Summertime release for Anthony Braxton quartet box set featuring his UK band

A 13-CD box set of Anthony Braxton's Quartet (Standards) 2020 is to be released this summer. Representing a 2020 tour that played London, Warsaw and Wels in Austria immediately pre-Pandemic, the upcoming Anthony Braxton box set has some 67 tracks …

Published: 28 Apr 2021. Updated: 2 years.

A 13-CD box set of Anthony Braxton's Quartet (Standards) 2020 is to be released this summer.

Representing a 2020 tour that played London, Warsaw and Wels in Austria immediately pre-Pandemic, the upcoming Anthony Braxton box set has some 67 tracks drawn from 9 nights of performance and spans within the significant Braxtonian compositional universe also Great American Songbook standards, Paul Simon, Dave Brubeck, John Coltrane, Andrew Hill, Sonny Rollins and Wayne Shorter compositions. With the great instrumentalist, composer, bandleader, innovator and free improviser Braxton, an icon of the music for decades, for the first time are a trio of top UK free-improvisers who have recorded together as the Room to Dream trio. These namely are: out of the Belfast scene the fine multi-directional exponent Stephen 'Dakiz' Davis from County Down on drums, known for Sugar Blade, his work as part of Bourne/Davis/Kane and Human; revered Oxford free-jazz pianist Alexander Hawkins heard recently on the 5-star All Knavery and Collusion with Evan Parker and for years with the Ethiojazz great Mulatu Astatke; and out of Birmingham the erstwhile Zed-U, original Empirical and now Pulled by Magnets bassist Neil Charles. The box set is out on 18 June issued by the Tri-Centric Foundation and New Braxton House Records. Anthony Braxton, top

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Chris Sharkey's Presets

The Not Applicable label this summer is to release guitarist Chris Sharkey's album Presets. Leeds-based Sharkey, who hails from the north east of England, is best known for his work with Acoustic Ladyland and TrioVD. He also arranged WorldService …

Published: 28 Apr 2021. Updated: 2 years.

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The Not Applicable label this summer is to release guitarist Chris Sharkey's album Presets.

Leeds-based Sharkey, who hails from the north east of England, is best known for his work with Acoustic Ladyland and TrioVD. He also arranged WorldService Project's For King and Country. The 11-track album, solely electric guitar and hardware, was recorded to one stereo track with no additional processing post-performance.

Sharkey notes: ''I’d been listening a lot to Actress, particularly Ghettoville and Hazyville which really worked for me on the road. I wanted a music that develops slowly over time, drawing you in, making you forget about the clock.''

''I sat down, plugged some things in – my guitar, a computer, an interface, a couple of speakers and a decade’s worth of pedals and other stuff I’d accumulated over the years to mess with my guitar – and started playing.''

That process lasted for more than two months during which Sharkey says he ''just improvised when I hit the record button, simply responding to whatever the first sound was and developing it from there'' paying ''no attention to the time'' and trying to stay patient and focused. ''As the process continued, I would select my favourite parts and create playlists just for myself… Over the course of the next 5 years: touring, travelling, listening, I slowly whittled it down to what you hear on Presets.”

Tracks are: 'Blue Cloud, Red Fog'; 'The Sharecropper’s Daughter'; 'Faloodeh With Flake'; 'Evangelist (Salvation History)'; 'Detained At The Border'; 'Blowup'; 'Young Brothers'; 'Torpid Metacarpals'; 'Watt, Law and Order'; 'Puget Sound Backlash'; 'Scorpion Bow'.

The Presets release date is 25 June. Chris Sharkey, top