30 May 2020

Clifford Thornton - Ketchaoua




Following up a request from fellow blogger Correct Silence, here is another of the many records coming out of Paris in the late 60s, mixing mostly American expats with French musicians and released on the legendary Byg Actuel label. This has cornetist Clifford Thornton in four different ensembles, from multimember down to trio. Only four tracks, from the boisterous "Brotherhood" to the moody atmospherics of the tile track to the chant-infused "Pan-African festival". He was to release another album, The Panter and the Lash, on America, another French label documenting the same scene.

Due to alleged connections to the Black Panther Party, he was denied entry to France in 1970, but the ban was lifted the year after. Due to this interruption, he was unable to continue teaching and performing in France and eventually relocated to Geneva in Switzerland. Durinng this period he made The Gardens of Harlem, again for a large ensemble, which to my knowledge has not been released on cd. Later on he was featured on an allbum by Joe Malinga, a South Asrican expat.

Trckslisting:

A1 Ketchaoua

Alto Saxophone – Arthur JonesBass – Beb GuerinCongas, Gong, Percussion – Earl FreemanCornet, Congas – Clifford ThorntonDrums – Sunny MurrayPiano, Bells – Dave BurrellSoprano Saxophone – Archie SheppTrombone – Grachan Moncur III

A2 Pan African Festival

Alto Saxophone – Arthur JonesBass – Beb Guerin, Earl FreemanCornet, Congas – Clifford ThorntonDrums – Sunny MurrayPiano – Dave BurrellSoprano Saxophone – Archie SheppTrombone – Grachan Moncur III

B1 Brotherhood
Alto Saxophone – Arthur JonesBass – Beb Guerin, Earl FreemanCornet – Clifford ThorntonDrums – Claude Delcloo


B2 Speak With Your Echo (And Call This Dialogue)
Bass – Beb Guerin, Earl FreemanCornet – Clifford Thornton

Recorded August 18, 1969 in Paris.

37 comments:

kinabalu said...

LinK:

Adrive

francisco santos said...

HUGE THX!...

correct silence said...

Hi Kinabalu
I appreciate your intention but unfortunately you have provided a rip that comes from the perspective if you know what I mean and in fact this rip made by the owner of this blog is one of the numerous fake that he posted, it comes from a mp3 rip that he have artificially upgraded. I suppose that it is a mistake from you. The problem with the numerous fraud made by the small perspective is that we own perhaps several of his fake in our collection. Personally I have cleaned mine but it took several research to clean totally my collection of rip from his fake. From the first minutes of the first track I was almost sure that this rip was the one posted on the perspective and to be sure I have downloaded his file again and the comparison confirm this without doubt. If some people think I'm crazy they just have to do the same, go to the perspective, download the file of this album and compare with this one.

Andy said...

@ CS Give it a rest. I was hoping all this policing had finished.

pierre d'alai said...

What is meant by "the perspective"? and in what way is this a "fake"? Would someone please explain?

correct silence said...

@Andy
My purpose is not to start again this topic, I just wanted to mention that the rip provided by Kinabalu comes from another blog and that it is a fake lossless. I don't blame Kinabalu for this mistake, as I said we all have many files coming from many sources and this can happen. But if on this blog there are now forbidden subjects this have to be mentioned and some rules of what can or can't be written have to be established.

mike said...

Yes, this rip is a 128-160kbps rip. Sadly not FLAC.

rev.b said...

A wonderful album regardless of format. A true FLAC would be even better, but this will do until a better one comes along. Thanks to everyone for their efforts.

Jonny Zchivago said...

Its this kind of shit thats makes one wanna give up blogging. I've got a 320 rip if anyone wants it?

correct silence said...

@Pierre D'Alai
I didn’t want to start again the conversation about this blog so I named it « the perspective ». To explain you as fast as possible the owner of the blog « different perspective in my room » have posted all over the years many files that are presented as lossless and that are in fact mp3 mostly stollen on others blogs or on some Russian website; some rip of cd have also been presented as lp rip. There are several ways to transform an mp3 file in a lossless one but even if it appears as a lossless, the reality is that when some frequencies are lost you can’t recreate them. If you want to know more about this subject there are many articles on the web and many software that can identify if a file is a true lossless or a fake. Igor was the first to discover the mystification created by Vitko and he have been unfairly mocked because the process is really lousy. If you want to know more about this topic you can go to the « free form « section of this blog where you will find many exemples of this fact provided by Igor. Later I also denounced this again because this man who’s not ashamed of anything continues his low works. I didn’t want to talk about this again contrary to what Andy Believes but when I realised that the file provided by Kinabalu for this post was coming from « different perspective in my room » and was one of those fakes (it is featured in the list of exemples given by Igor, he even gives the source), i just opened again the subject. Of course there’s no reasons to be angry or disappointed against Kinabalu; as I said before all of us have downloaded from this blog and all of us perhaps still have some waste coming from this guy in our library. The intention of Kinabalu was probably to transfer his own lp but perhaps he discovered this file in his hard disk and was happy to notice that the job was already done without supposing the source of this file. I didn’t have to use a software to identify the source, several audio index made me immediately think of the real nature of this file, I just had to download the « perspective « version to have the confirmation of my doubts

bifidus52 said...

If it can help, I can share the rip from my lp made several years ago.
Same thing for Kenneth Terroade - Love Rejoice.
Cheers

daniel said...

thanks or the information Correct Silence.
I really didn't know nothing about it.

anyway, this is a really great album, maybe the first I ever heard be Clifford Thornton, a very unique trumpet player for me.

take care everyone!
keep safe

rev.b said...

@ Jonny Zchivago, Sure, a 320 would be fine, either here or over @DorD, if if it isn't too much of a disruption to your current thread. I haven't been commenting much recently, but I've enjoyed all the pioneer electronic women very much.

pierre d'alai said...

@correct silence: Thank you for the explanation. Now I understand the issue, and I'll go to the 'free form' section and track down the postings that you refer to.
@bifidus: yeah sure, a genuine LP rip would be nice. Thanks for the offer.

rev.b said...

@ bifidus52, Kenneth Terroade's Love Rejoice would be sweet as well!

correct silence said...

@Bifidus 52
Your rip of Ketchawa in lossless is welcome if you want to share. The Kenneth Terroades lp have been posted on this blog long time ago, I haven't checked if the link is still alive.
Kinabalu have mentioned Joe Malinga in his presentation, it is a good idea because Malinga who is an interesting musician is not very well known. The album recorded with Clifford Thornton have been reissued on cd in the compilation
http://www.brambus.com
All the tracks of the original lp are in this compilation but not in the correct order.
This album that I recommend is still for sale at the Swiss label's website

Jonny Zchivago said...

@ rev b
Uploading will post a link on DoD or here....got a Terroade 320 too.

Jonny Zchivago said...

@ rev.b and anyone else who can cope with it being non-lossless!!!?....Clifford Thornton in 320 mp3
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1RFsCC2KgRpZsSDH8GneCM3j1Ui-csdTS/view?usp=sharing

rev.b said...

Thx Jonny. You know, in photography, if you try to sharpen a low pixel image, you usually just highlight its flaws and make it look worse. Isn’t it the same with low quality audio? There are numerous bootleg blogs out there who tout their lossless only policies. Funny thing though, often their files sound worse and more jarring than the the same recording on a noisy vinyl bootleg from the 70’s. I’m not enough of a technician to prove this opinion, but going by my ears, these mid-fi Byg/Actuel recordings are not helped by the bright light of lossless. Perhaps someone reading this can help me understand….

correct silence said...

@Rev.b
You use the word « bootleg » that is normally reserved to some live recording mostly captured from the audience. A radio broadcast or a soundboard recording can also be named as « bootleg ». In many cases « bootlegs » have a bad or very bad sound quality for different reasons, they can be considered as documents but I suppose that you want to talk more about the lp transfer than the live recordings. The polemic about lossless v/s lossy could appears as useless for two reasons. The first is that compressing a recording will reduce the highest frequencies, these frequencies are the most difficult for the human ears to perceive. The second reason is that the more we get old, the more we loose capacity to perceive those high frequencies. For exemple the difference between an mp3 at 320 and a lossless is impossible to perceive because the frequencies that have been lost in the process of compression is not important. So why insisting on collecting only lossless? There are two reasons. If in the early days of internet it was difficult to send heavy files it is no more difficult now for many of us; there is no reason now to compress a file. The second reason is that if there is not real difference between a 320 and a lossless, the difference become bigger and bigger and can be heard as much as you reduce the frequencies, 256, 192, 128 etc. The indignation of Igor and mine against Vitko is justified due to the fact that it is shabby to take advantage of the fact that it is difficult to detect a lossy file hidden behind an alleged lossless one. no-one has reasons to blame someone who does not have a big vinyl collection so there is no reasons to pretend otherwise, except maybe a narcissistic flaw.
Regarding your consideration about the poor sound of some files presented as lossless it depend on many parameters like the quality of the pressing, the quality of the turn table, the amplifier, the software used for the transfer and also the quality of the material that you use for listening. For exemple the byg actuel series that one of the references is the starting point of this topic have often a very low sound and pressing quality. All the reissues of this series have been made from original lp, not from the master tapes because Jean Luc Young who probably is the only one who have the master tapes have disappeared for some legal questions. You can imagine a reissue made from a poor original lp without any remastering and a digital transfer of that kind of lp…
It is also totally ridiculous to pass a cd for a transferred lp due to the fact that the process of digitalise a lp will make disappear some of the anagogic dynamic. Who can seriously believe that a normal person will waste one’s time to digitalise an lp when a cd version is available?
The fetishism about the lp is something totally stupid, there are now some cd reissues that have a real good sound quality, for exemple all the reissues of the « saturn » catalog made by art yard are much better than the original versions. Protecting the real lossless music is also important to support the work of the sound engineers who in many cases do a very good work in recording or remastering.
Later today I will update the link on the Kenneth Terroade love rejoice.

bifidus52 said...

I hope to remember well ... the rips were made many years ago by a friend with a good HiFi
and cleaned of defects.
Ketchaoua(tracks 1-4) and Love Rejoice (tracks 5-6) in wav.
http://www.mediafire.com/file/nj2eghu2mqzhv1r/C.Thornton-Ketchaoua_--K.Terroade-Love_Rejoice.zip/file
I hope I have been useful and I renew my great esteem in your passionate work.
Cheers

magogiallo said...

@ bifidus52, great upload, I listened only the fake lossless correct silence was talking about, So the upgrade is very welcome as the music here is great Thank you!

kinabalu said...

This post seems to have generated quite a bit of commotion judging by the number of comments which is actually a good thing as comments tend to be sparse on this blog, but this time not so much about the actual music, but more about whether it is a genuine lossless file set or not. I recall that back in the ancient days of Church Number 9, the standard was 192 kb mp3, but I used to post in 320 kb and nobody complained. These days, it seems that anything less than lossless is unlistenable, which is odd, considering that most of the music streaming services use lossy formats, with the exception of Tidal which offers a lossless format at an extra cost. As we know, mobile phones have taken over from expensive hi-fis as the usual way of consuming music, but I guess some of us still live in the olden days.

Anyway, on the subject at hand. This fileset was downloaded using P2P software which located these tracks both in flac and mp3 formats, so I selected the lossless files as it is the standard on this blog. It saved me the time and effort of trasnferring my own lp to digital format which is definitely more time-consuming than ripping cds.At the time, I did not know it has been posted on the Different Perspectives blog. If I had known, I would not have posted these files at all. One could argue that as long as they can be accessed through our means, such as P2P, there's no point in posting them here, but not everybody may be aware of these alternatives.

Secondly, on the subject of audio quality, Byg Actuel records generally sounded pretty murky, so I don't know whether the difference is all that great. Checking the comments at the Perspectives blog, nobody complained, including our own Ernst. I would recommend followers of this blog to take this test to check their abilities to discern between compresssed and uncompressed digital music files here:

https://www.npr.org/sections/therecord/2015/06/02/411473508/how-well-can-you-hear-audio-quality/

You don't have to report on your findings. The Byg Actuel records have been regarded as bootlegs as the artists reportedly were never compensated for their work and they have been rereleased many times, both on lp and cd on a variety of labels. All in all, rather a dodgy business, imho.

I was inclined to delete the entire post as there is not any point in duplicating material that has been posted on another blog and I see that there are a couple of other Thorntons there as well, so if you think you can survive the blasphemy of mp3s masquerading as flacs, you're welcome to them. I think the music is well worth it. But I see now that there is a comment just above with the lp in wav format, so I'll let the post stand.

dave said...

Guys -- there's plenty of debate to be had about the technology of audio digitization. But, there should be no debate that files should be accurately described. There's nothing inherently wrong with a 192kbps encoding of an album, but we should all be able to agree that it is wrong to re-encode and label that encoding as flac and there is value in identifying this. Obviously it's easy to make mistakes and even easier to accidentally perpetuate someone else's mistakes, but we should welcome and promote those mistakes being pointed out.

correct silence said...

@Bifidus52
Thanks much for the wav version of Ketchaoua for the few parts that I have listened this seems very good rip. Your rip of Kenneth Terroade is in mono but it is not a problem because I have updated the post on this blog and provided the rip in stéréo done by Sottise at the time, a lossless version contrary to what is mentioned in the title of the post.
@Kinabalu
I made a comparison between the files that you have posted and the ones posted by Bifidus, using a high quality earphone reveals a light difference on the middle high frequencies that are less aggressive in the wav version. The reason is that on the fake they have been probably artificially upgraded. if you burn a cd from those files and play it on a good hi fi system the high frequencies will be more amplified and make the listening experience not very nice. In another way you are right pointing the fact that in most case the byg actuel have a bad sound engineering but this is why it needs to stay as close as possible of the original sound until some remastered version appears, this will probably never comes. You are also right in the fact that musicians have never got money for the royalties. I did some research some month ago for a radio program and what I found is that obviously they win money for the recording session but nothing more, particularly no money regarding the numerous reissues that are all illegal.
Regarding the fact that Ernst have posted a comment on the blog that I won't name, if you search you will also find some comments posted by me because first many of us were trusting this person; and as I wrote before, in many case it is difficult to hear the difference between a lossless and a lossy but it doesn't mean that we all have to prefer lossy. If we start to do this why the sound engineers do they have to go on recording or remastering carefully.
I have a friend who is sound engineer and wo works on remastering old recordings to reissue them, when he do this job I don't think that he have in mind the fact that most of the people won't hear the difference between a high quality sound and a normal one. It is not because only very few people keep on listening music on a hi fi system that the research of the most perfect sound (mps) have to be stopped.

rev.b said...

@CS, Yes, I was focusing to bootlegs of live recordings

mike said...

Thank you, bifidus52, I've been looking for this in lossless for ages!

correct silence said...

@Rev B.
ok in the case of bootleg when the sound quality is poor it depends more on the sound recording than on the bitrate. Recently for exemple Osiris have posted some Art Ensemble Of Chicago from the seventies, all were audience recordings and at the time the material that could eventually make a good capture was heavy and expensive (nagra for exemple). That kind of material was impossible to hide to the organisers of the show. Recording a band from the audience also doesn’t allow to make a mix and also due tot the fact that you can only use very small microphones, the sound of the instruments are distorted. Since the advent of the digital recorders in the early nineties (dat, dcc, md etc.) you can have better results. For exemple the post of Eddie Prevost Quartet 50th anniversary done by Andy have a very acceptable sound for an audience recording. But I suppose that Andy used a digital recorder and had the luck to put the microphone near the musicians because there is a ambient stéréo effect with a spatial distribution of the instruments and relatively little noise and reverberation coming from the room. But in that example even with a obvious good material the piano and the bass are still behind and the sound is dominated by the saxophone and the drum. But for an audience recording the quality is very good and doing better would require several microphones, I don’t know what kind of material Andy have used for this show and the others ones that he recorded during those nineties.
In général of course the best live recordings are the soundboard but they are rare because it is illegal. But even some soundboard recordings can have poor sound. Some month ago I posted a live from Gregg Bandian’s interzone which is a soundboard but in mono. In that case I think they recorded what we call the « front sound ». When you sound a room you never do it in stéréo because all the speakers needs to distribute the same sound. If you record this you hear clearly all the instruments but this is not suitable for a publishing on cd or lp. I think they did this to keep a track of the concert without intention of publishing. What makes me think that is also the fact that in my memory we don’t hear applause from the public, so there were no ambient microphone which are always used when one want to publish a recording from a live performance.
Radio broadcast can also have a good sound if the radio broadcast in good quality and without interference. IN most case bootleg have to be considered as documents and personally I have very few because the sound quality is important for me and I don’t want to have a very high concentration to try to identify the bass of Malachi or to guess if it is Jarman or Mitchell who plays behind the high level of Famoudou’s drum. But I can understand that some people can accept that kind of low fi. But in general I still wonder if the jazz fans really listen to all of what they catch from the web?

rev.b said...

@CS, Thank you for your detailed explanation. It brings to mind King Crimson's Earthbound album; 'soundboard recordings', but badly balanced and distorted. Do you think something like that would benefit from being digitized as losses rather than mp3 320?

correct silence said...

@Rev B
Surely it won't change anything. The lossless or lossy is a process that have an influence on the frequencies (high) but not on the problems of the source. Sometimes with material in a professional studio it is possible to make some sounds better. The famous sound engineer Michael King who passed away some years ago and who was the owner of Reel recordings, he also worked for Cuneiform and others labels, could make miracles. I was fortunate to listen to the original test pressing of the lp of John Surman that was reissued on cd under the title "way back when" and the job done by King is just incredible. Same for the lp and cd of WMWS "one night stand" that was originally a tape recorded in the audience of the Ronnie Scott club, King also did a fantastic job. This needs very good material and also very long time. When you work on a recording your ears quickly get used to a sound and therefore you you have to work for short periods otherwise your work is distorted because your ears misleads you

mike said...

Just curious, does anyone else use the great, free app Spek to check the authenticity of files they download?

http://spek.cc/

correct silence said...

@Mike
Personally I use a program in the studio of a friend but I don't remember the name of this program, but yours seems interesting, i will download it.

correct silence said...

Despite everything we must be careful not to fall too much in the fetishism of the lossless. It is clear that to disguise mp3 in lossless is totally shabby but on the one hand we probably all have fake lossless without knowing it; for example the lp of Don Cherry with Terry Riley live in Köln have been probably made from a youtube source and there are many others bootlegs commercially available that have questionnable sources. ON the other hand I have one example of mp3 320 who’s sound is absolutely remarquable, it is the two albums of O M C I that are available on the Itunes store and only at 320. The source is the original lp and the dynamic is just incredible and the music of course is fantastic.

correct silence said...

for those who are interested I have added a new link to this post
http://inconstantsol.blogspot.com/2007/07/kenneth-terroade-love-rejoice-byg-1969.html
rip in stéréo

... said...

bifidus52,
thank you so much for such a pleasing contribution! this is a fair rip and it does sound really good!

correct silence,
regarding El Saturn, i'd like to praise the engineering work on Sun Ra's audio archives of Michael D. Anderson and Irwin Chusid whose versions can be found for streaming and purchasing on digital platforms, e.g. https://sunramusic.bandcamp.com/; here's an interesting interview with Irwin Chusid, Administrator for Sun Ra LLC, on this matter http://sunraarkive.blogspot.com/2014/09/exclusive-complete-interview-with-irwin.html

Igor

correct silence said...

Thank you Igor for the advice and nice to see you back here.
yes the job done on the recent reissues of Sun Ra on lp, cd or download is very good and most important very respectful of the music.

wrayb said...

very interesting comment thread. Many thanks to the people followed up with better files.