Not a name that immediately springs to mind when recalling the 1980s-to-early-90s New York Downtown scene, drummer-percussionist-composer Phil Haynes was nevertheless a notable player within the ranks and still records to this day - last year’s Fast Food III trio album featuring Dave Liebman and Drew Gress being the most recent example.

Back then Haynes was in the orbit of experimental downtown flagbearers such as Ellery Eskelin, Paul Smoker and Herb Robertson who are all aboard this three-album set and Downtown-style tongue-firmly-in-cheek title The Complete American Recordings. It consists of the 1991 debut release 4 Horns & What and next year’s follow up 4 Horn Love, both being two dynamic studio dates that disappeared following the liquidation of German-based label Open Minds not long after their release. Both include the experimental downtown scene’s raw, noisy punk rock-energised mix-and-match ingredients.

On the studio dates, Haynes’ bands embrace the meaningfully free-spirited roots of jazz: everything from ragtime, N’Orleans second line, blues hollers and spiritual hymns via Ellington and Mingus though to the New Thing. The third recording - a later, newly unearthed concert recording Live at BAM from 1995 – is less post-modern, more skewed towards a smaller ensemble conversational free jazz with the influence of west coast cool in Haynes’ horn-section writing. Of interest is the involvement of influential Danish tenorist John Tchicai but not too much else really. Haynes’ whirlwind of sound mixing tribal percussion mantras and an avant-garde sensibility a la Elvin Jones and Rashied Ali gives a vigorous momentum to what is, on the whole, an interestingly anti-conformist blast from the past.