Freddie Hubbard - Breaking Point! (Blue Note Tone Poet Series 180g Vinyl LP)

Freddie Hubbard - Breaking Point! | Vinyl LP - 2022 Blue Note Tone Poet Series Reissue (BST 84172, all-analog mastering by Kevin Gray, 180g pressing at RTI, gatefold sleeve)

• Hubbard's most adventurous album as a leader, recorded in May 1964 immediately after leaving Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers, with James Spaulding on alto saxophone and flute and Joe Chambers making his recording debut on drums
• Blue Note Tone Poet Series reissue, produced by Joe Harley, mastered all-analog from the original tapes by Kevin Gray at Cohearent Audio, pressed on 180g vinyl at RTI and housed in a Stoughton Printing gatefold jacket
• Produced by Alfred Lion, engineered by Rudy Van Gelder, with Reid Miles cover design and Francis Wolff photography

Freddie Hubbard had played on some of the most radical records of the early 1960s, including Ornette Coleman's Free Jazz and Eric Dolphy's Out to Lunch!, but his own Blue Note albums tended toward the centre of hard bop. Breaking Point! is the exception. Recorded in a single session on May 7, 1964, weeks after leaving the Jazz Messengers, it was the first record with his own working quintet and the most stylistically restless date he ever led. The title track opens Side A with a burst of free-form playing that resolves unexpectedly into a calypso groove, possibly a nod to Sonny Rollins, before pulling apart again. Eddie Khan's bowed bass brings the piece to a close. "Far Away" follows as a modal waltz with Spaulding switching to flute, the lighter texture a deliberate contrast with the density of the opener. Spaulding's flute playing splits opinion among collectors, but it changes the colour of the quintet in a way that a second horn wouldn't.

Side B carries three tracks. "Blue Frenzy" is the most aggressive piece on the record, Hubbard and Spaulding (back on alto) trading over Chambers' driving drums. "D Minor Mint" shifts into darker harmonic territory with Ronnie Mathews' piano more prominent in the mix, and "Mirrors", the sole Joe Chambers composition, closes the album as a spare, contemplative ballad that earns its place after the intensity of everything before it. Chambers was making his recording debut on this date, and his rhythmic sense throughout is already distinctive, particularly on the title track where he shifts between metres without signposting the change. Mathews, then under contract to Prestige, performs here by courtesy of that label. Alfred Lion produced, Rudy Van Gelder recorded, and Reid Miles designed the cover around Francis Wolff's session photography.

This Tone Poet edition was mastered all-analog by Kevin Gray at Cohearent Audio, with lacquers cut by Gray, pressed on 180g vinyl at Record Technology Incorporated, and packaged in a gatefold jacket by Stoughton Printing. Liner notes by Leonard Feather.