LOL COXHILL, PIERRE COURBOIS, JASPER VAN'T HOF-TOVERBAL SWEET, LP, 1972, UK / NETHERLANDS

The second of innumerable albums released by soprano sax master Lol Coxhill during his lifetime (he sadly passed away earlier this year), Toverbal Sweet arrived on the heels of Coxhill's tenure in two key Canterbury concerns, Delivery and Kevin Ayers And The Whole World. This trio outing finds him paired with one half of Nurse With Wound-listers Association PC in the form of keyboardist Jasper Van't Hof (also of Pork Pie and Electric Circus) and drummer Pierre Courbois, who'd previously been mixing it up with Gunter Hampel, Manfred Schoof and Alexander Von Schlippenbach in Hampel's Heartplants group. The live recording quality here is a mite rough (in keeping with Coxhill's warts and all DIY approach heard on his debut solo Ear Of The Beholder), but the glow generated by this inspired trifecta quickly renders such concerns moot, with the arc, swoop and drunken list of Lol's delicately shaded soprano statements snaking through and spiraling out from the wily and invigoratingly raw thrust and parry generated by Van't Hof's insistent vamping and Courbois' Robert Wyatt-like rhythmic attack.