Luyah! The CECIL TAYLOR albums poll!

"In Florescence" was also my first but I voted for "Air Above Mountains..." since I'm a sucker for solo CT and it's an astounding performance.

Plus, I didn't know he'd released an album with John Coltrane (under Coltrane's name) - the music's terrible apparently!

it's a good record, but cecil's holding back. supposedly kenny dorham hated cecil's music, and was being kind of a dick to him at the session.

unperson, otm re: taylor/dixon/oxley. the critics weren't kind to this record, but it's among my top two or three cecil records (one of the others being the other one with dixon, conquistador!). dixon was one of the very few players who could really push cecil into previously-unexplored territory. they recorded a duo album in 1992 that is still unreleased.

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

Ultimately I had to go with Air Above Mountains, the most purely beautiful of his solo discs, to my ear anyway.

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

This looks like a bit of a no brainer: www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B00JWS9I9U
9 Cecil Taylor albums for 10 quid! Only one review but packaging & sound quality don't seem to be an issue.

Not "complete" by any means -- his Candid material alone (of which NYC R&B and The World of Cecil Taylor are part) has its own 4CD box (The Complete Nat Hentoff Sessions, previously a Mosaic set). Also, no alternate/bonus tracks.

Still a good deal, though.

'Complete' box sets should be approached with caution, sure.

Just out of interest, is the 'Live at the Cafè Montmartre' disc the same date as the 'Nefertiti' set on Revenant? (which i already have)

Yep, you'd be doubling that material. And I'm pretty sure the Montmartre set is maybe 1/3rd of what's on the Revenant set.

Also, you probably know that Cecil's only on half of Into The Hot.

Echoing what's already been said, a lot of that material isn't great. You're much better off picking up the aforementioned Complete Nat Hentoff Sessions box, which actually has more material than the old Mosaic box (it includes the live-at-Newport tracks from the split album with Gigi Gryce included in the box you linked).

The Complete Nat Hentoff Sessions set is unfortunately more than twice the price of the set that millmeister links to.

All these albs are out of copyright in Europe now - I have this set, which omits the Montmartre disc and is a little bit cheaper still:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/7-Classic-Albums-Cecil-Taylor/dp/B00B1D6XJW/ref=sr_1_1?s=music&ie=UTF8&qid=1406143914&sr=1-1&keywords=cecil+taylor+seven+albums

Sound quality is excellent. They also do a good Sun Ra set of similarly out-of-copyright material:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Four-Classic-Albums-Audio-Sun/dp/B007VA1YE8/ref=pd_sim_m_h__1?ie=UTF8&refRID=03ZM8D9V6K242SG6K82Z

Yeah, those Real Gone sets seem to be OK. I have the Blakey set (19 albums! 10 CDs! $20!), and it sounds great.

I bought the Real Gone set myself just last month - well worth it, even though I already owned a few of the albums. (Nice that those two half-Cecil albums are included)

Thanks for all the advice. Will investigate the Real Gone / Nat Hentoff Sessions.

winged serpent has a lot of chunky mass, fat horns

is this comment pro or anti or merely descriptive

i suppose theoretically someone could feel a need for skinny horns but

looking ahead is a decent little album

Tremendous and long sustained energy on Akisakila. I only wish the 40 min sets were broken up into shorter tracks.

I try listening to a new Cecil Taylor record every few years to see if I "get it" yet. I've been trying with Indent, also recorded in 1973, but I can't parse it. It's not unpleasant. Unit Structures and 3 Phasis I appreciated without having to make such an effort!

I’m that way w a lot of artists and this probably not gonna help you or w/e but a big thing for his work clicking with me was the degree I started recognizing his playing as percussive.

Too late, but I would have voted for Nefertiti, The Beautiful One Has Come.

percussive and with complex tone clusters, which reached a peak with 2 Ts For a Lovely T