Consumer Guide Album

Anthony Braxton: New York, Fall 1974 [Arista, 1975]
Braxton's music is classified as jazz because Braxton is a black saxophonist who often plays with jazzmen, but that hardly covers it. The feeling is closer to eccentricity than it is to spontaneity, and just as I was starting to dig the cerebral exercises on side two--one cut features new-music synthesizer minimalist Richard Teitelbaum--I noticed that even the wildest of the new-jazz james on side one was sounding cerebral. Don't get me wrong--my cerebrum really got a buzz on. But this is often a little stiff. B+