Little Birds Have Fast Hearts No.2 [Import]

Peter Brotzmann | Format: Audio CD

Product Details

• Audio CD (January 30, 1999)
• Number of Discs: 1
• Format: Import
• Label: Fmp
• ASIN: B000025510
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #569,638 in Music (See Top 100 in Music)

Track Listings

1. Part 3

2. Part 4

3. Part 5

4. Part 6

Editorial Reviews

From Jazziz

Die Like a Dog is saxophonist Peter Brotzmann's salute to Albert Ayler. Tribute projects are usually less than memorable, but this quartet, and particularly this performance (at 1997's Total Music Meeting in Berlin), was different. William Parker, lynchpin of New York's free-jazz scene, plays bass. His sound - stumpy, impactful, dense - suggests the hajouj from Morocco or the inanga from Burundi, instruments that require physical input if they're to sing. Chicago-based drummer Hamid Drake also favors thumping, hand-on-skin sonorities. This ethnic feel is not mere coloration; it's in the beats, too. Both pursue the polyrhythmic universalism of late Coltrane. Unlike Ayler's rhythm sections, which tended to respond congregation-style to the soloist, Parker and Drake sketch a firm yet accommodating metrical grid. Trumpeter Toshinori Kondo uses electronic effects, shooting the air full of sonic shrapnel. Using his gargantuan tenor, e-flat clarinet, and the buzzing tarogato, Brotzmann squeals in sympathy. The horns become seagulls in a wide-screen thunderstorm, wildly beautiful. Throughout, the music has the sense of epic confrontation that is Brotzmann's earmark, though Last Exit's metal vibe has been replaced by one of skin and gourd. proud and powerful stuff.

--- JAZZIZ Magazine Copyright © 2000, Milor Entertainment, Inc.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Hallucination Fuel to feed your nightmares, September 25, 2008

By 

Pharoah S. Wail (Inner Space) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: Little Birds Have Fast Hearts No.2 (Audio CD)

*IMPORTANT MESSAGE* Though all 4 of these fmp Die Like A Dog Quartet albums are listed here for big bucks, I think they're now out of print so these are leftovers. If every time you see the $35+ price tags here you sigh and pass these albums by, stop! In late 2007 or early 2008 they became available as a 4-disc boxed set for $40 - $50! I've seen it at both the Atavistic and Downtown Music Gallery sites where I got mine in early 2008. It's nothing fancy. It's the 4 cds (Aoyama Crows, Little Birds Have Fast Hearts, No. 1,Little Birds Have Fast Hearts, No. 2, and Die Like A Dog: Fragments Of Music, Life & Death Of Albert Ayler) and a booklet in a sleeve. ESSENTIAL!

*THE MUSIC* Recorded on 11/8&9/97, Little Birds Have Fast Hearts #2 is Peter Brotzmann on tarogato, clarinet and tenor saxophone, Toshinori Kondo on trumpet and electronics (electric trumpet really... it's not like he's putting the trumpet away to go play with electronics), William Parker - double bass, and Hamid Drake - drums.

Did you ever do LSD? If you're lucky. Do you miss it if it's been a while? Of course you do. No mere 1-hit trip to the land of giggles and rainbows, this music will crush you into the realization that we're all just dust in the universe. Dust capable of unimaginable love, dreams, nightmares and horrific violence, but dust just the same. Evidently these 4 know it, because they play it. Peter and Toshinori are particularly attuned to one another on this disc, cluster-bombing all across the already pock-marked, dusty landscape William and Hamid are constantly sculpting.

The only reason I give this one 4 stars when I just gave 5 to Aoyama Crows is because track 3 here just kinda sits there. It's only 9 minutes though so it's not a big deal. Everything else here is 50 minutes of Shock & Awe sorts of stuff counterbalanced by trips through ancient, hypnotically repetitive passages that seem to be leaking out of a prehistoric cave somewhere.