Cecil Taylor - Conquistador! (1984 Japanese Blue Note Promo Reissue Vinyl LP)

Cecil Taylor - Conquistador! | Vinyl LP, 1984 Japanese Blue Note Promo Reissue (BNJ 71049 / BST 84260, New Wave in Jazz Series, Toshiba EMI)

• The second and final studio album Cecil Taylor recorded for Blue Note, two side-long compositions from a sextet session with Bill Dixon, Jimmy Lyons, Henry Grimes, Alan Silva and Andrew Cyrille, recorded October 6, 1966 at Van Gelder Studio
• The complete classic Blue Note production team: Alfred Lion producing, Rudy Van Gelder recording, Reid Miles designing the cover, Francis Wolff photographing it, and Nat Hentoff writing the liner notes
• Japanese promotional pressing from 1984 in the New Wave in Jazz reissue series, manufactured by Toshiba EMI

Cecil Taylor was classically trained and spent the late 1950s and early 1960s building a musical language that treated the piano as a percussive instrument as much as a harmonic one: dense clusters of notes, physical attack, rhythmic structures that had more in common with contemporary classical music than with the chord changes of bebop. By the time he came to Van Gelder Studio in October 1966, he had already recorded Unit Structures for Blue Note five months earlier, and the group he assembled for Conquistador! was built around musicians who understood what he was doing. Jimmy Lyons, his alto saxophonist since 1961, plays with a passionate, bluesy energy that anchors the freedom around it. Bill Dixon’s trumpet is the opposite: patient, subdued, using space and long tones where Lyons fills the air with sound. Henry Grimes and Alan Silva play double bass simultaneously, creating a dense, moving foundation. Andrew Cyrille, who would remain Taylor’s primary drummer for nearly a decade, holds the centre with a drumming approach that is both structured and open.

The album is two compositions, one per side. “Conquistador” on side A runs through contrasting sections: an opening five minutes of driving intensity without Dixon, then the trumpeter entering with quieter, longer phrases before the piece builds again. “With (Exit)” on side B follows a different arc, with passages of near silence alongside the more characteristic Taylor density. This is not easy listening by any definition, and it was not commercially successful in 1968 when Blue Note first released it. Taylor made only two albums for Blue Note, and they were among the last sessions Alfred Lion produced before retiring from the label he had cofounded. This 1984 Japanese pressing is a promotional version in the New Wave in Jazz reissue series. Manufactured by Toshiba EMI. Catalogue number BNJ 71049 (original Blue Note catalogue: BST 84260).