by Thom JurekIn 1971, Berlin was the killing floor of free jazz -- at least in Europe where people like Ornette Coleman, Cecil Taylor, John Coltrane, Archie Shepp, and Pharoah Sanders ceased to matter for a while. The Europeans couldn't believe the Americans had beaten them to the creation of a new music that threw their own centuries-old conventions completely out the window and set them afire. They figured if they couldn't play jazz or free jazz like the Americanskis, they might as well create a new Euro free jazz. (It's amazing how much it sounds like American free jazz of the same period though.) Some are shell-shocked to this day and have insisted on a neo-fascistic, "Euro-only" improvised music. It would be hilarious if it weren't sad. These four guys had other ideas. They were looking to take the free jazz thing to a limit heretofore unimagined let alone untried. Given these three concerts that were recorded during a week in which Orne...