MEDICINA by Peter Brötzmann / Peter Friis Nielsen / Peeter Uuskyla

Recorded March 16, 2003 at Bohus Sound Recording, Kungälv, Sweden. Edit, mix and mastering by Dragan Tanascovic and Peeter Uuskyla. Album originally released 2004 by Atavistic.


Recorded in Sweden in 2003, this free jazz power trio features three Peters: Brötzmann (saxophone, clarinet, and taragato), Friis Nielsen (electric bass), and Uuskyla (drums). Medicina contains all the excitement, creativity, and deep listening interplay that signifies why the free approach still has plenty to offer. There are eight cuts here, ranging from just over six minutes to over 13. Propulsion is the key here; everything is force, motion, and friction. Hearing Brötzmann play against an electric bass player who understands how to get under blasts of cacophony and keep it all gurgling forward in a snake-like fashion while giving Uuskyla plenty of counterforce. The high point of the session is the final cut, the lengthy "Hard Time Blues," which begins something like a conventional blues with Brötzmann playing a mournful solo before the rest of the band comes in, and swirls about the low end and "melody" for a few bars before beginning to build a tower of tension and energy. The movement of the piece ebbs and flows with a fine solo by Friis Nielsen before Brötzmann takes the blues line and turns it inside out, moving forward and back across three vamps and warping them enough to create a wall of fury. It's a hell of a finish to a very fine album. Medicina is modern free jazz at its best.
Thom Jurek, All Music Guide


Orininal linernotes:
göteborg, sweden, august 6, 2003 at work, the everyday job to make the living, ones daily bread. thinking of breaking the chain of doing this samething. how bored do you have to be? how much money will you get for all these hours, days and years you are selling off from your lifetime? will there be enough for your kids and the ones you love? will there ever be enough and who will not get enough? why must it be boring to earn ones bread? must it always be boring? so if it´s not going to be boring all the time, you have to shorten the boring time and use it it as a reference point when defining the good time. to make the good times happen at least once a day, you have to get in touch daily with your dreams and visions.
music comes first. the sound, the noise, shaped into form while letting it pass your body. it´s difficult to keep and own the music. it´s not like a piece of art. maybe you can borrow it for a short while. you can anyway never just buy it and keep it for yourself. it´s abstract and untouchable and therefore difficult to dissect. this music is never perfect or complete. it is always in progress. you can change it´s direction, like your path in life. it´s give and take. you must put in some of whatever you have, leave your fingerprints ringing, loud and clear. you are able to change the overall sound by the way you are adding your own sound. like painting and writing, but on the run. you never go backwards for correction. a living music is more ritualistic than a package of rehearsals and concerts. it continues day after day, changing, slowly or fast, like life. it sounds now, in this moment, every day, living only once you have to act in every now situation. there is not too much time to talk about it while you better play it, guts out, music as life security, as a daily spoonful of strong kicking medicine.
and you may maybe be able to handle reality.
peeter uuskyla

Digital releases of some remastered self produced recordings originally made between 1979-2024. Some are previously released in limited editions as cassettes, CDs or LPs and EPs