Soloist, composer and academic Archie Shepp was a driving force in the ‘60s avant-garde, plotting wild, free-form jazz fuelled by his African heritage and a passion to fight social injustice. These expansive jazz epics encapsulate Shepp's radical free spirit in the period up until the early ‘70s. African drums wrestle with a feral tenor saxophone, while a soprano weaves its way through a bleeding viola—the slow, seething undertaking is pierced by an offbeat harmonica to haunting effect.
