John Coxon and Ashley Wales have, on a series of recordings for Thirsty Ear’s Blue Series imprint, challenged the notion of what defines improvised music and how it can interact with technology. Initially the pair were electronic music artists who were defined by the largely British electronica style known as drum ‘n’ bass. Recording as Spring Heel Jack, the duo quickly went from exploring and even expanding the genre to growing far beyond its boundaries. The duo’s last several recordings, including Masses, Amassed, and Sweetness of the Water increasingly abandoned any sort of popular music trapping, concentrating completely on music as an abstract art for, and, increasingly, as pure sound. That the duo should work with the cream of both British and American free improvisational players seemed completely natural. Their associations with musicians like saxophonist Evan Parker, trumpeters Wadada Leo Smith and Kenny Wheeler, percussionists Han Bennink and Mark Sanders, as well as pianist Matthew Shipp, seemed increasingly strong on both sides of the equation. The improvisational musicians flourished in the soundscapes provided by the duo while Coxon and Wales genuinely interacted with the musicians, putting them into the realm of serious investigators of sound rather than mere studio knob-twiddlers.

Now the duo have started a limited-edition series of recordings known as the Treader series (after the Spring Heel Jack CD Treader). The series has a distinctive look, with each pastel colored cardboard sleeve featuring a gold foil embossing of a different animal. The title also appears on the front of the sleeve, otherwise all other information is inside, where we find out who plays or contributes what sounds to the recording, but there are no track listings. It does create an immediate visual aesthetic for the series, one as distinctive as the Impulse I! Or the photographic minimalism of ECM recordings.

Evan Parker with Birds is exactly what it says. Parker improvises on both soprano and tenor saxophone with soundscapes largely created from samples birdsong recordings as well as field recordings made by Ashley Wales in locations such as Cornwall and Liskeard. There are four distinct tracks, with the first and last being the longest and the middle two providing briefer interludes. Though the birdsongs and other ambient sounds have been manipulated by Coxon and Wales, providing structure to what would otherwise be a completely random collection of sounds, there is an overwhelmingly natural feeling to this recording. Parker’s improvisational lines are largely delicate and frequently achingly beautiful. He plays soprano on much of the disc, and his sound on the instrument is one that compliments the bird sounds without becoming submerged into the soundscape. On tenor, his sound owes much to Coltrane, but there is no doubt that Parker always sounds very much like himself. Obviously, this is not the sort of pure, abstract sound that will appeal to everyone, but certainly to those who enjoy freely improvised music or are fans of Parker’s work, this is a very unique recording that will offer rewards to the careful listener. It also works as a sort of meditation, and I’d bet that if one were to listen to it while sitting in or driving through the countryside, it would mix with the additional layer of live ambient sounds to create an interesting listening experience.

Much less pastoral is the recording Trio with Interludes, which features Parker on tenor sax along with percussionist Mark Sanders and a variety of instrumental contributions from Coxon and Wales. The disc is divided into thirteen tracks of wildly varying lengths (from .41 seconds at the briefest to 7:52 at the longest), and there are a variety of textures on display. The opening track is a frantic improvisation that features Parker and Sanders sounding like Trane and Rashied Ali on the last couple of recordings they made together. Meanwhile, there are outbursts from piano, harpsichord, and a Roland MKS 80. The Roland delivers a nice, fat analog sound that provides nice commentary on the dialogue between Parker and Sanders. Coxon is particularly present on this disc, his Roland work echoing Sun Ra’s on the album Nuits de la Fondation Maeght, particularly the long final track, “Cosmic Explorer.” This type of experimentation is clearly where Coxon and Wales have taken their cues from, and it’s interesting that while they appear to have come full circle from electronica to free jazz improvisation, this may well be the direction they were always coming from in some fashion. The Treader series, at least so far, seems to make explicit the fact that the duo are more influenced by Sun Ra and other free jazz musicians who were prominent in the late ‘60s and 1970s than by other musicians who’ve fused jazz with electronics and studio effects, such as Dave Douglas, Erik Truffaz, and even Matthew Shipp himself. For most of those musicians, the touchstone was Miles Davis; for Coxon and Wales it is more of an extension of the late work of Coltrane, Sun Ra, and Albert Ayler to include these additional elements.

The third release in this first set from Treader is a solo percussion recital by Mark Sanders, entitled Swallow Chase. Through nine tracks, Sanders explores various textures and sounds as well as rhythm. Most of the playing here is surprisingly delicate; Sanders is much more restrained and paints with a softer-hued palette than on Trio with Interludes. Sanders’ improvisations grow in intensity, as one would expect, but they are always varied and interesting to listen to. Coxon and Wales step back and merely function as producers here; there is no manipulation of Sanders’ playing and no studio restructuring either. It is the most natural performance, acoustically, of the three, and it again points up the fact that Coxon and Wales, along with their various cohorts, are interested primarily in sound itself: how it is created, how it is heard and affects the listener, and what meaning can be attached to pure sound stripped as far as possible of any outside programmatic suggestion. If this is indeed to be a guiding organizing principle of the series it will certainly be an artistic success, and could well generate a catalog of music that is every bit as distinctive yet possessed of a unified sensibility as that of ECM.

Pressed in limited editions of only a few hundred copies apiece, these recordings will no doubt sell out quickly and become collectors’ items. Of course, no one could expect a boutique label to operate without a cost structure that allows them to at least break even with frighteningly small sales. But these discs, while somewhat peripheral, are not mere side projects in the vast discographies of the performers. These are strong performances by Sanders and Parker, and the Trio recording approaches some of the elements many found most interesting in SHJ recordings such as Amassed and Masses, elements some found missing on The Sweetness of the Water. Clearly the Treader Series is not to everyone’s (or even most people’s ) taste, but for those who are ardent fans of free improvisation, they are likely to be the must-have CDs released this year.

To purchase, visit Treader online.