The introductory compilation album of Decca's new 1960s/70s British Jazz Explosion reissue series includes a track from the restless and shortlived pianist/composer Mike Taylor's rare and much sought-after Pendulum album, a long-neglected 1965 classic. Pendulum was one of only two studio recordings Taylor made before life and crippling drug dependence induced him to take a last walk into the Thames Estuary in 1969 at the age of 30, but a third release by the Pendulum lineup has now emerged as a 500-disc limited edition – caught live at Southend's Studio Club in January 1965, and retrieved from the tape archive of the late great Jon Hiseman, Taylor's drummer that night. The music fuses the leader's cryptic, percussive piano roots in Monk, early Cecil Taylor and maybe a little Stan Tracey, with the full-on ferocity of the classic John Coltrane quartet. ‘Night In Tunisia’ is the only cover, opening as an abstract soprano-sax wail from Dave Tomlin (playing soprano throughout) before the arrival of the tune's famous vamp, and Tomlin's and Taylor's pithy, fragmentary exclamations over Hiseman's seamlessly rumbling pulse. ‘Half Blues’ is a slinky groove that becomes a dark, funeral anthem, the fast ‘Mandala’ gets close to a Trane-quartet energy, and the bright, almost-vivacious ‘Folk Dance #1' is an ensemble-improv firestorm. Tony Reeves’ bass is under-recorded, and Tomlin unsurprisingly runs out of melody-varying steam on these open settings faster than Coltrane would, but Mandala is a gripping fly-on-the-wall glimpse of a work in progress that could have gone a long way further.