Label: MU Records – MU 1001
Format: Vinyl, LP, Album
Country: US
Released: 1988
Genre: Jazz, Rock
Style: Free Jazz, Jazz-Rock
Wide ranging improvisational free for all on MU records. (NM)
For all practical purposes, this is the very first Machine Gun record, comprised of two live performances in New Jersey and New York. Machine Gun was a band that played hybrid forms of rock, jazz, and funk, all from an outsider's perspective. Personnel were the late saxophonist Thomas Chapin, guitarist Robert Musso, drummer Bill Bryant, bassist Jair-Rohm Parker Wells, and vocalist and electronic cutup artist John Richey. Special guests on these dates included the late guitarist Sonny Sharrock and Karl Berger (melodica, voice). From the opening skronk of "In Court," it's obvious that Machine Gun plays high-energy, visceral music. There are riffs and form, but lots of improvisation follows that form, and mutates it further into other forms. Feedback, tape manipulation, and hard rock and punk attitude are at the heart of the Machine Gun approach to music and noisemaking. On "Fancy Products," a striated funk riff is wound around itself and a vocal until it becomes a harmolodic jazz riff that collapses in on itself before remerging as a colossal free improv jam where Chapin and Musso trade out eights for the remainder.
Tracklist
A1 In Court
A2 The Opening Of Entry
A3 Fancy Products
A4 Prancing In Your Bed
A5 Dive
B1 Muffy's 1st Date
B2 The .8 Factor
B3 One For The Chipper
B4 Trinity Rain
B5 Hierocryptics
