Michael Valeanu, Move Your Feet ***

Two years on from I'll Be Seeing You Michael Valeanu in an organ, guitar, drums combination is easy going and disarmingly casual. Recorded in a Paris studio - very much a lounge type OGD sound it's Fred Nardin on Hammond Organ particularly effective on 'King Cobra' and certainly reedy on Move Your Feet. As for the Paris born guitarist Valeanu he is certainly a player with Nigel Price level chops who like the Englishman worships at the altar of Wes Montgomery and can salt away numerous appealing licks to keep for further enjoyment and the rerunning in the memory banks of Epsom one der Nige-the-jazzer's finest derring-do.

The drummer is Andreas Svendsen who is OK but nothing special. To dip in here most satisfactorily go to the trio's moderately zany and appealing take on the 1920s show tune 'Limehouse Blues,' a Philip Braham song covered by loads of heads and singers down the years notably as an instrumental by Duke Ellington and his Cotton Club Orchestra in 1931 and while not at all in the same idiom as Duke or indeed in another to die for treatment Django, the latter's treatment is a reminder of that remarkable primus inter pares exemplar among icons of all that's great about jazz then or indeed now. But, to paraphrase the owner of ''the pet shoppe'' in the Dead Parrot Sketch: ''Sorry squire, I've had a look 'round the back of the shop, and uh, we're right out of Djangos.'' Hearing Nardin recalled his Live in Paris, a much better record than the much less gripping Move Your Feet when piano not organ was at the heart of the matter and more than that factor was elevated by the presence of drummer Leon Parker who made all the difference. And yet Valeanu is worth knowing about and the added value is his indomitable spirit. Michael Valeanu, photo: publicity shot

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Set up by Chris and Dan Brubeck, Environ in New York was a loft scene performance space located not far from the great John Coltrane drummer Rashied Ali's place Ali's Alley and where Evan Parker recorded these tracks live not long, some 6 months, after the recording of his classic Monoceros during this first visit to the US in 1978.

Like Monoceros this is solo unaccompanied saxophone, mostly soprano, some tenor - Monoceros was all soprano sax. These days when we are used to loop pedals and a lot of real time generated electronics the solo-ness of a single instrument performance is quite different. These Environ évènements - each piece is an event and all pack a punch - benefit from the hard lifting and physical sensation you get from a grand method making ample use of circular breathing techniques strong enough to keep the momentum up without any technological crutches or the bathos, the roughage if you like of the boring bits, you often get elsewhere with transition aspiring electronics in the context of a broader piece. As usual with Parker's unique and highly radical sound when wave upon wave of piston-like notes form a mass via a forensically cellular granular approach minimalist, repetitive, darting, phrases swarm and eventually rip into your consciousness via a process of what some might feel is a deep primevalism, a zombie necromancy that penetrates the very synapses in our brains to commune with the spirits of the past rejoicing at such vision following detailed autopsy and suddenly made undead and mercifully free to roam once again. Certainly the effect is hypnotic. All in all a vital glimpse of one of the most influential free improv jazz musician innovator visionaries by far whose influence spanning continents by erasing genre constraints (the dismantling of structures imposed by style consensus, habit, popularity or the felt need to self-censor and/or represent some school of thought) is vast.

Michael Valeanu, Move Your Feet ***

Evan Parker, NYC 1978, Relative Pitch ****

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