snobb The year is 1977 and synthesizer still isn't a every band's (boring) toy as a decade or two after. There are two kind of jazz albums incl. synthesizer coming from seventies - rare very creative,almost unique works combining new sounds possibilities with improvisation in a true jazz tradition key and others - where musicians are openly fascinated by their expensive toys and enjoy their possibilities more than care about the music they produce.

"The Cheque Is In The Mail" unfortunately belongs to the second category. Two of leading British scene's reeds players saxist Elton Dean and trumpeter Kenny Wheeler are part of the trio with American drummer/percussionist and keyboardist Joe Gallivan. Dean has already released few suite successful albums as leader (demonstrating very own combination of avant-garde jazz and tuneful, even sentimental rock-songs influenced composition). His solo career is radically different from the music known from his previous band - Soft Machine. Gallivan was a Soft Machine member too (he replaced Robert Wyatt in a band), but as Dean is obviously attracted by free jazz here.

Unfortunately, nothing works properly on trio's album. Credited to Dean as leader, "The Cheque..." is in fact an evidence of how much Gallivan enjoys his synthesizer. Playing extremely free (or better to say - demonstrating the possibilities of his expensive toy in a form of free improvs) on whole album, Gallivan doesn't care much that both reeds players can't find the way how to play and most of time just add some minimalist solos here and there without even expecting of having a chance for true musical collaboration.

Nothing happens till the very end - ten-songs album stays in reality a bag of bulky unrelated sounds. Probably at the time of release it has some special attractiveness containing those spacey early analogue synths' sounds, but from distance of time it doesn't sound attractive anymore. Obvious collectors item, hardly more.

snobb One of the four Elton Dean albums released in 1977, "El Skid" (what comes from Elton + Skidmore), is the only one of them released outside of his home country (on the tiny German Vinyl Records), all the others come from the English Ogun label.

The quartet on here is led equally by two British sax players, Elton Dean and Alan Skidmore, and also includes acoustic bassist Chris Laurence and ex-Soft Machine drummer John Marshall. Released during a time when Soft Machine had become inactive but still retained name recognition. It's not unusual that the music recorded by this band's living legend Elton Dean (plus one more ex-Machinist) attracted a lot of attention from their former band's fans, but it wasn't necessarily for good at all.

Even if the album's opener, "Dr. Les Mosses", sounds quite close to early 70s "Softs" fusion, the rest of the music is pure jazz, and even more - quite straight-ahead jazz (at least compared to many of Dean's freer works). This co-led quartet plays quite melodic free-bop and blues-rooted groovy music, the kind one can hardly find on other Dean albums. Four long compositions are influenced more by Eric Dolphy and Sonny Rollins than the Canterbury scene they came from, or the quirky English improv-based avant-garde jazz of that time.

Reissued in 2001 on the UK Voiceprint label which specializes in the Canterbury scene and other rock-jazz reissues and vault material releases, this album missed its second chance to find the right listener and it's a pity, since it contains some really good jazz coming from one of Dean's most fruitful periods. Anyone coming from an interest in the Canterbury scene and wanting to dig deeper into the Elton Dean solo works can start here - this free, but quite accessible album could become a good entry to his other, often more "out" and quirky solo music.

snobb "Remembrance" is the last album (June 2014) from the excellent British sax player, Elton Dean. It features just four long compositions, released as a double CD set. Recorded in a London studio in 2004, this music perfectly represents Dean's(who passed away in 2006, being just 60) improvisational side.

Widely known as an early member of Soft Machine (where he spent three years only), Elton Dean for decades was one of the key figures in the British free jazz and improvs scene (quite regularly returning to progressive rock recordings as well). Here on this excellent double album, each extended improvisation is played by a different line-up: bass-drums duo,two different trios and a quartet. Dean's equally skilled collaborators here are Paul Dunmal on tenor, Paul Rogers on bass and American expatriate drummer Tony Bianco.

Probably the most impressive fact from all of these sets is how well-balanced this music is without being overpowering. Quirky rhythm sections drive the flow ahead of Dean's laconic and melodic alto sax and saxelo inclusions. There are not even a few free spaces during the two hours of music, but the sound is so loose that being generally up-tempo and muscular compositions. they still sound almost relaxed.

Everyone interested in Elton Dean's freer side will enjoy this album for sure.

Sean Trane Whether this is an Elton Dean album or a Wrong Object one is up for debate, but I’m more of a partisan of classifying it with TWO’s discography, because four of the seven tracks are TWO compositions (and therefore “new”, while the three Elton pieces are almost old standards. Nevertheless the two parties had arranged for more than just one session/gig, but Elton’s health would not allow it, since he departed for the big jam session in the naught. They’d had prior contacts and had sent tapes to each other.

Aymeric tells us of the circumstances of this gig, and how the band had barely had anytime at all to set up and no sound-check to play the first half of the gig, as usual, mostly made up of Frank Zappa covers. Then Elton joined them for the second set, and right from the opening Seven For Lee, all madness breaks loose. In many ways, we’re not far away from Soft Machine’s type of fusion during Elton’s tenure in that band, but this is valid for much (if not all) of TWO’s compositions. You’d swear it is Hopper on bass at the start of Millenium Jumble, because it’s a stealing hot Machinist-like number where Elton shines like one thousand sun (Delplancq ans Estievenaert leave him all the space to roam around).

However Dean’s Baker’s Treat is a bit of the odd piece out of the set, since it plays a fairly trad jazz game, and sticks out a bit from the rest of the set. Indeed with Delville’s Unbelievable truth (the title track) we return to fuzz territory worthy of the Machine, and even more. Indeed the track reaches an enthralling intensity, especially during Delville’s lava-melting guitar solo (he’s the band’s main songwriter). Surprisingly enough Cannery Catastrophe is a sung piece, though the vocal parts are so few that it might as well have been an instrumental. But the piece also develops in a wild full-blast blow-out. Elton’s old Basho Variations might just be the evening’s more dissonant piece, but it’s definitely a gentle side, with some slight bop influences.

This album was the last one Elton Dean recorded and in some ways, it’s the perfect testimony of his JR/F side, albeit incomplete, since The Unbelievable Truth doesn’t show his more experimental or extreme facet, but I’m ever so grateful that destiny made that his last album he participated is a great one. Thank you Elton…. And RIP.

Sean Trane After having returned from the Netherlands from his Supersister tenure, Elton formed his next group called Ninesense with some of his usual suspects from the London jazz scene, including Charig, Skidmore, Tippett and the London South African contingent of Moholo, Feza, Malfatti and Harry Miller. Add trombonist Nieman, and you’ll reach the nine members of this formation, hence the band’s name. After their first Oh For The Edge album (released on the Ogun label in 75), the band toured extensively Europe and played some broadcasts before releasing their second Happy Daze album (still on Ogun) the following year. While the band remained somewhat active until the later 70’s, those were their only two albums. The present Hux label release features two BBC gigs, including one from their productive era in 75, while the second part is from the band’s later days in early 78, with the notable change of Harry Beckett, in lieu of the then-deceased Mongezi Feza and Nick Evans for Paul Nieman.

The first BBC radio session dates from mid-75 and offers a rather jazzy side with big band penchants, and the opening Dancin’ track will surprise those expecting a full frontal Dean-Tippett attack. However, the following Soothing piece offers a much more experimental side of Ninesense, where the aforementioned Elton and Keith really play up a dissonant typhoon of notes, enough to destabilize the old Londinium foundations to let the Thames in the basement. The reprise of Sweet Francesca certainly doesn’t follow its predecessor’s mood, and to be honest, its 50’s slow-paced aura bores me to shreds. The much faster Bidet Bebop is much less a snoozefest, and despite the trad bop rhythm, but Malfatti’s trombone, Dean’s sax and Tippett’s 100MPH piano challenge your tolerance levels. On the whole, the set varies from almost-swing to dissonant bop, with tad of avant-garde in Soothing.

The second set dates from the later days of the venture, but the least one can hear and say is that the band had lost none of its impetus and power in the winter of 78, and present energy levels closer to the rock realm, and even more in the JR/F genre. After a dissonant start, the band goes into some typical soundscapes for some 16 minutes, sometimes strongly reminiscent of Centipede, where Tippett’s ever discernable piano emerges from the aural quagmire and leads the brass and woods into an unstoppable inferno spiral in which the grand piano will fall into at the superb chaotic Nicra end. The closing Seven For Me is an awesome slow tense crescendo that grows on you as it unwinds its aural wings around your powerless awe-stricken ears. Indeed my preference goes for this second set, and one can wonder what their third album might have sounded like, if recorded at the time of this broadcast. Surely not many bands still played with this kind of energy back then (79).

Both of the Ninesense studio albums on Ogun Records during the 70’s have received a recent CD 2on1 reissue from Ogun, and the least we can say is that despite the typical Ninesense spirit and sound, their live facet was somewhat different than their studio works. Of course it doesn’t help that there are few common tracks between these sessions and the studio, and when there are, they’re titled a bit differently, as to highlight some consequent differences. One may not want to choose whether he prefers the live or studio version of the band, but this BBC Sessions makes a perfect companion album in the Ninesense discography. Actually prefer this posthumous release to the two historical albums.