Rarely was a band as aptly named as the late Billy Bang’s Survival Ensemble. Bang had been scarred by the horrors of war and radicalised by racism as a black soldier in Vietnam. Returning to New York, he faced a completely different fight for survival, trying to make a living playing avant-garde music at a time when many of the better gigs were going to recently arrived out-of-towners. Bang’s response was to round up a gang of fellow Bronx-dwellers (including Parker and Bakr who would go on to play with Cecil Taylor) to unleash a raucous statement of defiance. Disc One of this double CD release is a previously unheard quartet date recorded live in 1977, which reveals how much Bang’s music of the time – and, indeed, the whole NYC loft scene – owed to the New Thing of the 60s. The set begins with a poem dedicated to Albert Ayler, and Bang’s playing recalls Ayler’s mid-1960s work with French fiddler Michel Samson. There’s a ragged intensity to the date, combined with a steely sense of purpose that makes for gripping listening. New York Collage, Bang’s first album as a leader, from 1979, is reissued here on Disc Two. Rounded out to a sextet, the group produces a fuller sound with enough bells, shakers and percussion to keep Art Ensemble fans happy. But the militant anger is still close to the surface. What’s amazing is how contemporary so much of that anger still seems. In Bang’s righteous spoken rap on ‘Illustration’ he tells us: “When the poor steal it’s called looting/When the rich steal, it’s called profits.