The Peter Brötzmann Octet's "Machine Gun"
February 20, 2025 7:53 AM Subscribe
"This historic free jazz album is a heavy-impact sonic assault so aggressive it still knocks listeners back on their heels decades later. Recorded in May 1968, Machine Gun captures some top European improvisers at the beginning of their influential careers, and is regarded by some as the first European — not just German or British — jazz recording. Originally self-released by Peter Brötzmann, the album eventually came out on the FMP label, and set a new high-water mark for free jazz and 'energy music' that few have approached since." - AllMusic
Wikipedia:
Peter Brötzmann Octet live, 1970
Wikipedia:
The authors of The Penguin Guide to Jazz awarded the release four out of four stars plus a special "crown" accolade, and placed it in its "core collection" of jazz albums. They called the album "one of the most significant documents of the European free-jazz underground," praising its "fearsome power," and commenting: "The three saxophonists fire off a ceaseless round of blasting, overblown noise, built on the continuous crescendo managed by Bennink and Johansson and, as chaotic as it sounds, the music is informed by an iron purpose and control... Whenever we return to it, the power of this amazing record seems as potent as ever."
Peter Brötzmann Octet live, 1970
so raucous and noisy the sax players ask for mercy, mercy at the end - i wonder what joe zawinul thought of that
posted by pyramid termite at 8:51 AM on February 20 [1 favorite]
posted by pyramid termite at 8:51 AM on February 20 [1 favorite]
Peter Brötzmann has always brought me a substantial amount of joy when I discovered him through a friend many years ago. But of course that's not something everybody shares with me. I once used the Brontzmann Group's seminal Fuck de Boere to communicate my dissatisfaction with my upstairs neighbours in a house we shared who insisted on drinking and vomiting all night in the room above our heads. The next day I got up early, left the album playing on loop at a substantial (but not ear deafening) volume and went for a long walk on a crisp winter day. After that they chose to never party as hard again, or at least not above our heads. I thanked Mr. Brötzmann everyday I lived with them above me.
posted by Ashwagandha at 10:21 AM on February 20 [4 favorites]
posted by Ashwagandha at 10:21 AM on February 20 [4 favorites]
do you take requests?
any Pharoah Sanders albums in the pipe? do Karma, do Karma!
posted by ginger.beef at 11:50 AM on February 20 [1 favorite]
any Pharoah Sanders albums in the pipe? do Karma, do Karma!
posted by ginger.beef at 11:50 AM on February 20 [1 favorite]
> I've been slowly acquiring a greater interest for all things jazz over the last years (maybe a sign of age? nah..)
I came to jazz appreciation late, especially because I'm a trumpet player. My Dad tried to get me interested, way back when: he gave me a Harry James album, and some Lee Morgan... but it didn't take. I was too preoccupied with this. And this.
Eventually I started listening to Miles Davis, and then discovered that the Lee Morgan stuff was really pretty cool. Sometimes I download transcriptions of Clifford Brown tunes and noodle around with them on my horn. Somewhere I got a contact with a guy who had a huge library of old Big Band charts, and got the whole band book for Harry Jame's version of Ciribiribin1 for like $5, as a PDF of scans. I've whacked at the solo trumpet part for that and never gotten it close to tempo.
I ran into free jazz by accident: I was making a playlist of "Jazz Albums of 1959" (there was a bumper crop of good ones that year) and stumbled on Ornette Coleman's The Shape of Jazz to Come. That was kind of challenging at first but I got into it, enough that I looked up Coleman's later stuff.
I haven't really been focusing on it, but I'm about halfway through the archive stream of Machine Gun and I'm finding it rewarding.2
1The chart has the whole solo James played written out: there's not any improv going on there.
2And Today I Learned that mefi honors the sup element in comments.
posted by Aardvark Cheeselog at 2:13 PM on February 20 [1 favorite]
I came to jazz appreciation late, especially because I'm a trumpet player. My Dad tried to get me interested, way back when: he gave me a Harry James album, and some Lee Morgan... but it didn't take. I was too preoccupied with this. And this.
Eventually I started listening to Miles Davis, and then discovered that the Lee Morgan stuff was really pretty cool. Sometimes I download transcriptions of Clifford Brown tunes and noodle around with them on my horn. Somewhere I got a contact with a guy who had a huge library of old Big Band charts, and got the whole band book for Harry Jame's version of Ciribiribin1 for like $5, as a PDF of scans. I've whacked at the solo trumpet part for that and never gotten it close to tempo.
I ran into free jazz by accident: I was making a playlist of "Jazz Albums of 1959" (there was a bumper crop of good ones that year) and stumbled on Ornette Coleman's The Shape of Jazz to Come. That was kind of challenging at first but I got into it, enough that I looked up Coleman's later stuff.
I haven't really been focusing on it, but I'm about halfway through the archive stream of Machine Gun and I'm finding it rewarding.2
1The chart has the whole solo James played written out: there's not any improv going on there.
2And Today I Learned that mefi honors the sup element in comments.
posted by Aardvark Cheeselog at 2:13 PM on February 20 [1 favorite]
Like standing outside in a thunderstorm - still a bracing listen.
posted by reedbird_hill at 3:26 PM on February 20 [1 favorite]
posted by reedbird_hill at 3:26 PM on February 20 [1 favorite]
That's intense - it reminds me more of noise rock than any jazz I've heard from that period.
posted by misterbee at 3:35 PM on February 20 [1 favorite]
posted by misterbee at 3:35 PM on February 20 [1 favorite]
I think noise music and free jazz come from the same place - at around the time of this album, new jazz splits into two camps. Miles Davis leads one camp for a bit, makes albums like Bitches Brew, which are sonically related to free jazz but coming from a different place. Eventually he gets lapped by people like Herbie Hancock, who are making a more palatable version of ‘jazz with cool instruments’.
The other camp is free jazz. I’m not a big expert on free jazz, but it seems to run for a little bit from the mid 60s and then kind of fade away, as amplified instruments and better stereo systems make it possible for avant guarde musicians to make louder, weirder tones and textures without the tedious work of learning to play an instrument.
posted by The River Ivel at 3:48 PM on February 20 [2 favorites]
The other camp is free jazz. I’m not a big expert on free jazz, but it seems to run for a little bit from the mid 60s and then kind of fade away, as amplified instruments and better stereo systems make it possible for avant guarde musicians to make louder, weirder tones and textures without the tedious work of learning to play an instrument.
posted by The River Ivel at 3:48 PM on February 20 [2 favorites]
> ... free jazz, but it seems to run for a little bit from the mid 60s...
Wikipedia mentions some 1940s antecedents, and some 1958 throat-clearing by Coleman, but apparently a turning point was the 1959 album The Shape of Jazz to Come.
posted by Aardvark Cheeselog at 7:03 AM on February 21
Wikipedia mentions some 1940s antecedents, and some 1958 throat-clearing by Coleman, but apparently a turning point was the 1959 album The Shape of Jazz to Come.
posted by Aardvark Cheeselog at 7:03 AM on February 21
> I’m not a big expert on free jazz, but it seems to run for a little bit from the mid 60s and then kind of fade away, as amplified instruments and better stereo systems make it possible for avant guarde musicians to make louder, weirder tones and textures without the tedious work of learning to play an instrument.
Oof, that's harsh. You're skimming past all the musicians with solid chops who played jazz for love while working on more famous things. There's Charlie Watts of the Rolling Stones, for an extreme example, but his love was trad jazz and R&B so we can leave that here. Ginger Baker and Jack Bruce were honing their jazz and improvisation chops by working in African and African-inspired bands, playing with completely out ensembles, all while paying the bills with session work and pick-up bands (Baker was both an early member of Fela Kuti's group and Public Image Ltd., for pete's sake!). Don Cherry cut his teeth in one of Ornette Coleman's lineups and later paid the bills as a first-call studio musician for TV commercials in between stints improvising with minimalist composer Terry Riley, setting up his own world music groups, jamming with Coltrane, and touring with Carla Bley.
And then there was the Canterbury Scene of the early 70s (and other scenes like it) which was nominally a bunch of heads playing prog rock but many of the performers parlayed their skills developed there into careers straddling the rock, jazz and avant-garde circuits.
And then starting in the 80s there are the dozens of musicians in Bill Laswell's orbit playing everything from straight funk to completely out-there free jazz, often in the same set. Loud as hell but with unquestionable skills.
For sure there's more but how long do you want this comment to be?
Yep, music got louder and leaned on tonal experimentation that was technically impossible in the 60s, but assuming who came along since Coleman traded their musicianship for being weird is a bad call.
posted by at by at 9:22 AM on February 21
Oof, that's harsh. You're skimming past all the musicians with solid chops who played jazz for love while working on more famous things. There's Charlie Watts of the Rolling Stones, for an extreme example, but his love was trad jazz and R&B so we can leave that here. Ginger Baker and Jack Bruce were honing their jazz and improvisation chops by working in African and African-inspired bands, playing with completely out ensembles, all while paying the bills with session work and pick-up bands (Baker was both an early member of Fela Kuti's group and Public Image Ltd., for pete's sake!). Don Cherry cut his teeth in one of Ornette Coleman's lineups and later paid the bills as a first-call studio musician for TV commercials in between stints improvising with minimalist composer Terry Riley, setting up his own world music groups, jamming with Coltrane, and touring with Carla Bley.
And then there was the Canterbury Scene of the early 70s (and other scenes like it) which was nominally a bunch of heads playing prog rock but many of the performers parlayed their skills developed there into careers straddling the rock, jazz and avant-garde circuits.
And then starting in the 80s there are the dozens of musicians in Bill Laswell's orbit playing everything from straight funk to completely out-there free jazz, often in the same set. Loud as hell but with unquestionable skills.
For sure there's more but how long do you want this comment to be?
Yep, music got louder and leaned on tonal experimentation that was technically impossible in the 60s, but assuming who came along since Coleman traded their musicianship for being weird is a bad call.
posted by at by at 9:22 AM on February 21
Mod note: Hey, for these great links to some historic stuff in music, we've added this post to the sidebar and Best Of blog!
posted by Brandon Blatcher (staff) at 4:30 AM on February 22
posted by Brandon Blatcher (staff) at 4:30 AM on February 22
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I've been slowly acquiring a greater interest for all things jazz over the last years (maybe a sign of age? nah..) and, funnily enough, free jazz and avant-garde artists of Brötzmann's intensity were one of the better entry points for me. (As was Brötzmann himself, naturally.)
These days, I don't necessarily need to be knocked in the head anymore to enjoy a jazz record, but sometimes I come across a record like Kaoru Abe's Mokuyoubi No Yoru (YouTube) at 3 am and hits exactly the right spot.
(Thanks, btw, for your jazz posts, Lemkin. I've been reading them all.)
posted by bigendian at 8:44 AM on February 20 [2 favorites]