This superb 1971 album from saxophonist Buddy Terry exists just about as far along the not-free-jazz-to-free-jazz scale as is palatable for the jazz fan and indeed music aficionado who just doesn’t get free jazz. There are moments in the high speed 12 minute bop opus Sodom and Gomorrah and in the four part opening suite that almost descend into the kind of musical cacophony that I can perhaps admire but struggle to enjoy, but Terry and co. always pull it back at the crucial moment, either to super tight, high expertise bebop, spacey, progressive spiritual jazz, or precision engineered, funk-flavoured jazz. 

Across five tracks, Awareness is an extremely inventive, complicated and exciting jazz outing, with tracks that switch mood, direction, tempo and rhythm, and that have unexpected left turn codas and intriguing false endings. The grooves are at times tranquil then frantic, the band equally at home churning out fiery speedster bebop, or spectacularly swinging head-nodding soul jazz. Uncompromising, searching, intense, it’s a jazz album that’s both powerful and beautiful.