10 June 2009

Quartet Circle "Circulus" (United Artists, 1978, 2LP)



This one as to be considered a gem. At least that's my opinion. Quartet Circle was a brief quartet with four astounding players: Chick Corea, Anthony Braxton, Dave Holland and Barry Altschul. As far as i know, this group recorded and edited 4 double Lps to United Artists, end of 60's beginning 70's. Nobody knows why but the luminaries at UA never considered reissue those albuns on CD, so they remained forgotten, which is incredible due to the high quality of the music.

Quartet Circle features Chick Corea as you never heard him before and after (at least for those who don't know this group). Partners Braxton, Holland and Altschul are in high avant-garde shape with ideas and playing far from being conventional. The interplay between the quartet is amazingly top quality avant garde free music. One might expect that due to subsequent Corea's career this couldn't be possible, but it was.



About "Circulus":

double gatefold LP
United Artists, 1978


side one: "Drone" (track 1)
(trio without Braxton, recorded April 8, 1970, New York)


side two: "Quartet Piece No. 1" (track 2)
(quartet, recorded August 21, 1970, New York)


side three: "Quartet Piece No. 2" (track 3)
(quartet, recorded August 21, 1970, New York)


side four: "Quartet Piece No. 3" (track 4)
"Percussion Piece" (track 5)
(quartet, recorded August 21, 1970, New York)



Chick Corea: piano, prepared piano, vibes, percussion, bass marimba
Anthony Braxton: alto sax, soprano sax, clarinet, contrabass clarinet
Dave Holland: bass, guitar, percussion
Barry Altschul: drums, percussion, bass marimba


About the transfer:
recorded directly from the vinyl to DAT record to audio CD through CD recording (not PC).
From CD to lossless Flac files. Crisp and clean as you can hear on the deepness and colourful music. On last flac file you'll find high quality scans of outer and inner sleeves from the gatefold LP. Hope you enjoy it.

30 comments:

  1. Link to folder with 5 files:

    http://www.mediafire.com/?sharekey=e68d94bf92436d478d78a0e5552916090fde05eeefaa16c38271ce49816d50b1

    Files:
    01 - Track 1.part1.rar [95.78MB]
    01 - Track 1.part2.rar [18.16MB]
    02 - Track 2.rar [80.41MB]
    03 - Track 3.rar [76.07MB]
    04 - Tracks 4 & 5.rar [89.77MB]

    Hope it works! Enjoy!

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  2. I got a '0 items found to display!' on my end...

    greetings

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  3. The links are not working. Please correct and repost. Thanks

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  4. My apologies for the troubles. I must confess that i found a little troubling the workspace on mediafire... anyway, here it goes the individual links:

    01 - Track 1.part1.rar [95.78MB]:
    http://www.mediafire.com/download.php?w44zjtzymmm

    01 - Track 1.part2.rar [18.16MB]:
    http://www.mediafire.com/download.php?n4njngtmdmm

    02 - Track 2.rar [80.41MB]:
    http://www.mediafire.com/download.php?mtyljmnoeon

    03 - Track 3.rar [76.07MB]:
    http://www.mediafire.com/download.php?mtnmmvmtuyk

    04 - Tracks 4 & 5.rar [89.77MB]:
    http://www.mediafire.com/download.php?xyzwjntuyzo

    Last file has the sleeves (high quality jpegs), both inner and out of the gatefold sleeve. Hope it really works now. Best, NM

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  5. The new links work. Thank you for reposting them and of course a big THANK YOU for sharing this great music.

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  6. Magnificien blog. Many thanks. Love it. And thanks for the scans! Found further informations on this always useful link [JazzDiscography (...)]. Cheers to all.

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  7. Dang - year or two back, I put together here a whole bunch of released and unreleased Circle. So if you like this stuff, go hunting backwards!

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  8. Thanks for the tracks. Great stuff!!

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  9. This is an exquisite rip. Wonderful work. Very much appreciated. Thanks!

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  10. Got this on wax--but this rip is extra clean. Drone is so ridiculous....many thanks!

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  11. great record indeed!
    baffling that CIRCLE is not more recognized and issued. there are a few more hard to get recordings floating around the web. the 2 trio records (sans braxton that I THINK are still available on CD) are also outstanding. this plus the issued PARIS CONCERT and the 2 solo piano ECM records are for me the very high point of all CCs output.

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  12. Superb work on this rare item. Many, many thanks!

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  13. There was a time when Corea was a fine free player and not just in Circle- parts of "Is" demonstrate this as well as his work with Miles during the Fillmore period with elec piano and ring modulator. And he was great on Marion Brown's Afternoon of a Georgia Faun". Thanks for this

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  14. Kudos for your hard work on "Quartet Circle", and generally for all your hard work. I can't thank you enough!

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  15. all is ok about the links but it's impossible to convert flac files to mp3, my FLACFRONTEND converter tells that it's not authentic flac.

    i wanna convert these to burn a cd in wave or mp3.

    it's now 3 or 4 albums that it's a the thing since a couple of months.

    because of that i have to take my speaker out of my computer and plug that in my standalone phillips cd burner to record that on cd, i don't really keep music in my computer.

    i think that i will maybe not download when it's flac, only mp3.

    but, anyway thanks for the Corea rare item.

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  16. thank you very much!
    this is a treasure

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  17. Wonderful to find links still working!
    Many thanks for the great music and for posting in flac.

    I really cannot understand PE-35's comment. AudioChecker confirms these are genuine lossless files and flac frontend decodes to wav with no problems, and there's loads of software that will convert to mp3 if required!

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  18. To bad 01 - Track 1.part2.rar is not accessible, which means the whole Track 1 cannot be unpacked. NM, next time we expect better job. This was supposed to bring pleasure, not frustration.

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  19. OK, my apologies, it is working now (after a few days of trying). NM, thank you very much for the upload.

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  20. any chance for link update? I'd like to listen to this.

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  21. please re-up? would love to ear this.
    thanks, -James

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  22. Please re-upload again this material.
    I can highly recommend you also both albums released by CBS/Sony:
    Circle - Circle-1 Live In Germany Concert
    Circle - Circle 2: Gathering
    Thx a lot.

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  23. "Circulus" 2LP can be torrented from here http://rutracker.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=2145820

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  24. "Gathering" here http://rutracker.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=1486091

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  25. Thanks for that tip, Miloo2. Got it, even though I have the actual reocrd. Always nice with a digital backup. I find it difficult registering with that torrent site. My Russian is less than rusty.

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  26. This comment has been removed by the author.

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  27. miloo2, thanks, yes, for the Rutracker advice. Got it!

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  28. This looks to be the same material which was briefly out on the "Blue Note Jazz Classic Series" of double Lps, issued in 1978 just before Blue Note imploded. re: 88mmbolex's comment, another GREAT date by Corea was the ECM trio date w/Holland and Altschul, "ARC." Wearing Scientology on Corea's sleeve, but boy did this date cook!

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