Ah, the corpus of 70s British jazz rears its hydra-headed frame up once again thanks to the good folks at the Ogun label and their recognition that, dammit, some music is way too good to simply vanish into obscurity. At least Dean's coin retains its currency — he's continually championed by the likes of imprints such as Cuneiform (and rightly so), for example — and with something of a small resurgence of interest in British improv, this is a timely reissue indeed.

The large ensemble Dean assembled for these two mid-70s recordings (only available on an utterly impossible-to-find LP for the past three decades) is the crème de la crème of the then burgeoning scene, when British jazz began to shake off its post-war U.S. shackles and embrace freedom in all its forms. So saxophonist Dean surrounded himself with his best mates: trumpet player Mark Charig, trombonists Nick Evans and Radu Malfatti, the incomparable Keith Tippett, drummer Louis Moholo, bassist Harry Miller, plus flugelhornist Harry Beckett and Alan Skidmore on sax as well. As you might surmise, it's horns a-plenty, but this isn't just a noisy blowing session in late-period Coltrane guise: no, this is simply some of the 70s' finest players essentially freeing big-band from its affiliation with anything standardized, sanitized or formalized. This outfit knows how to jam, rip the very air asunder, and, in many instances, lock into some pretty fiery grooves.

The opener "Nicrotto" feints with its left and goes right for the most part, an exercise in tension and release that never releases, the multi-tracked horns twisted into perpetual, building crescendo — it throws your sensibility off-balance, and must have turned many an ear sideways 30+ years ago. "Seven for Lee" brings Moholo's drums to the forefront as he and Miller provide some faux "funky" underpinning to Tippett's background flourishes while the multitude of horns set the air alight. If anything, Dean and his troupe seamlessly alternate between heavy-handedness and aloofness with what appears to be reckless abandon but instead reveals itself to be carefully calculated poise — you can't keep such a beast steady without allowing its muscles to flex (such as on the call and response wails of "Forsoothe"), even when the ensemble foresakes anything as formulaic as horizontal progressions for a decidedly vertical ascent in sound. Anyone with the slightest interest in the roots of progressive British jazz need avail themselves of this one — essential.

Elton Dean's Ninesense: Happy Daze + Oh! For the Edge Is On Sale at Squidco!