John Surman was in his headlong 20s when these sessions were recorded by the collective threesome known simply as The Trio (with ex-pat Americans Barre Phillips on bass and the late Stu Martin on drums), and a subsequent one-off big band built around The Trio with Kenny Wheeler, Dave Holland and a briefly-glimpsed Chick Corea among the sidemen. Originally released as two LPs (The Trio and Conflagration), they were reissued as a compilation in the 1990s, and now again with remastered audio and new liner notes including current interviews with Surman and Phillips. Though the big-band sections are sporadically gripping in their wailing improv polyphony and jostling Mingus-like clamour on Phillips’ shapely ‘6's and 7's’ (also here in a hypnotically slow-burning Trio version), Martin's anthemically thrashing ‘Nuts’, or soloing from edgy alto master Mike Osborne and the inimitable Harry Beckett, it's the 17 tracks from The Trio's March 1970 debut session that truly distinguish this set. Surman mostly concentrated on the hulking baritone saxophone (adapting Coltrane's off-the-horn falsetto sounds and multiphonics in lungbusting marathon solos), Phillips combines warmth of tone with an intuitively Charlie Haden-esque melodic freedom, and drummer Martin supplies a muscular, idiomatically diverse interpretation of Elvin-influenced free bop. The themes – from Surman's sonorously folksy and then freeracing ‘Incantation’, to Phillips’ magnificently hooky, rocking ‘Green Walnut’ and delicate, Spanishtinged three-way meditation ‘Centering’ – are as compelling as the flat-out blowing on a landmark session for early Europe-based free-jazz.