Pendulum (Remastered 2025) Mike Taylor Quartet

• 1 But Not For Me (Remastered 2025) 06:01
• 2 Exactly Like You (Remastered 2025) 02:47
• 3 A Night In Tunisia (Remastered 2025) 13:57
• 4 Pendulum (Remastered 2025) 07:48
• 5 To Segovia (Remastered 2025) 05:31
• 6 Leeway (Remastered 2025) 06:25
• Total Runtime 42:29

Info for Pendulum (Remastered 2025)

Decca Records are officially reissuing two albums by British jazz composer, pianist, and band leader Mike Taylor, on vinyl for the very first time since their original release: 'Pendulum' (1966) and 'Trio' (1967). Part of Decca's British Jazz Explosion series, these significant recordings have long been sought after by collectors and connoisseurs.

Alongside Taylor on 'Pendulum', the quartet comprised John Hiseman on drums, Tony Reeves on bass, and Dave Tomlin on saxophone. With a slightly (possibly deliberately) misleading title, 'Trio' features Taylor, Hiseman, with Jack Bruce and/or Ron Rubin on bass. Both albums were originally recorded at Lansdowne Studios, under the supervision of Denis Preston.

These new editions have been remastered at Gearbox Studios, London, using the original tapes (or high-resolution digital source files, taken from the original tapes), which were transferred to a Studer reel-to-reel tape machine, then mastered using an all-valve analogue mastering desk.

In the only obituary at the time of his death at the age of just 30, that followed years of heavy LSD and cannabis use, psychosis and ultimately homelessness, a tiny column in the Melody Maker written by Bob Dawbarn reflected that Taylor “seemed too sensitive and strange to belong in the rough, tough world of the jazz man….He looked like a bank clerk and acted like a mystic.”

Raised by his grandparents in Ealing, West London, Mike Taylor took to the piano early and after a stint in the RAF was a regular performer at the all night jazz sessions in the basement of the Nucleus coffee bar in Covent Garden. Through the early sixties he played in various ensembles with a pre-Cream Jack Bruce and Ginger Baker and the future members of his Quartet. Drummer Jon Hiseman and bassist Tony Reeves would later join prog rock group Colosseum with saxophonist Dave Tomlin playing with psych rock group High Tide while running free jazz sessions at the London Free School, as part of their counter cultural activities. These were exactly the kind of forward thinking and free minded musicians that Mike Taylor needed as he searched for his own sound in the ‘new thing’.

The home for his innovations was Denis Preston’s famous Lansdowne Studios in Holland Park, West London. The writer and radio presenter turned producer, had founded Lansdowne in 1956 firstly as an avenue for skiffle and trad but soon through the cutting edge of modern British Jazz. Only getting the recognition they deserved thanks to Impressed with Gilles Peterson from 2002, compiled by Tony Higgins, Preston’s Lansdowne Series included albums by the likes of Don Rendell-Ian Carr Quintet, Amancio D’Silva, Joe Harriott, and Neil Ardley.

Recorded at Lansdowne in 1966, the same year as The Joe Harriott Double Quintet’s “Indo-Jazz Suite” and Don Rendell Ian Carr 5tet’s “Dusk Fire”, Mike Taylor’s “Pendulum” took its place alongside these pivotal British jazz albums. “This record is something of a landmark in British jazz,” wrote Ian Carr in the original liner notes. “It is one of the first recordings made by the new generation of musicians who grew up when the ‘hard bop’ and ‘funky’ school of playing was already losing its vogue and prophetic voices were learning to pronounce more elegant slogans such as ‘the new thing’, or ‘the avant-garde’”.

Side One of “Pendulum” consists of three standards but as Ian Carr writes: “the chemistry of Taylor’s mind seems to change the piece’s whole identity.” The Quartet’s interpretation of George and Ira Gershwin’s “But Not for Me” sets the tone, with Taylor’s almost discordant piano hanging above and behind the colliding rhythm section while Dave Tomlin’s saxophone soars freely above. Their version of Dizzy Gillespie’s “Night in Tunisia” is even more astounding as the Quartet turn the standard inside out over 13 minutes of freeform improvisation that somehow keeps the funk. It is thought Taylor wrote over 200 pieces of music, so the three on Side Two of “Pendulum” offer just a small insight into his compositional prowess – that straddled free jazz and the avantgarde with modal jazz and classical modernism.

Mike Taylor, piano
Dave Tomlin, soprano saxophone
Tony Reeves, bass
John Hiseman, drums

Recorded at Lansdowne Studios, London, October 1965

Digitally remastered

No biography found.

This album contains no booklet.