‘Whatever happened to Byron Allen?’ asks keyboard player Don Pullen, lamenting the passing of the avant-garde scene, in Gary Giddins’ excellent 1998 book Visions Of Jazz. This limited edition re-release, part of a series to celebrate ESP-Disk’s 50th birthday, doesn’t tell us the answer. But it does remind us that the disappearance of the saxophonist – who released only one more album, and that 15 years later – was a tremendous loss. Subtitled ‘performing serious improvisational music’, the album was recorded in 1964, after Ornette Coleman recommended Allen to the label that also brought us free jazz fireflies such as Albert Alyer and Gato Barbieri. The debt to Coleman is acknowledged in the track ‘Decision For The Cole-Man’, and Allen’s solos share the Cole-man’s mix of searing, radical energy and debt to the tradition. The album sags a little when Allen drops out, but it’s still a glorious listen.