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By Any Means - Live at Crescendo

Stewart Lee, The Sunday Times

Charles Gayle spent two decades living, and playing his saxophone, on the streets of New York. His last London gig was at Baltic, the Southwark restaurant, where bejewelled diners yakked all through his set, an inconvenient intrusion into their scoffing.

But the hip Swedes of Norrköping’s Club Crescendo ditch their meatballs and dig Gayle’s new trio, with the bassist William Parker and John Coltrane’s final drummer, Rashied Ali. Gayle’s ferocious releases have, sometimes, been punctuated by gentler projects, and on the first disc here he is in unusually tuneful mood, before the second sees him cautiously unfurl his thunderous sheets of sound. Shut up! And listen.