Dave Liebman was still with Miles Davis when he recorded Lookout Farm (ECM) in 1973, leaving the trumpet player's band in time to promote its release with the group's public debut at the Village Vanguard on 6 June, 1974. “Lookout Farm is a perfect record”, said Downbeat magazine at the time. Drum Ode (ECM), under Liebman's name this time, was recorded in May 1974 but could hardly be called perfect, yet neither of these albums prepare you for the full frontal, raw energy of post-Coltrane, post-jazz-rock of Onkel Pö's, which previously appeared on German Polydor. ‘Naponoch’ is potent stuff, as exhilarating as it is powerful, and those of a delicate disposition or a susceptibility to nosebleeds need not apply. Once you get through that there's another four tracks to go and this band does not let up – a mixture of total confidence in what they are doing and of each other. This is dangerous, risk-taking music that goes from inside to outside, from acoustic to electric and back again. It's both exciting and stimulating in a way not heard in jazz today. Liebman and Beirach were then, as they are now, massively accomplished improvisers, and then as now, massively undervalued. Liebman was one of the first post-Coltrane saxophonists who had sat at the feet of the master and unravelled the saxophonist's technical and harmonic complexities, which he translated into a personal voice with the kind of energy Coltrane would have approved. I'd never thought I'd hear myself say it, but they really don't make jazz records like this today.