Almost everything veteran Chicago composer and pianist Andrew Hill has attempted is a break with tradition that still protects the essences. His reputation as a leader was forged in the 1960s with a series of startling recordings for Blue Note - the label's founder Alfred Lion described him as his last great discovery.
The best-known and most radical of the Blue Note sessions was 1964's Point of Departure, a fearless exploration of jolting time-shifts and searing colours. Black Fire, Hill's Blue Note debut from the previous year, is usually treated as a more conventional warm-up to that breakthrough, but it certainly doesn't sound like tentative or immature music in this enhanced reissue.
Saxophonist Joe Henderson is on hand here, and the music is played by a mixture of piano trios and quartets including Henderson, with an adventurous rhythm section featuring Richard Davis on bass and Roy Haynes on drums. Pumpkin is typical Hill - even Joe Henderson, who knew Hill's work well, sounds badgered by its unruliness at times. In Subterfuge, a trio piece, Hill's playing constantly suggests the squeezing of a pint into a half-pint glass.
The title track foregrounds Hill's Thelonious Monk connections, with its zigzagging theme and turnbacks - and though the Latin Cantarnos is more orthodox, Hill's piano is always prodding at the melody. Bassist Davis sounds startlingly abstract and tonally pliable all through the set, and Haynes is brilliant. It still sounds like pretty new music, 40 years on. - John Fordham
Tracks
01. Pumpkin
02. Subterfuge
03. Black Fire
04. Cantarnos
05. Tired Trade
06. McNell Island
07. Land of Nod
08. Pumpkin
09. Black Fire
JOE HENDERSON tenor saxophone
ANDREW HILL piano
RICHARD DAVIS bass
ROY HAYNES drums
All compositions by Andrew Hill
Recorded on November 8, 1963 at the Van Gelder Studio, Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey
BLUE NOTE - BLP 4151