motel de moka

Last year’s album “Not on Earth… In Your Soul!” by Sabir Mateen, Daniel Carter and Andrew Barker on the Italian Qbico label was a huge revelation for me and ended up in fifth place in my top 10 list. It was their energetic playing that made it one of the most inspiring and exhilarating albums of 2006. You cannot help but being impressed when listening to this album.

Two elements in particular were responsible for its power of attraction; the vigorous and heavy grooving drumming by Andrew Barker and the energetic playing of Sabir Mateen and Daniel Carter on horns. This created an album that is capable of taking its listener to a state of mind where one can be free from its usual mental boundaries.

“When people believe in boundaries, they become part of them.”
~ Don Cherry

It is exciting to know that music is capable of giving us such spiritual freedom. That sound can be used to transfer energy from the musicians to us as listeners without the time factor interfering. Free-jazz is capable of doing this in a highly contagious manner. It is able to break down your expectations and restricted mental maps and to replace it with a heightened sensitivity of your own emotions and surroundings. It is no longer about thinking, it is about feeling. Booker Little once made the following statement in the early years of the development of free-jazz:

“My own feelings about the direction in which jazz should go are that there should be much less stress on technical exhibitionism and much more on emotional content, on what might be termed humanity in music and the freedom to say all that you want.”
~ Booker Little

He was right on the spot regarding what was about to happen. Cecil Taylor and Ornette Coleman together laid down the foundations of free-jazz during the mid-50s. A genre which was a radical departure from past styles and which received its name through Ornette Coleman’s 1960 album “Free Jazz: A Collective Improvisation”. A genre which knew no holding back, no creative boundaries, just pure and honest self expression. A genre which mostly relied on improvisation to express its musical message.

“Improvisation is the ability to talk to oneself.”
~ Cecil Taylor

An alternative name for free-jazz is energy music. However I think that this is a much broader definition of music. There is music well outside the jazz genre that is equally able to energize and to evoke spiritual freedom. Bands like Sunburned Hand of the Man, Jackie-O-Motherfucker and MV&EE do this in a trippy sort of way, but for this playlist I am specifically looking for music that features a bold, playful and ecstatic celebration of spiritual freedom. Personally I get this effect especially when big and heavy drums come into play. Raccoo-oo-oon is still a relative young band that uses this effect very successfully. Their new album “Behold Secret Kingdom” is a thundering eruption of heavy percussion and guitar noise.

All put together I imagined my own definition of energy music; a combination of free-jazz, heavy percussion, screeching saxophones, guitar noise and African drumbeats. Key instruments are drums and saxophones.

1. Sabir Mateen/Daniel Carter/Andrew Barker - In Your Soul!
   Not on Earth…. In Your Soul! (Qbico, 2006)
2. Albert Ayler - The Wizard
   Spiritual Unity (ESP, 1964)
3. Raccoo-oo-oon - Mirror Blanket
   Behold Secret Kingdom (Release the Bats/Not Not Fun, 2007)
4. Flaherty/Corsano/Yeh - Dirty Firetrucker
   A Rock In The Snow (Important, 2006)
5. Konono No. 1 - Paradiso (live)
   Congotronics (Crammed Discs, 2005)
6. Akron/Family - Blessing Force
   Meek Warrior (Young God, 2006)
7. Aa - Thirteen
   gAame (Gigantic/Deleted Art, 2007)
8. Steve Baczkowski/Ravi Padmanabha - A1
   Aqua machine (Qbico, 2006)
9. Ornette Coleman - Matador
   Sound Grammar (Sound Grammar, 2006)

Stream playlist

Photo credit: Lane Hartwell

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