Last Wave [Import]

Arcana, ????? | Format: Audio CD

Product Details

• Audio CD (August 13, 1997)
• Number of Discs: 1
• Format: Import
• Label: Disk Union
• ASIN: B000001C3W
• Also Available in: Audio CD
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #235,061 in Music (See Top 100 in Music)

Track Listings

1. Broken Circle

2. Cold Blast

3. The Rattle of Bones

4. Pearls and Transformation

5. Tears of Astral Rain

6. Transplant Wasteland

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars excellent and a half, June 28, 2010

By 

Bill Your 'Free Form FM Handi Cyber Print DJ ... (Mahwah, NJ USA) - See all my reviews
(TOP 1000 REVIEWER)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Last Wave (Audio CD)

Saying who is best among great musicians is moot and subjective. Any landmark musician has strengths that are fact and styles that you like or don't.

Now, let me reverse my idiot self and say why Anthony Williams was the best jazz drummer. He had the flexibility and musicality of Max Roach, the rhythmic invention of Elvin Jones. The agility of King Crimson Mach '69's Mike Giles.


You wanna know who else you can compare Anthony Williams to? Sir Paul McCartney. Like Paul, Williams did things on his instrument that no one else could think of in a thousand years. Listen to some of William's improvisations. Who dreams of fills and random movements like that? One Mr. Anthony Williams

I have only told you one half, the other being that Williams was always looking for new, edgy music to play, and I have no doubt that if he had not died from medical malpractice in 1997, he would be doing jazz as hip to 2010 as he did to 1964, 1969, 1978, and 1997.


"Tragic" is an over used word in the death of those well known, but in William's case, it truly was tragic. The amount of music we all missed out on is impossible to calculate.

But if not that, we have this. Arcana was one of William's last projects with guitar player Derik Baily and bassist Bill Laswell. If the 1960s had its free jazz, Arcana is free jazz on the other end of the time machine, with musicians having lived past rock, funk and fusion,


This is almost completely free, but two things strike me as fascinating: the ability of older musicians to make music this fresh and with such a sharp edge, and the ability of them to make it completely as it happens. More than 1960s Coleman or Coltrane-the only other place you can find music this good and this free is Cecil Taylor--this is totally improvised: it is ALL about the interaction of the trio--there is virtually no writing here- and the results are simply miraculous, for free jazz of ANY era

5.0 out of 5 stars What Tony W. was really capable of, July 11, 2007

By 

M. Chapman (Maryland / USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Last Wave (Audio CD)

I agree with the other two reviews that were first posted here. This is an incredible album, but you have to have the ears for it. It's a wild, intense ride. Just wish that Tony had left us more recordings like this before he departed. So sad. RIP, Derek, as well.

5.0 out of 5 stars free-improvisation heaven on earth., April 30, 2006

By 

Lord Chimp (Monkey World) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Last Wave (Audio CD)

is it the deadliest avant-garde trio ever? quite possibly. Arcana is Bill Laswell (bass) with the wizard Derek Bailey (anti-guitar) and Tony Williams (drums). If you let your imagination work a little then nothing more needs to be said. If you can bring to mind electric dissonance so perfect that each cell in your body spasms with pleasure, then _The Last Wave_ is something like that. Yet you'd be damn amazed how much these guys rock in a fairly idiomatic way.