Peter Kuhn

LP version. The Kill is the Soul Note album of clarinettist Peter Kuhn, recorded in New York in 1981 and released in 1982. His quartet has pianist Wayne Horvitz, bassist William Parker and drummer Denis Charles. Kuhn came out of the downtown loft scene of the late 1970s, where Parker and Charles were already his partners: both play on Livin' Right, his debut as a leader, taped for WKCR-FM in December 1978 and issued on his own Big City label. A heroin habit pushed him back to California in 1981. This was among his last records before he dropped out of music; he got sober in 1986 and came back with a new trio only in 2016.

The sessions took place on January 12 and December 20, 1981 at Morton Street in New York, with Kuhn producing, Giovanni Bonandrini as executive producer and liner notes by Lee Jeske. Kuhn plays B-flat clarinet and bass clarinet and wrote all four pieces. Horvitz moves between piano and synthesizer, and Charles is also credited on voice. Kuhn and Charles already knew each other well: they had played duets in the fall of 1979, later issued by NoBusiness with Livin' Right as No Coming, No Going. Side one holds three shorter tunes, the eight-minute Skeeter, You and Being Human; side two is given entirely to the title track, close to 23 minutes long. Writing in Jazz Right Now in 2016, Clifford Allen called Kuhn's few leader dates "as obscure as they are remarkable".

This is the original 1982 Soul Note LP, catalogue SN 1043, a 140-gram copy from the first pressing that CAM Jazz, owner of the Soul Note catalogue, rediscovered in its vaults.