| Recorded 23 November 1986 at La Galerie Maximilien Guiol, Paris. Though the name Alan Silva is no doubt familiar to anyone reading this – his discography after all reads like a roll-call of the all-time great free jazz albums – his post-Center of the World recordings are less well-known and sometimes hard to track down, particularly the later recordings of his Celestrial Communication Orchestra released on his IACP label). Take Some Risks was recorded in the Maximilien Guiol Gallery in 1986, and features Misha Lobko on clarinets, Bruno Girard on violin, Didier Petit himself on cello and Roger Turner on percussion. Those poor souls who take sides for or against free jazz in favour of improvised music could do no worse than go back to this album and clean their ears out: at its wildest, this could be the Cecil Taylor Unit of the late 1970s (though without the piano!), while next minute you might be fooled for a moment into thinking it was SME-style "insect music". Sure, Turner's extraordinary fireball percussion work is light years away from "conventional" jazz drumming (he was one of the first to abandon the standard kit set-up in favour of a seemingly miscellaneous pile of bric-a-brac, metal and toys), but Silva's booming bass work is just as recognisable as it ever was on his recordings with Taylor, Ayler and Frank Wright. The album is aptly named – the music lurches forward with apparent abandon, a blind man walking a cliff top footpath: some of it is absolutely breathtaking, some of it fails.. magnificently. Younger generations of improvisers who pore over master tapes in studios trying to mix out odd spots of trouble should go back and listen to this, have the courage of their convictions, and take some risks themselves. |