This 2001 re-release on this Mutablemusic CD of the LP from 1982 on 1750 Arch Records is a fresh breeze in the somewhat over-simplified and commercialized world of ethnic hints and glances, which in many cases has proven to falsify and down-grade the musical roots on which they draw.

This set of tracks were recorded live as live can be, and the story behind the recording and its haphazard occurrence is fresh in itself, portrayed by Philip Elwood, who wrote the original linear notes for the 1982 vinyl.
Elwood describes how Big Black called him up one day to have him write the linear notes to a new record. ”What record?”, Elwood answered, completely lost. ”Our record – You know what I mean? Our record!”. And so it was.
A few years earlier, as Elwood had encountered Black at a Pharoah Sanders session in San Francisco, he was invited over to Black’s place. As he walked into the house, which burst at it seams with music (like a Donald Duck cartoon house in Disney’s world), he was introduced to Anthony Wheaton.
Black said: ”We’re working out! Dig?”.
Elwood was impressed by the way Wheaton played his classical guitar, while Black ”rippled” across his five drum heads, calling up a cascading response from Wheaton.
The bringing together of Wheaton and Black was the lucky whim of a friend of Wheaton, who thought, rightly, that this would provide Wheaton with the creative freedom that his special talent craved for.
Black described Wheaton as having ”the freedom of a jazzman but the technique and structure of a classicist”.

Black grew up in Georgia, picking up influences from the Caribbean and the Bahamas – and later from Mother Africa herself.

”China Lake” is the starter, opening in watery, mellow guitar caresses, inviting the tender rhythms of the drums, played directly, of course, hands-on (tumbas and bongos). There is a peculiar softness in this accelerating motion down the trail, and the sound is colorful – not in the least brutal or crude, even though it turns into an up-beat, fast event.
I am surprised at the merger of these instruments, wherein the strumming and the twanging of the acoustic guitar seamlessly flow in a coherent progression with the drums, extremely elegant and with a classical tradition fuel-injected into the sunny rhythms of the Caribbean or the Southeastern seaboard of the United States. It’s peculiar and very beautiful, and very much in it’s own vein, in an unexpected possibility of sound.

”Pavan”, sporting Wheaton as the sole composer, introduces a true classical – or troubadour – atmosphere, or a merger of the two, and the guitar almost sounds like a lute here. Wheaton dances up and down the neck of the guitar, and the sound is full, giving a palpable sense of the wooden body of his instrument.
Suddenly Black’s hectic drumming picks up and breaks in, while Wheaton rests his guitar, and vice versa – until the guys sort of start to accompany each other, and it’s hard to tell who is leading the way here; such is the fusion of these seemingly different sound worlds and traditions. The sound itself is clear-cut and rounded, with shiny surfaces and perfect dimensions. It’s a treat to let this music – unlikely as it is – flow around you like the water of a Colorado stream. The melody is a sweet, thoughtful incident of a medieval scent, resting on centuries of human artfulness.

”Jigs” moves directly into the atmosphere of Bach, but with an Incredible Stringband feel of old British Isles traditions, with a melody in the guitar which evokes scenes of medieval and renaissance dances, where fair maidens and gallant riders circle each other under the eyes of dukes and counts. Black has soloistic passages in the piece, producing brownish, noble, and sometimes curiously bent, glissandoing sounds on his tumbas and bongos, wonderfully recorded – close and clear - even having you feel – in some cross-sensual phenomena – the soft and cool surfaces of varnished hard-wood furniture! The feeling is noble and sensual, like the thoughts you may receive while relaxing in a room filled with the fragrances of amber incense. There is something triumphant about this particular piece.

”Afro-Cuban Lullaby” approaches in these stark, rounded, spherical percussion flashes of Black’s tumbas and bongos, having you thud and vibrate between the corners of sound, rubbery, soothing – but instantly clear-cut and exactly defined; I can’t get over these peculiar properties of this music; hasty, clear-cut, rhythmic and soft, fondling and noble at the same time, in this exotic incense atmosphere of enlightenment and appeasement.

“Trinidad” concludes this all too short CD, starting on a note resembling Led Zeppelin and “Stairway to Heaven”, with very full guitarisms, also diverging your referential thoughts in the direction of Joni Mitchell and her private tunings. Black’s drums only accompany – softly and precisely – in the first part of this piece, giving a suiting basis for the flowering, glittering and waterfalling gushes of chordal bliss from Wheaton’s acoustic guitar, which even hints at some bluesy influences here and there, but only audible to connoisseurs’ ears.

This CD has been a revelation to me, in it’s perfect merger of the guitar and the tumbas and bongos, and in its soft and noble presentation of events that could easily be blurred or crude, but here rising in an almost Eastern consciousness of enlightenment.