DOYLE, ARTHUR AND HIS NEW QUIET SCREAMERS - First House

"First House (AMI048) is the final recordings from free jazz legend and Birmingham, Alabama native, Arthur Doyle. Recorded live at the Stone July 11, 2012, these six pieces are backed by His New Quiet Screamers, a Brooklyn-based ensemble adding muscle and movement to Doyle's always already free, non-linear saxophone, flute and vocal lines. The live set collected on this LP slips outside those reductive categories that pit noise against melody, bop against free jazz, jazz standard against total improvisation (by way of evidence, listen to Doyle's versions of "My Funny Valentine" and "Stormy Weather" on these recordings). These pieces move with an improvisatory immediacy aiming to capture the impossible: ecstatic music at the very moment of its making. Born in Birmingham, Alabama in 1944, Doyle studied Music Education at Tennessee State University in Nashville. In his early Alabama and Tennessee-based years, Doyle worked with an array of musicians and in a range of musical styles, from R&B to Soul to traditional jazz, collaborating with everyone from future Sun Ra Arkestra trumpeter Walter Miller to Funk-Soul-Disco diva Gladys Knight. Doyle officially emerged on the international Jazz scene, however, playing on Noah Howard's iconic Black Ark (Polydor, 1968), and later on Milford Graves' 1976 IPS LP BaBi. In 1978 Doyle debuted as a band leader and soloist with Alabama Feeling, released on Charles Tylers Ak-Ba label. Alabama Feeling features Charles Stephens (of the Sun Ra Arkestra) on trombone, drummers Rashied Sinan and Bruce Moore, and bassist Richard Williams. After the release of Alabama Feeling, Doyle continued to ignore boundaries and generic conventions, playing with Rudolph Grey as part of The Blue Humans, which introduced his music to NYC's Downtown and NoWave scenes, including the likes of Lee Ranaldo, Kim Gordon and Thurston Moore. In the early 1990s, Doyle's work was re-introduced to another generation, largely through Moore and Ranaldo's work, on releases for labels like Ecstatic Peace and Audible Hiss. Since the late '90s, Doyle continued a fevered pace in terms of his collaborations, most notably with Sunny Murray, Hamid Drake, Takahesi Mizutani (of the Les Rallizes Denudes) and Sabu Toyozumi, among many others. His New Quiet Screamers consists of an acclaimed ensemble of musicians with a wide array of history and associations. Members have played with and/or include: Sunwatchers, Dark Meat, NYMPH, Effie Briest, David First's Western Ennisphere, Matana Roberts, among others. This LP includes a commissioned essay from noted Jazz historian Clifford Allen who describes His New Quiet Screamers as "vault[ing] and envelop[ing] Doyle's bursts" of sound to the point where Doyle "sounds positively invigorated. Doyle's final recordings offer what Allen describes as a kind of "unfurling" of the free jazz lexicon, offering insights on "the spidery architecture of an obliquely-referenced standard" that characterizes this enigmatic artist's entire career. Standard and experimental improvisation alike, First House offers a window on Doyle's last performances, an artist very much at the top of his playing and artistic form. The gatefold LP is an edition of 300 copies (200 standard black vinyl LPs and 100 copies of the LP in white vinyl only available from the label's webstore). Both versions include an exclusive digital download (ONLY AVAILABLE WITH LP PURCHASE) of Doyle performing with His New Quiet Screamers at Issue Project Room September 22, 2011." - Amish.