MOUNT EVEREST TRIO
Waves From Albert Ayler
Atavistic Unheard Music Series
UMS/ALP202CD

It took a while for me to really get into what a lot of music journalist-types call free jazz. As a consumer, I approached a lot of this music with a certain amount of fear and trepidation. Was this music going to really open my mind, or would it seem like a bunch of noise? Would I ever be able to figure it out? Most fearsome of all… would they start singing? This sense of risk was, and still is, part of the music’s appeal.

Of course, there were free jazz records that really did get through to me. They didn’t seem radical or forbidding or incompetent or silly. These recordings strike me as being very human, they spoke to me, resonated in my brain and, for a variety of reasons, helped me grow as a listener and as a musician. Talking to friends over the years, I learned that everyone with a passion for this music has their own personal breakthrough recordings. For me, these would include Sun Ra’s Space is the Place, several of Anthony Braxton's mid-70s recordings for the Arista label, Edward Vesala’s Nan Madol, Ornette Coleman’s Science Fiction, Self-Determination Music by the John Carter / Bobby Bradford Quartet, Fire Music by Archie Shepp, and a dozen or so others. I’ve been listening to some of these records (and now, CDs) on a regular basis for almost 20 years. This stuff is like musical food for me!

My first impression of Waves From Albert Ayler by the Mount Everest Trio, a group from Sweden that was most active in the early- to late- 1970s (and still plays occasionally today), was that I wished I had heard these amazing musicians 25 years ago. This recording would surely have been a breakthrough recording for me: a touchstone by which I would measure all subsequent recordings of its genre. "No Hip Shit," indeed! Listening to the Mount Everest Trio in the year 2000 with my well-seasoned, 40-year-old ears, I was still completely floored.

I’ve long been a fan of European jazz, so it never seems strange that musicians from places like Sweden, Finland, Denmark, Italy or France might feel and understand jazz as deeply and as viscerally as an American would. One listen to this CD should be enough to convince you of that. These goofy-looking Swedish hippies are for real! Gilbert Holmstrom’s tenor saxophone is deep, broad and soulful. He is obviously influenced by Coltrane, Ayler and Rollins, though he had developed a unique sound at the time of this recording. His sound in the lower registers reminds me of Odean Pope’s. Though most of this CD is furiously paced, hard-hitting, strongly rhythmic freebop, Holmstrom is quite a formidable balladeer ("Bananas Oas," "E.L.F.," "Consolation"). Unlike a lot of so-called free jazz musicians Holmstrom is just as strong when he plays inside ("101 W. 80th Street," "People’s Dance," "Ramblin’") as he is when he plays outside ("Eritrea Libre," "Ode to Albert Ayler"). The same can be said of Holmstron’s colleagues. Drummer Conny Sjokvist (who studied informally with the Ayler brothers in NYC in the late ‘60s) shows impressive musicality, chops and command at all tempi, with sticks and with brushes. Bassist Kjell Jansson is a first-rate improvisor, and his muscular playing gives strong support to Holmstrom’s fierce improvisations.

Atavistic and Unheard Music Series curator John Corbett deserve great praise for even knowing about the existence of Mount Everest Trio, let alone reissuing this otherwise lost 1975 recording (plus 3 non-LP tracks recorded in 1977). In a sense, their music goes beyond labels like free or avant garde. This is a recording that I will treasure for many, many years. Don’t miss Waves From Albert Ayler this time around!

Dave Wayne

Track Listing: 1. Spirits; 2. Ramblin’; 3. Orinoco; 4. Bananas Oas; 5. No Hip Shit; 6. E.L.F.; 7. Eritrea Libre; 8. People’s Dance; 9. 101 W. 80th Street; 10. Consolation; 11. Ode to Albert Ayler

Personnel: Gilbert Holmstrom, alto and tenor saxophones; Kjell Jansson, contrabass; Conny Sjokvist, drums