Rüdiger Carl has been a mercurial presence in European free music for four and a half decades – a former neighbour of Peter Brötzmann's in Wuppertal, West Germany, erstwhile member of the monumental Globe Unity Orchestra, collaborator with drummers Louis Moholo-Moholo and Sven-Åke Johansson and pioneer of the accordion in free improvisation. His 1972 debut album, King Alcohol was, at least at first sight, noticeably more influenced by US free-jazz than later developments, with Rüdiger playing a honking, unbounded tenor sax – and yet there are idiosyncrasies here too. Günter Christmann's rollicking trombone occupies the place you might expect a bass to sit, adding a braying, quick-witted commentary to Rüdiger's tumbling ideas. But it's drummer Detlef Schönenberg who really lifts the session out of fire-music cliché, with an endlessly inventive, minutely detailed clatter of pinging toms, wood-blocks, cymbals and gongs, carried off with a playful bounce and lightness of touch. Originally released on Brötzmann's FMP label, and here reissued together with an extra CD containing 70 minutes of previously unreleased cuts from the same sessions, it's a must for connoisseurs of heavy Euro sounds.