2025 repress. Originally released in 2019, this essential 4CD box set documenting one of the rarest trio meetings in the history of European free improvisation is finally available again.

Eleven years after the legendary The Topography of the Lungs (Incus, 1970) - one of the landmark early albums of English free improvisation, co-founded the Incus label itself - the trio reunites at 28 rue Dunois in Paris. Almost three and a half hours of non-idiomatic free improvisation captured by Jean-Marc Foussat on April 3rd, 1981. By this time, each musician was pursuing different directions: Derek Bailey had denounced fixed groups, while all three had developed into fully formed, uncompromising voices. The nine pieces here mark an evolution and further development of the strategies explored on the 1970 recording.

As Bill Shoemaker notes in his insightful liner notes, these sessions employ well-timed and laser-accurate disruption as a preventative against style - subversive means that liberate the music from the legacy of free jazz. Two extended trio improvisations of over 40 minutes each, five duos in various configurations, and two solo performances by Evan Parker. Bailey on acoustic guitar, his abstract lines and exotic sonorities sometimes submerged in the tumult; Han Bennink never content to remain at his drum kit - trombone, clarinet, harmonica, piano; Parker focused and intense on tenor and soprano.

The interplay is naturally egalitarian, but Bennink always injects more energy, ready to embrace chaos. The sound sizzles. A document of three strong personalities colliding and conversing in real time - the only other trio recording being that brief excerpt from Company 6 in 1977.

The music presented here can be broken down into two lengthy trio blocks, five duos, and two solo performances by Parker. Sorting out the group dynamics and character struggles between the players (all head-strong folk) is better left to personal friends/musicians and maybe a psychoanalyst. But it is great fun to witness the push/pull of master free improvisers exerting their will and responding to the impulses of their partners. Bennink plays the part of the eternal prankster, never content to remain at his drum kit. He blows a bulbous trombone, some clarinet, tortures a harmonica, and even hammers at a piano, which Parker comments on as rubbish. Except for the first duo in CD1, the mix is quite good. Maybe it is just that Bailey is playing acoustic guitar here, that he gets lost in to tumult of Parker's saxophone and Bennink's mayhem.
 By 1981, each of these musicians were fully developed and their sound was familiar territory to devotees. This set carried none of the "shock of the new" that The Topography Of The Lungs possessed. Nonetheless, the sound sizzles with energy. Bennink's modus operandi is to always push his partners into new territories. The energy jazz he coaxes from Bailey could be taken as a lesson plan for Nels Cline, and may be the highlight of the recording. Parker is another case, his stoicism endures, sort of. His trademark circular breathing remains a treasure and he perseveres while Bennink entertains the audience with whistling, bass clarinet squawk and visual jokes. The three and three quarter hours of music is never repetitive and always entertaining. It is a great reason to run into a burning building of free improvisation. " M. Corotto 'AllAboutJazz'