Terry Riley / Don Cherry - Live Köln 1975

Long-time coming ultra-limited vinyl edition of this legendary recording that pairs Don Cherry’s heavenly trumpet stylings with Terry Riley’s psychedelic/minimalist organ work in an edition of only 275 copies: recorded live in 1975 but never officially released and never available on vinyl before, this is a long whispered-about recording, a meeting between Terry Riley’s amazing all-night-flight organ styles and Cherry’s devotional trumpet work, tying in with his explorations of higher-minded drones states with the Organic Music Society. Riley is on stunning form on the A side, “Descending Moonshine Dervishes”, playing the kind of endlessly rippling dosed organ drones that sound like the play of heavenly DNA, with a sense of stasis in expansion that is uniquely brain-razzing. Cherry’s playing is heart-stoppingly beautiful, curling slow, melancholy arcs and threading high angel tones through Riley’s electronic matrix. Something so lonesome and beautiful about this combination, the perfect 2am stone. On the flip they’re joined briefly by Karl Berger on vibes for the slow-motion celestial tone-float of “Sunrise Of The Planetary Dream Collector”, which is just awe-inspiringly gorgeous and intensely psychedelic, somehow managing to sound exactly like its title, while the closing “Improvisation” might be one of the most elegaically beautiful and time-killingly complex works of live stream minimalism ever wept to wax. A staggering document and another fascinating uncovering of a key moment in the secret history of holy minimalism. (volcanictongue)