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The New Language of Music Vol. 1

by Serge Ermoll's FREE KATA

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1.
The First Movement 17:16
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2.
The Second Movement 19:32
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A. The First Movement 17:15
B. The Second Movement 19:30

Recorded October 10, 1976.
Recorded and mixed at Earth Media Recording Company, Sydney, Australia

Originally released on vinyl as KATA 002

Liner notes:
The music on this record makes no attempt to sell itself, so it would seem inappropriate for me to try to sell it with words. Whatever I say, in any case, will not make it palatable or even tolerable to many listeners. There is no gentle, structured track which might get airplay or prove that these musicians can play their instruments in a conventional way. They have done all that before. This is the outpouring, unchecked. I work with these musicians. I know how deeply this music is felt. We all know it is not going to be very 'successful'. The time had simply come when it had to be put down. There is no doubt at all that nothing as unfettered as this has been recorded in Australia. Even in America, most 'free' improvisations on record have been played against some formal element, be it just a repeating bass figure. This is shaped by nothing but the interactions of the moment. There are tremendous peaks of excitement here, but there's a lot more too, which I hope you will hear. - John Clare

Jon Rose re-released these two seminal recordings by Serge's group from 1976 as two of the earliest releases on Fringe Benefit in 1978. He later arranged for the group to re-form for a gig in 2003 (without John Clare) and joined them to make a quartet.

"For nearly 40 years, pianist Serge Ermoll has been the wild man of Australian jazz.
His group Free Kata, formed in the 1970s, 'ripped open the heart of music aesthetics in Australia' (John Shand, Sydney Morning Herald, August 2003). Ermoll has played with some of the greats of the international jazz scene, such as the trumpet player Dizzy Gillespie; but his desire to 'be free'—and a chaotic life—has kept him out on the wild frontier of Australian music making."

"My deep lifeblood and love is free music, for free music is simply composing on the spot spontaneously, taking a walk outside the bounds of the metaphoric house of music and the boundaries of form, a walk on the wild side, a walk on the wonderful unpredictable path of beauty, of spontaneity returning home after the excursion... home again. For all free music has form in itself and all music has time and rhythm, it's like my sensei used to say, "Experience is empty, innocence is full. There is surely nothing other than the single purpose of the single moment. A man's whole life is a succession of moment after moment, but if one fully understands the present moment, there will be nothing to do and nothing else to pursue." - Serge Ermoll

credits

released June 1, 1978

Eddie Bronson, tenor saxophone
Serge Ermoll, piano
Lou Burdett, drums

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Fringe Benefit Records Sydney, Australia

Fringe Benefit Records was set up in 1977 by Jon Rose as a tape library of Australian improvised music. By the time of the final release in 1985, more than 50 cassettes and more than a dozen LPs had been released. This site now exists to digitise and bring those releases to a new audience, beginning with the compilation double CD released on Entropy Stereo Recordings in Michigan in 1998... ... more

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