211. Can / Tago Mago (1971)

Each of Can's albums is distinctly a product of the legendary ensemble, but each also presents its own direction and tone. Tago Mago is the first turning point. As the maiden voyage with Damo Suzuki, it opens the period of their most innovative work. "Paperhouse" displays the new chemistry: unintelligible motivic phrases are intoned, sometimes shouted by Suzuki. His strained voice is utilized for its value as a rhythm instrument, and also for texture. The caterwaul is entwined with Michael Karoli's grainy, insect-like guitar, while jitterbugging around Jaki Liebezeit's impeccable, discomfiting claptrap. Elsewhere, fragments of surreptitiously recorded rehearsals are draped over layers of arranged material in moody loops that crash together with the anxiety of cut-and-paste editing. "Mushroom" features a disorienting reversed vocal and further collisions of noise and melody. Moving into the dense heart of the album, "Halleluwah" is the archetype for Can's trailblazing approach to music. Suzuki mumbles and howls over noisy keyboards and chiming guitars, while Liebezeit parades in zombie fashion to the track's uncertain conclusion 18 minutes later. It's a 2-LP set, audacious and necessary. The music moves without being touched, as if by enchantment. If there exists a skeleton key to understanding Can and everything after, this is it.

200. Giger Lenz Marron / Where the Hammer Hangs (1976) & 201. Giger Lenz Marron / Beyond (1977)

Peter Giger's career is full of wild one-way streets. It's like he can do it all, equally at home playing it straight, or rattling through an assortment of percussion instruments in jams of thorny, implacable experimentalism. Where the Hammer Hangs and its sister slab Beyond are just a short stop in his considerable career. Both albums are presently out of print, and are obscure considering his other accomplishments in major jazz circles. If you're familiar with Giger's work in more mainstream engagements, it's probably best to come at these from the Dzyan angle (which was actually my introduction to Giger some time back). Hammer and Beyond were released on his own Någarå label, and stylistically speaking, pick up right where the Dzyan vehicle left off. There are differences. Just like Dzyan, you will hear searching group improvisations, hints of Eastern rhythm and instrumentation, druggy, reverb-laden guitar forays, and plenty of crossover from the above. But Giger Lenz Marron has fewer pedestrian handholds, less that is familiar, and seemingly no rules except for limitations imposed by the instruments themselves. It's like the ingredients of a Dzyan album, but set in a different project removed from whatever restriction was imposed by the group moniker. Although not a major pit stop on the timeline of such prolific musicians as these, the GLM trio interests me for its freedom of form as well as its connections to several trends that first emerged ten years prior. It proves that jazz is a many faceted thing that will continue to be wrought anew by the creative hands and minds that shape it.

98. John Coltrane / Interstellar Space (1974)

This was actually recorded in 1967, but not released by Impulse! until '74, almost a decade after Coltrane's death. It's famously dense, but not impenetrable. Throughout the album, Coltrane demonstrates a litany of technical ideas by running through scales, stacking chords, and changing meters in snatches of modal improvisation. It is very experimental and obviously one of the more inaccessible works in the Coltrane canon. Interstellar Space was recorded shortly after the session that produced Stellar Regions, so many of these pieces share themes. "Saturn" is the longest piece, also the only one to lack bells in the intro. Some people latch onto "Venus" which is the closest thing to a conventional melody on the record. Rashied Ali plays like a mystic, and I often find myself listening to him more than Coltrane, whose explorations are searching but also noisy and make the ear weary. Ali's rhythms seem to accommodate any of Coltrane's fancies, or rather Coltrane is free to step in and out of them when it suits he is doing. This is huge music for 1967 that has been hotly debated, put down, or academically dissected ad nausea ever since. I'm happy that the package was expanded on CD to include the similarly minded "Leo" and "Jupiter Variation." 2013 has a lot more context for this type of musical activity than there was in 1967, and it's found a happy home with hundreds of people. That's the crime of being ahead of your time, that it takes everyone else that much lonegr to catch up. Gregg Bendian chose this album to recreate with Nels Cline (Interstellar Space Revisited), describing it in the liner as his love letter to free jazz drumming. In that regard, I can't think of a finer template. Listen to both, see where it takes you.

68. Freddie Hubbard / The Artistry of Freddie Hubbard (1962)

This is Hubbard's fifth album as leader, and his first recorded for the Impulse! label. The music is hard bop inside and out, but Hubbard's sextet undergoes some changes with trombone Curtis Fuller, and John Gilmore moonlighting away from the Arkestra. Together they stretch out in some lengthy jams and experimental explorations that lean clearly in the direction of the Impulse! ethos. "Bob's Place," "Summertime," and "The 7th Day" really put eyebrows on the proceedings. The reworking of "Caravan" is interesting, too. Gilmore is especially captivating. Like a musical alchemist, he plays long, sustained notes in lengthy phrases that unmoor the notes from their melodies. On compositions like "The 7th Day" or "Bob's Place" these contrast with the backdrop of the vamp, creating the effect of pure tonal color and presenting the tones themselves in striking relief beside their harmonic relationships. Tommy Flanagan on piano, Louis Hayes does drums, Art Davis bass. I like this side trip from the early Hubbard formula quite a bit.

53. Alice Coltrane / Journey in Satchidananda (1970)

Alice plays harp and piano, with help from two lineups of New Jazz practitioners (one band for the studio, and one recorded at the Village Vanguard). Coltrane's harp is wild and free, and the diverse instruments of her band make a colorful backdrop of shifting textures and rich tonalities. Pharoah Sanders' tenor and soprano saxes are played with an ear toward Middle Eastern or north African themes, but no on. If you've ever questioned or been curious about the influence of the former on the latter, this as close to a living, breathing side-by-side comparison that you're ever going to get. The liner says something about Coltrane's association with Swami Satchidananda and his doctrine of universal love. While we listen, we are invited to envision ourselves floating on his love for humanity. I'm not sure I prefer to do that over listening to how the musicians choose to stretch out and cooperatively interpret music that is entirely modal in form. I always hear something new, especially from McBee.