OUTSTANDING!!! a set of five CDs containing a selection of the most interesting and technically the best recordings of the ensemble active from 1982 till 2010. This legendary trio - Mike Cooper, Lol Coxhill and Roger Turner - played its way through 28 years of concerts, just a few in most years, but a presence not forgotten - in part because of its willingness to tread paths uncongenial to many improvisers, in particular those theatrical, referential and genre-inflected. Lol, a colossus and a man who heeded no convention, augments his soprano with acting, mumbling and singing, as well as on occasion pre-recorded tapes and a crackle-box, Mike Cooper, a man of many and varied parts, adds radios, cassettes and electronic processing to his electric lap steel and acoustic national guitars and the always pertinent Roger Turner hits a wide variety of things, occasionally adding electronics.After the “Barbecue Strut” [LP – 1987] and “Zombie Bloodbath On The Isle Of Dogs” [CD 1991 and 1995], the box contains the first in the considerable time published recordings of the band and is released precisely in the fourth anniversary of the last concert of The Recedents in Café OTO [London]. Over 4 hours of never published music recorded on their tours in Belgium, Italy, Germany, France and England.
The Recedents, as a trio in unchanged lineup, is likely the second longest performing British improvising band, just after considerably older AMM with which it had been repeatedly compared. However, from the time-distance perspective, it appears as an utterly distinctive phenomenon, an inspiration for other performers and occupying a well-deserved place in the pantheon, creating a canon of electroacoustic free improvised music.
The set of those 5 CDs is accompanied with a 28-page booklet containing:
- notes of the band's members, which were: Mike Cooper, Roger Turner and Lol Coxhill and some of their friends: Steve Beresford, David Ilic, Gerard F. Tierney, Tim Fletcher,
- reproductions of original posters and artworks,
- the most interesting surviving photographs,
- chronology of activity.