At long last - a new HWF live album! Recorded in March 2010 in Monmouth in the UK, this features the three bald blusterers in fine form...

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“Wilkinson and cohorts use co-operative tumult and tumble as a thesis; linearity is evident, but Wilkinson defers to collective swirl and push. His horn is up front and sometimes sounds the lead instrument, but this isn’t really the case, and his cryptic vocals are totally visceral and unnerving. Fell endures low volume but on The Submission he sparks a woozy arco that snaps him into focus and takes the activities to outer space. The perpetually raw Hession similarly suffers the mix with loss of tonal variation but keeps this train moving way ahead of schedule. The recording captures a pure communal flame making session.” Ben Hall THE WIRE

“This album will surely blow your socks off, and I can already start by highly recommending it to anyone interested in forceful free jazz and in sax trios. The three lengthy pieces on this album are freely improvised, yet all three have an uncanny sense of unity and direction: raw, merciless, powerful, loud, but interestingly enough never noisy - although that is of course relative. The trio has been playing and recording together for the last twenty years, and that can be heard, felt even, as all three move forward as a three-headed monster, but then one with a heart as big as it is raw, because they do not shy away from emotional delivery. Sometimes the storm dies down a little for slower, calmer moments, yet the intensity and the raw sensitivity never diminish, an amazing accomplishment. The trio demonstrates how musical drive, expressivity and forward motion can be achieved without clear rhythm but with incredible pulse and collective energy. It is in any case their best album so far, rawer and with a more attentive audience than on 'Bogey's', with more unity and coherence than 'foom! foom!', less chaotic and with better sound quality than 'The Horrors Of Darmstadt', ... and it shows how the trio has managed to perfect its style and approach, making it even more direct, more impactful and cohesive. The real deal in free jazz!” Stef FREE JAZZ BLOGSPOT

“In their heyday in the ’90s, the threesome was an awesome prospect both live and on disc; all three played with the kind of wild freedom that had characterized ’60s free jazz (yes, jazz, not improv) but had not been heard much since. Around 2000, after the release of 'St. John’s' on the Ecstatic Peace label (proprietor Thurston Moore was a fan), they went their separate ways. When their 2010 reunion tour was announced, many wondered if the three would still generate their former fire. They need not have worried. Right from the first notes of the opener, First Fall, the years fall away as all three simultaneously hit top gear in a bravura display of high-energy improvisation. Wilkinson immediately grabs the limelight, straight away playing with a raw intensity that other saxophonists might hit once a night; for Wilkinson, that is the baseline from which he then builds. Alternating between saxophones, he solos relentlessly, keeping a seamless barrage of phrases flowing from his horns. When he does intermittently pause from blowing, he is likely to pour forth improvised, wordless vocals with as much gusto as he plays. It seems entirely appropriate that 'Two Falls & a Submission' takes its title from the parlance of all-in wrestling. Hession and Fell never act as support players. Throughout, the drummer matches Wilkinson’s intensity, never letting the pace flag so as to keep the pressure up. At times it sounds as if he and Wilkinson are involved in a one-on-one duel to see who will crack first; of course, neither of them does. For his part, Fell stokes the fire with his own propulsive phrases, constantly driving things forward and holding them together. The end result is an amalgam of three equal contributions that fit together perfectly; the absence of any one of them would make the whole feel incomplete. Even when the three move down a gear — as they sometimes must, given the relentless pace they set — they still retain all the qualities that make this trio special: intensity, togetherness, equality. Awesome stuff.” John Eyles DUSTED

“There’s nothing polite about Two Falls & A Submission (3½ stars), the first new recording in more than a decade by three of England’s most devoted and ferocious free-jazz practitioners. The trio subscribes to a particularly bruising style echoing Peter Brötzmann, marked by fierce overblowing, lacerating tones and frenetic rhythm. Wilkinson continues to be a marvel on baritone, ranging from gut-rumbling honks to upper-register squeals that could raise the dead.” Peter Margasak DOWN BEAT

“Pressurized intensity would appear to be Wilkinson’s favored mode of expression. In truth there are points during the CD’s 60 minutes, when reed slurs, cries and mastication appear inadequate for all he wants to express. At those occasions he begins vocalizing, either with echoing basso puffs or acute yelps. On First Fall for instance, these aren’t random grunts, but yodels, whoops, lip-bubbling and chanting that fit the narrative the way similar verbal outbursts from tribal musicians complement their playing. Nonetheless, with First Fall percolating for more than 32½ minutes and the other two tracks nearly 16 and almost 13 minutes respectively, it’s evident that the saxophonist’s productivity has no beginning and no end. Tracks appear to finish when he runs out or breath or stamina, not ideas. On later tracks with Fell’s sprawling, percussive bass strokes and Hession’s drags strokes and shivering cymbals behind him, Wilkinson lets loose with throated reflux from the baritone saxophone that so quickly soars to screaming altissimo that you wonder if he has actually returned to the smaller sax. Even as The Submission ends with a cornucopia of reed-shredding harmonics and shrill split tones, it’s nearly certain that the defining climax of moderato and curvaceous line extensions comes from the alto. With more than one-half hour devoted to First Fall however, the saxophonist as well as his cohorts have even more space in which to explore the variants of dissonant interaction. Backed by Fell’s unvarying rhythmic pulse and Hession’s drags, rebounds and door-banging smacks, Wilkinson keeps spinning new tones and timbres from his horns. When he isn’t vocally screaming multiphonics, the saxophonist builds up a collection of abstract lines, staccato vibrations and intense glossolalia as well as juddering bites and snorts. At points the drummer responds with cross sticking and drumstick scratches on a cymbal top as Fell scrubs spiccato textures. And, as elsewhere, there are sequences, almost always played on alto saxophone, where the reedist proves that, if so inclined, he can create a moderato, impressionistic interlude. Those intervals don’t last very long however, and shortly afterwards Wilkinson’s reed playing is off in the stratosphere again, packing enough ideas and reed timbres into his exposition that would give many other saxophonists material for a dozen forays. Finally as the rhythm section rolls along unperturbed and sympathetic, the saxophonist trades the split tones and flutters for slides and silences.” Ken Waxman JAZZWORD