protest against the artificial separation of Germany.