Hard Living by Forbes / Young / Walter

Recently unearthed and launched forth, this 2010 studio session, recorded wtih Colin Marston (Krallice et al.) in NYC features this rogue unit of asskickers in prime form smack dab in the middle of a tour. Four long tracks of brutality and propulsion from tenor saxophone, double bass and drums, summoning classic hardcore free jazz while putting the players' own modern, unique stamp on the form.

"I first met and played with Mike Forbes and Andrew Scott Young at an improvised music concert in Chicago on September 14th, 2008. My peer and former Flying Luttenbachers bandmate Jeb Bishop brought his trombone to make it a quartet. The music was powerful and heavy. Needless to say, I was knocked out by Mike's articulate, but fully red-faced tenor saxophone outbursts and Andrew's burly, propulsive bass bombast. I definitely wanted to play with these demons again. Both were recent Chicago transplants, whereas I had gotten my ass out of there in early 2003 and headed west to California. At that point, the bassist Damon Smith had been hooking me up with tons of gigs but I was also heading back to the Midwest to do stuff, as well as making regular jaunts out to the East Coast and Europe. My stint in XBXRX was winding down and I had a false start on an embryonic version of Cellular Chaos, but I was still kicking plenty of ass with Burmese. It was a busy time. I just did as much as I possibly could. I came back out to Chicago and did another quick hit with Mike and Andrew as a trio on March 1st, 2009. The music was good and my gears started turning. I released that set as the "American Free" LP later that year. I returned again in the summer, and we did Chicago, Cincinnati and Cleveland on July 31-August 2nd. By the end of 2009, I realized there was a lot of action for me elsewhere, so I packed my bags and headed from Oakland to New York City to start my next phase. I knew these guys were hungry and ready to kick some ass. Truth be told, they already had their own working trio, Tiger Hatchery, with drummer Ben Billington, and I set up a hit for them at Death By Audio in Brooklyn on February 10, 2010. Yet another gig with me in Brooklyn went down on May 16, 2010. Mike and Andrew were champing at the bit so I set up a 9 date tour for us in September and we hit the road. "Hard Living" was a studio recording we made in the middle of the tour, at Colin Marston's Menegroth studio on September 14, 2010. Our chops were ready to go and we knocked out the whole session in a few hours. The tour went great, but after that we kind of went our separate ways for no particular reason. I probably just had my hands a bit too full in New York. The studio album was slated for release but there were some problems with the bass recording, so I wound up putting it to the side. By 2013, my life was really nuts and I eventually wound up killing off the label for a while, so this project was shelved. All the while, I knew there was something special here. Tiger Hatchery soldiered on, doing lots of tours and releases, including two for ESP-Disk. Last year, during quarantine, I made another attempt at finishing the mix on this thing. I wound up starting completely from scratch and came up with what you can hear on this release. I'm happy to say, the technical issues were solved and this thing sounds as explosive as I had always hoped it would. I ran it by the guys and they were into it. We haven't played together in a long time, but we're all glad this document of an intense period in our lives has finally seen the light of day.

This is hardcore free jazz done in the loud, destructive, furious old way. Crank it up."

Weasel Walter, Queens, June 16, 2021

ugEXPLODE Records was founded in 1991 and dissolved in 2013, and revived in 2018 building on a raw aesthetic springing from extreme rock forms and free jazz.

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