Recent years have also shown a renewed interest in Howard's career, with new recordings on CIMP, Cadence, Ayler and Boxholder and an important reissue on Eremite pairing his 1971 album Patterns (by a sextet that included Han Bennink and Misha Mengelberg) with an unreleased 18-minute track from 1979 called "Message to South Africa" (with
The Black Ark was Howard's third record as a leader. Released by Polydor after two ESP titles, it should have been his breakthrough. Instead it broke him. Unhappy with the lack of support for free jazz in the states, within three years he had left for Paris, eventually moving again to Belgium where he still lives. Record labels at the time were scrambling to figure out what was going on in jazz as well as rock and many worthy albums didn't get the proper promotion and distribution and were lost in the shuffle.
But The Black Ark was one that should have risen to the top. It is, in a sense, the missing link between
| Review | by Dan Warburton |
Following on from the Fractal reissue of Frank Wright's two Center of the World albums three years ago, the French label Black Keys has unearthed and issued an even rarer free jazz gem. Originally released in 1973 on an obscure label called Calumet, only 300 copies of Church Number Nine ever made it into circulation. As was customary at the time, the sides of the original album were entitled "Part One" and "Part Two," but each is in fact a separate track and is presented as such on the CD. The booklet retains the original Calumet front and back covers, along with Val Wilmer's liner notes and also includes a useful complete Wright discography. The personnel is the same as on Wright's BYG Actuel album One For John: Wright on tenor, Noah Howard on alto, Bobby Few on piano, and Mohamed Ali (sic) on drums. The first track, a 26-minute explosion of holy-rolling free gospel, finds the leader extending the tradition of free jazz's two most influential saxophonists, John Coltrane and Albert Ayler -- the theme is a churchy chord sequence which could have come right out of Ayler's songbook, and the occasional extra percussion instruments recall late Coltrane. Few's playing is particularly volcanic, including Tyner-esque comping and spectacular runs of clusters and glissandos, and Ali's drumming throughout is close in spirit to the raw energy of Sunny Murray. The second track has no theme other than a ten-note idea Wright blurts out ten times before taking off on a high energy solo flight. Howard's solo starts out more florid, but the rhythm section's relentless attack and Wright's preaching vocals and percussion eventually blast him into the upper atmosphere. | |