Terry Edwards is a musician probably best known for his collaborations and sessions. Accomplished on many instruments, he’s added “winds” (trumpet, flugelhorn) and reeds (saxophone) to the records of a multitude of pop and indie rock luminaries. There’s a long, long list of names Edwards has worked with: Barry Adamson, Dot Allison, Alternative TV, The Blockheads, Billy Bragg, Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds, Comet Gain, Julian Cope, Rhoda Dakar, Gallon Drunk, PJ Harvey, Robyn Hitchcock, Hot Chip, Lydia Lunch, Lush, Glen Matlock, The Nightingales, The Proclaimers, Siouxsie Sue, Sparks, Spiritualized, Subway Sect, The The, Tindersticks and Paul Weller. Edwards has covered The Jesus & Mary Chain, The Cure and The Fall. One of his current projects is the Near Jazz Experience (playing alongside Madness’ Mark Bedford and Simon Charterton of Zook) who versioned Jimi Hendrix and were then versioned themselves by On-U Sound’s Adrian Sherwood. 

Edwards is about to issue “The Köln Concerts”, a collection of performances recorded at Stadtgarten’s “per->SON Symposium” in 2002. Title-wise the set’s a tribute to legendary pianist Keith Jarrett’s equally legendary live album of the same name, which not coincidentally celebrates its 50th anniversary this year. Edwards’ LP contains incendiary, improvised takes of songs that spanned his career – up until that date – and include numbers that would later appear on his self-titled solo long-player debut and also his 2010 outing, “Cliches”. 

Cavernous, clanking percussion crashes around “Dipped In Tea”, whose sax line sounds like Archie Shepp exiled in Paris, on BYG-Actuel, despite riffing on a famous nursery rhyme. On “Dinner Jazz”, tender tango accordion accompanies Edwards’ romantic reed. “The B.O.T.H.” is an 11-minute epic, which features treated textures that summon a storm brewing. A blue, muted horn, squawking, skronking, cutting through an emotional, ambient expanse, that might put you in mind of Miles Davis’ “He Loved Him Madly”. The bopping, bleating “Boost!!” Is a burst of garage psyche, with rocking mod hammond and syncopation. There are duets with guitarist Marc Ribot and violinist Alexander Balenescu. The former is an abstract, angular piece of avant art, where the two musicians join together in honking no wave blasts. Ribot’s singular virtuosity firing off in freaky flamenco tangents. The latter is a far calmer, chamber-like piece.

During the endless solos, the “beat” balladry of “Didjeridu & Trumpet” Edwards doesn’t seem to draw a breath. Similarly “Stacking Beans” spotlights Edwards’ impossible circular breathing and blowing, surrounded only by fizzing, atmospheric electronic effects. Intro-ed by kazoo, “Homicide / Suicide” buzzes, distorted, like a night in New York’s `80s Mudd Club art / punk milieu. The rumbling, pumping, pulsating synth backing “Never Understand” is a ringer for Marty Rev. 

Edwards interprets a couple of standards. He first tackled Thelonious Monk’s “Well You Needn’t”, as a solo piano improvisation, for a 1994 Rough Trade single – which also included a Napalm Death medley. Here, however, the piece is totally transformed, full of angry energy, punchy power chords and tough trap drums. Like something you might expect to find at the socially, politically charged end of Chicago label International Anthem’s current catalogue. His reading of Earle Hagen’s “Harlem Nocturne” is cinematic, noir, serenading as if silhouetted on a “West Side Story” fire escape. My terribly talented friend Brother Lee, of The Inner Space Quartet, describes the entire, extraordinary endeavour as “ECM on peyote, further out.”

Terry Edwards’ The Köln Concerts 2002 can be ordered directly from Sartorial Records.