Steve Coleman - several albums
Jazz artists have been slow to embrace the internet as a way to promote their music. A major exception is composer and alto saxophonist Steve Coleman. He is the most influential jazz musician to release his material on the internet and he does it with style. All of his out-of-print CDs and non-US releases are placed for free distribution on his site. No less than 15 CDs were available at the time of this posting!
Coleman is most notable for his M-Base theory of music composition which attempts to incorporate the best of jazz, funk, world music, and the avant-garde into composition and improvisation. It a very complex concept which Coleman describes as a “macro-basic array of spontaneous extemporization”. I’m not sure what that means but what is important is the sound. Coleman’s music is very dense often using multiple and spontaneous improvisation similar to much of free jazz. However it never fails to swing and actually manages to sound funky at times. A number of young musicians are influenced by Coleman’s theories, the most famous being jazz vocalist Cassandra Wilson who appears on several of these albums.
I’ll focus on nine of the albums. Black Science is perhaps both the best example of his work and the most accessible. It features Cassandra Wilson on three tracks. The opening cut, “Vial of Calm” is quite beautiful. Rhythm In Mind is notable for combining the young M-Base players with veteran jazz musicians such as Tommy Flanagan, Dave Holland, & Von Freeman, making an interesting meld of mainstream and avant-garde. More typical of M-Base are the albums, Sine Die, Def Trance Beat, and The Tao of Mad Phat. His earliest works, Motherland Pulse and On The Edge of Tomorrow, tend to be less intense and showcases Coleman’s alto sax playing more distinctly. World Expansion may be the funkiest of the bunch and boasts some nice keyword work by Geri Allen. Finally, Alternate Dimension Series I is notable as it appears to be available as an online album only.
Of the 15 available albums, you can’t really go wrong exploring any of them. At the very least, you will familarize yourself with an important new branch of modern avant-garde jazz. The tracks are available as mp3s from 128kbps to 192kbps depending on the album.
I think Free Albums Galore killed the already weak servers that were hosting Coleman’s music. Can we call this “the FAG effect” or say “That site got FAGged”? Wait, no…
Anyway, I suggested to Steve that he host his music on free servers like ourmedia.org or go through a netlabel. He has not responded. In the meantime, anybody who got all the files wanna seed a torrent? I didn’t get to them in time?
(If you need help seeding a torrent, I can explain everything.)
Comment by freealbums — February 6, 2006 @ 10:02 pm
Is that you, Luke?
You’re probably right. Steve’s site goes down a lot but it’s usually back in a few days. He has a notice on his site about this and says he’s will be moving to a bigger server…but that message has been there for the past two years!
My advice is to wait. He should be back soon. if not, I’ll have to decide what to do with my post and then maybe a torrent.
Comment by freealbums — February 6, 2006 @ 11:13 pm
OK, the server is back! grab em while you can!
Comment by freealbums — February 7, 2006 @ 1:01 am
Lol, I came up as “freealbums”!
Comment by Luke — February 7, 2006 @ 1:38 pm
I’m having constant file timeout problems, and using DownThemAll with Firefox always crashes when downloading from that page. It would be so much easier for the rest of us, and so much easier on the servers, if someone who has all the files already put up a torrent. Be a pal!
Pretty please with cherry on top?
Comment by Luke — February 7, 2006 @ 5:55 pm
This was an excellent selection: a real gift from Mr. Coleman. Not that it matters, but I didn’t have any of the time-out issues myself.
Comment by snowbag — February 24, 2006 @ 5:55 pm
Site should be cool now, I switched severs a couple of months back, peace, Steve
Comment by Steve Coleman — April 1, 2007 @ 6:19 pm
Thanks, Steve! Your albums continue to be some of the most popular ones featured on Free Albums Galore. We certainly appreciate your generosity and I encourage everyone who enjoy the music to support Steve by purchasing his CDs.
Comment by freealbums — April 2, 2007 @ 9:24 pm