Wendell Harrison – clarinet, saxophone | Juma Santos – percussion

Executive producer: Mike Khoury. Photo credit: Barbara Barefield. Pluto artwork design: Virgil Grady. Artwork: Mike Johnston. Layout: Mark Rudolph.

Recorded at Rebirth Studios, Detroit, Michigan. Mastered by Terry Herald.

Tracklist: 1. Jazz On The Run 2. Transistion 3. Riding With Pluto 4. New Spaces And Faces 5. The Calling 6. Moods In Blue And Red 7. The Soul Of Ossalee 8. Dirge For Harold McKinney 9. The One In All Spirit

The 8th House is a disc of solo clarinet and saxophone improvisations with a few duets with Juma Santos thrown in. Wendell Harrison and the Tribe were pioneers along with BAG in St. Louis and the AACM in Chicago. Here Wendell recalls some of the freedom and soul from his early work with the Tribe in Detroit. He is joined by percussionist Juma Santos on a few tracks. You may recall Juma from his work with Miles Davis on the Bitches Brew record, or some of his work with Marion Brown.

“Ex-member of famed ‘70s Detroit group The Tribe, saxophonist and clarinetist Harrison courageously treads cosmic waters alone with a monosyllabic instrument in an exploration of freedom and purity, riff-walking in naked space with only an occasional conga/bongo mojo contributed by Juma Santos — known for work on Miles Davis’s Bitches Brew album. All nine tracks were laid down on first take, stream-of-consciousness style, following the Kerouacian belief that one’s first idea is always the best and, as Jack would say, “dictated by the Holy Ghost.” “Jazz on the Run” is a burning percussive odyssey that smelts popping rankled note vines of Harrison’s tenor sax into Santos’s voodoo tribal groove. At times, you can hear Harrison attempting to stretch beyond the doors of mortality, trying to cop a peek at his eternal destination. The Eighth House is shadowed, mystic music of the moment; one man’s harmonic quest to unlock Rudnyar’s “wondrous equation of destiny” with a skeleton key — his horn.” —Christopher Bahnsen, eCurrent.com

CD version (incl. shipment cost world-wide)