Lol Coxhill ICTUS Anthology

Between 1978 and 1981 Coxhill recorded and toured extensively with Andrea Centazzo in duo and in combination with trombonist Giancarlo Schiaffini and trumpet player Franz Koglmann, releasing 4 albums on ICTUS Records: Moot, Situations, Darkly and Darkly Again. This collection includes selection from those albums plus new, never before released tracks.

Soprano sax maverick Coxhill is a musician who's touched on nearly every area of music over the past half century. In the '60s he jacked in his day job to accompany soul singers like Rufus Thomas. He'd sit in with bluesmen like Alexis Korner and Champion Jack Dupree. He was signed to John Peel's label Dandelion and played bebop with the likes of Bobby Wellins and Stan Tracey, prog rock with Steve Miller and Kevin Ayers, and dabbled in ska and rocksteady with Rico Rodriquez and Jazz Jamaica. In 1977 he even toured with the Damned. In the last decade I've seen him play with assorted avant jazzers, drone rockers and electronic mavericks. I've seen him busking near the Thames, and seen his old LPs selling for $100 in New York record shops. And I've also heard him playing beautiful, straight versions of standards.... A true national treasure and a top geezer.  (John Lewis, Time Out)

Regarded as one of the major figures of soprano sax improvising and experimentation and well-known for his unorthodox recordings and concerts, Lol Coxhill possesses a personal style unlike that of any of his contemporaries. Coxhill has always gravitated toward the idea of musical freedom. Thus, while he aptly plays conventional bebop and mastered his instrument using more conservative methods, Coxhill wanted to explore the undiscovered possibilities of the saxophone. Consequently, in addition to inventing new and personalized saxophone sounds, he turned to improvised music in the 1960s.

"I can get more involved in it as a listener than most other music," he told Ben Watson of the Wire. "The very fact that it's open and you don't know what's coming next, you can't decide beforehand what's coming."

In his own improvisational approach, Coxhill is best known for creating wrenching and twisting sounds during his winding soprano and sopranino solos. He also uses minimal electronics and voice.