or better or worse, we here at Stylus, in all of our autocratic consumer-crit greed, are slaves to timeliness. A record over six months old is often discarded, deemed too old for publication, a relic in the internet age. That's why each week at Stylus, one writer takes a look at an album with the benefit of time. Whether it has been unjustly ignored, unfairly lauded, or misunderstood in some fundamental way, we aim with On Second Thought to provide a fresh look at albums that need it.

The Hatology label was established in 1975 by Werner X. Uehlinger, as a way for Uehlinger to document the work of saxophonist/trumpter Joe Mcphee. Three hundred releases later, the label has grown to document the art of many musicians working on the fringes of the jazz and classical (done by the sister label Hatart) world. Another important element of this label, besides the release of new music, is the documentation of archived recordings. Cecil Taylor Unit’s It’s in the Brewing Luminous is live recording from a concert in 1980, which the Hatology label has given the reissue treatment in the past year. And it’s a beautiful thing, as most listeners would do themselves a huge favor by discovering, or rediscovering, this gem.

In one single, 70-minute composition (broken into two tracks on the CD), Taylor and his group shows us how demanding music can be. It starts very slowly, with a few piano clusters. Eventually drummer Sunny Murray and Jimmy Lyons’ sax comes in, the latter playing a beautiful, joyous solo, becoming a cue for the rest of the unit to join in, and when they do, an organic mass is established where no single instrument seems to dominate. It is impossible for the listener to follow any single run, as members of the unit push and pull in different directions (though there isn’t any doubt, after a listen or two, that they are hearing exactly what each member is doing). In fact, the sonic overload is so dense that the only thing that tells you that Cecil is the leader is the fact that he’s the only one that plays continuously for the whole time, unlike the other players who drop in and out at various points after the first section (which lasts about 25 minutes). Taylor always remains, showing his incredible stamina, strength and powers of concentration to realize his vision of the piano as a set of “88-well tuned drums”.

This approach to jazz piano upset many jazz fans who have described him as too “European”. As Valerie Vilmer notes in her book on Free Jazz, Cecil uses chromaticism, using notes outside the music’s key (a note in the scale to where everything comes to rest) to gain more varied harmonies thus expanding the musical vocabulary. Indeed, Cecil introduces so many notes into a key that, as a result, it appears that each piece has no key, therefore introducing atonality.

It is lazy to relegate music to a set of “genres” which have nothing to do with each other. Cecil has studied in a conservatory, but his flights on the keyboard come out of jazz improvisation. It has often been said that Taylor thinks of a dancer’s movements when approaching a rhythmic idea for a song. It even wouldn’t be too far fetched to say that the impact of his piano playing, and the sound of this unit, could appeal to a rock fan as well. It is, at the very least, a completely distinctive approach that is to be celebrated, as Taylor is someone who is aware of the “boundaries” that have been created and tries to work with those, to “mess” with them.

Instead of celebrating it, however, many listeners dismiss it as “chaotic” and “unlistenable”. It’s far from the “noise” music that is produced by someone just holding his guitar to an amp or a person that turns on his radio for fifty minutes and passes it off as some sort of sonic density experiment. The key to this recording, and most free jazz albums, is to stick with it. You must give a little to gain a lot- allow the music to reprogram the ear to allow something that is strange and unique to wash over you- and eventually you will begin to see the dialogue established between the players that come in and out of the mix at certain points. At a later point, you may even notice the smaller trios and quartets that begin to emerge at points during the process of this sextet’s concert. The listening suddenly gets ‘easier’ for a while (in this context anyway), until they all come back and we are looking through the kaleidoscope again- an endless array of sound colours.

This music has unfortunately been described as “cold”. Beside the fact that I think that maybe too much value is being put onto “emotion” in musical discourse and that there is a lot more to music than that (maybe this music is trying to transcend basic identifiable human emotions, taping into a whole new set of feelings which have not been named yet). I think these accusations can be dismissed when taking into account how this record ends. The instruments slow down to a few notes and a bit of accompaniment with the bass and drums and then a vocal emerges- it’s Cecil singing (in a very off key manner), reciting his poetry. You can’t make out the words, though. His mentalist babbling filled me with happiness, nonetheless, because it told me that he’s trying to reach out to the listener in different ways, that it isn’t enough just to show off his technique or compositional ability. There is a lot more to music. Maybe I’m putting too much into this, maybe he’d tell it’s just another thing he does but for me it says a lot more. And, well...it’s pretty funny, too.

Once you get past the ‘ugly’ surface, beauty is to be found. Only beauty.