The sax (or clarinet) at that point was there, but in the distance. It was just deeper beneath the blanket. They played with foreground and background, honing the focus, adding contour to the sonic bloodbath. There were many voices coming from each man. And then, sniffing the air, feeling each other’s lines, peering into the future, they would stop on a dime. Animals.

Now I have Machine Gun, Last Exit’s Koln Concert, and Fuck De Boere. These are great documents of literally gigantic groups moving the earth and displacing entire lobes of people’s brains. And these guys ain’t young anymore. Fuck De Boere is 1970! That’s almost forty fucking years ago. I love the idea of not getting old. Well, one’s body does what it does, but to not adhere to the conventional aging process is something that I aspire to. But in aging, there is always change, always a re-examination of our values, a constant evolution of perspective.

These guys playing as a duo is a nice reflection on that process. They’ve boiled it down to essential brutality; just the marrow in the bones. It isn’t exactly a conversation; they’re both remembering at the same time. Sharing memories in an incommunicable language. At once intensely quiet, laughing together, and hollering alone from a peak about the sublime and the futility of life. This brutality is heralding the sun and championing the darkness. It made me think about the idea of freedom in music. Are Brotzmann and Bennink free? Or is what they do a reaction? How free is a lion when it smells blood on the air?