Zach Top Strasbourg 82 [VINYL]

Cut from the original master tapes and never-before released, Gearbox Records add another true AAA production to their astonishing archive of important gems - this time from drum legend Art Blakey. Resplendent with Gearbox's high-end production specifications, it comes as a premium, double 180g gatefold vinyl and double gatefold CD with obi strip, mastered in-house at their all-valve (vacuum tube) future-analogue studio in London. The recording itself stands as the earliest full-length live document of the Terence Blanchard/Donald Harrison edition of the Jazz Messengers - a unit that would define the band for the next few years and help power the Young Lions movement from revivalism into something deeper. At 62, Blakey certainly was not mellowing with age. If anything, he was doubling down on the mission. "You go to school to get your diploma," he once said. "You come with me to get your education." Strasbourg 82 is that education in progress: live and unfiltered, and captured at the very moment the university was being rebuilt. Available on double LP in gatefold sleeve with obi strip: 12" / 180g / 33 1/3RPM / stereo / AAA and double CD in gatefold sleeve with separate booklet and obi strip. Art Blakey: drums Johnny O'Neal: piano Donald Harrison: alto saxophone Terence Blanchard: trumpet Billy Pierce: tenor saxophone Charles Fambrough: double bass Recorded on 1st April 1982 in Strasbourg, France Mastered by Caspar Sutton-Jones at Gearbox Records, London Press: "A revelation in the crispness of it's fidelity and dynamics of the group's performance with a 62-year old Blakey defying his age by rumbling through such classics as "Along Came Betty" and "Moaning" as well as an interesting run through Miles Davis' "Eighty-One" that really allows the new blood to shine." - Downbeat Magazine "There have been so many extraordinary iterations of Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers that some remarkable editions have tended to get overlooked. I think that's the case with the 1982 band... Strasbourg 82 shows that the Blakey bands never stopped pushing the envelope." - NPR