* Edition of 300 copies. High thickness cardboard with opaque laminated cover. Comes with a printed insert. * Founded initially as the The Beckerlee Quartet sometime towards the late 1950s and early '60s, a time during which time they went through various lineup changes before morphing into The Contemporary Jazz Quartet, in 1962 they began playing the Vingaarden club in central Copenhagen as one of the earliest European adopters of the emerging movement of free jazz. It was there that they came into direct contact with seminal players like Cecil Taylor, Sunny Murray, Albert Ayler, and John Tchicai, all of whom recognized the groundbreaking effect of the group. The following year, the quartet began playing at Jazzhus Montmartre, leading to greater contact and exposure that set the ground for even further collaboration and influence. It was there that they came into contact with The New York Contemporary Five - Don Cherry, Archie Shepp, John Tchicai, Don Moore, and J.C. Moses - who immediately recognized kindred spirits, and collaborated with the group shortly thereafter for a broadcast on Danish Radio. Similarly, they were invited to back the American jazz duo of Ran Blake and Jeanne Lee for an early television broadcast, further cementing their conversations at the forefront of the global free jazz scene.

While still operating as a quartet, the group - Franz Beckerlee on sax, Steffen Andersen on bass, and Hugh Steinmetz on trumpet - invited Sunny Murray on board as their drummer for their debut release “Action”, issued by the legendary Debut Records in 1965. That record has come to be regarded by many as one of the most important early gestures in European free improvisation, as well as being a crucially tangible link between the European and American scenes, as well as interpolation across Europe, notable via Steinmetz and Beckerlee subsequent gigs in Peter Brötzmann’s band, alongside Peter Kowald, Willem Breuker, Han Bennink, Derek Bailey and Paul Rutherford, and further collaborations with John Tchicai and Don Cherry. Shortly thereafter, the group would shift again in membership and become The Contemporary Jazz Quintet, featuring Bo Thrige Andersen, Franz Beckerlee, Hugh Steinmetz, Niels Harrit, and Steffen Andersen, and enter the studio in 1967 to record what would have been the follow up to “Action”, intended to be also issued by Debut. As a fascinating illumination of the moment, particularly because it predates Miles Davis’ revolutionary innovation of electric jazz by roughly a year, new innovations in amplification during that moment that the band began to observe in rock music, provoked them to abandon that album and begin again, eventually producing the LP “T.C.J.Q.” in 1969, which featured two electrified saxophones, as well as amplified trumpet and double-bass, relinquishing their previous recordings, unreleased, to the vaults. It is those incredible, lost 1967 recordings made by The Contemporary Jazz Quintet, unearthed for the first time in nearly 60 years, that comprise “Action A B C E”, FormalIbera’s astounding new LP dedicated to the group.

From the first sounding of “Action A B C E”, it’s easy to quickly understand how radically ahead of their time this band was. As they take off in a fury that rises like a sonorous storm, the central arc is carved by strange, unfamiliar howls that reveals itself to be a musical saw played by Niels Harrit. While undeniable free jazz, the breadth of texture and tone, as well as the group’s sense of time and truly collectivist, non-hierarchical approach to organization pushes the orientation of sound toward a broader notion of experimentalism drawn from across the globe and multiple creative contexts. As the first side progresses, the group sprawls out with a remarkable sense of space, each player dialled into the next with carefully delivered responses and interventions - always virtuosic and considered, sculpting complex and tense tonal relationships, while often laying back completely to let the sounds of certain members and instruments soar and emote.

The second side of this astounding LP distills all of the singular virtues of this remarkable band. Pacing further appears as a central force in the group’s collective voice as glacial, tonally tense moments gather momentum and tempo and rise toward a seething storms that stand among the most furious expressions of free jazz of this moment and rivalling the energy of Peter Brötzmann recordings like “Machine Gun” and “Nipples” that would appear over the following years, while equally anticipating high energy free jazz exemplified by albums like Noah Howard's “The Black Ark” and Rashied Ali and Frank Lowe’s “Duo Exchange”, with monstrously explosive force.

While The Contemporary Jazz Quintet has remained in the consciousness of deep diggers of free jazz over the decades and celebrated by those in the know for their incredible contribution to the development of free improvisation within the European contexts over the years, the group has equally remained fairly marginalised within more general awarenesses of this music. Formalbera’s astounding new LP dedicated to the group, drawing upon their newly unearthed, previously unreleased 1967 recordings takes great lengths toward righting the scales and bringing them the attention they’ve always deserved. With the story further illuminated by fantastic, exploring liner notes by penned by Mats Gustaffson and Anna-Lise Malmros, in conjunction with these truly mind-blowing sounds, this beautifully produced, limited edition vinyl LP is quite simply one of the most earth-shaking archival releases we’re likely to encounter this year.