Before going into the review I would like to say that the people who claim that this is just noise does not know what they are talking about. I have listened to free- (which this record really isn't) and avantgarde jazz extensively for the last ten years and there are undoubtedly some records that can be described as noise but this isn't one of them. Just because the music puts more emphasis on textures and improvisation than on conventional melodies and "swing" doesn't make it noise. You guys have a lot to learn!!!

About the music, this features one of the best groups Taylor ever led. Drummer Andrew Cyrille, bassists Henry Grimes and Alan Silva
and altoist Jimmy Lyons were "regular" (if that can be said about guys who rarely had the chance to perform in public)band members of taylors various groups over the years. Added to this nucleus was multi-reedist McIntyre and trumpeter Eddie Gale Stevens. Especially the former is crucial to the overall sound of the album. The basses were used in a very cool way:Grimes kept the pulse going, functioning as a "traditonal" bass while Silva was "freer" and played with a bow, often in a very high register, commenting on the soloists various movements.

The first song "Steps" features McIntyre on alto (Stevens does not play on this song). It starts with a very complicated stop-start theme before an almost boogie-woogieish piano line introduces a screaming, intense McIntyre solo. The energy level is VERY high with Taylor variously playing/changing patterns and improvising along with the soloists. The greatest part of the song is Taylors solo which starts as a piano-drums duet before kicking into overdrive with the basses joining in. Awesome!!!

The next song "Enter, Evening" is a ballad of sorts with MCIntyre playing oboe. This could have drifted into impressionistic muzak but Taylors edgy playing keeps everyone on their toes. I have always heard this song as a dialogue between Silva and the soloists. His playing really comes through on this number. I really like the trumpet solo on this one...

The title track is VERY complicated with at least 20 different, short motives being played in various instrument combinations before McIntyres bass clarinet solo begins and the madness starts!!! I don't like the trumpet solo on this one but otherwise it's perfect and as far away from meaningless noise as it gets.

The last song is a Taylor solo piece (with drums and bass) that is brilliantly constructed. Because of the many instruments, Taylors solos on the other songs are quite short and this album seems to focus more on group interactions than individual solos so this song gives Taylor an opportunity to stretch out.

This album is really Cecils big break from the jazz traditon. It was his first proper recording in three and a half years and he had tons of great ideas that he just wanted to get out of his system. Cecil Taylor recorded another album, "Conquistador" a bit later which is even better. That album has only two songs and only one saxophone which means that there are more opportunities for the players (especially Cecil) to stretch out. I's also MUCH more accessible than"Unit Structures" with less rapsodic and more melodic themes. Unfortunately, it's out of print. Blue Note should really reissue that album-it would probably cost them much less than a Norah "BORING" Jones marketing campaign...

Cecil Taylor's "Unit Structures" is an avant-garde classic that documents his creativity in 1966, showing him continuing to push the boundaries of creative music. The sonic intensity and tendency toward collective group improvisation is in full force here. To some extent, this is in contrast to the recordings he did for Candid just a few years earlier, which, although radical, were still largely based around "tunes." The musicians in Taylor's group are legendary in their own right: Jimmy Lyons is on alto; Alan Silva is on bass; and Andrew Cyrille is on drums, to name just a few of the masters who take Taylor's unit structures to incredible heights.

I have only given the recording four stars because this session is definitely in dire need of remastering. For such classic and incredibly executed music, it is unfortunate that the sound of this Blue Note CD is fairly muddy and lacking in color. It is almost maddening to hear Taylor's piano sound as though it is underwater. The drums sound dull and Silva's incredible bass playing lacks clarity on this CD. Try to find an original LP copy of this session, because it will sound much better than this CD, which is a poor representation of the session.

I played _Tales (8 Whisps)_ from this recording for a course in jazz that I taught in a college this past semester. While the students and I listened, we read Cecil Taylor's liner notes for the album, which do not make sense syntactically as sentences but do make sense if read as Modernist poetry. My students were in general agreement that the liner notes and the music explained each other, and that both would have been more difficult to understand without the other. So I recommend to all of you to read the liner notes while listening, at least the first time, and keep an open mind and open ears. However, you don't have to like all types of free jazz to appreciate this music. The students hated Ornette Coleman and had trouble with the in-your-face qualities in Coltrane's _Meditations_ album (though they generally enjoyed Coltrane's earlier work through _A Love Supreme_), but they all enjoyed listening to Cecil Taylor and his group. For my part, I would say that Cecil Taylor and the artists he works with exemplify inspired spontaneous composition. Listen to this music for a while, and you will perceive the order and coherence in it. And once you do, you will be stimulated to seek out more recordings by Taylor. Recommended for fans of Modernist classical music and modern jazz alike.

This album, along with Taylor's other Blue Note Album Conquistador, mark the first moves by Taylor into his fully mature group style. Most of his work since these two ground-breaking recordings, has mined the veins he discovered in this period. Of the two albums, Unit Structures is the more tightly organized, all appearences to the contrary.

Unit Structures really has to be understood as a series of compositions. Unlike much of the New York avant-garde music of the 60's, this really isn't "free" jazz. Taylor's music is always highly controlled...just listen to how his piano "directs" the soloists and the rhythm section. His is not a cacophonous art, despite it's surface. Many of the works are based on predetermined modal scales, improvisations based on precomposed motives and themes, and obssessive development of tiny rhythmic cells. In many ways, Taylor shows influences of the European avant-garde (or influence on the European avant-garde) and yet the music always has a sense of it's jazz, blues and African roots. As such, I think Taylor may have been the most influential jazz composer of the 60's...paving the way for the experiements of Roscoe Mitchell, Henry Threadgill and other structuralists of the late 20th century avant-garde in jazz.

I think many others have hit on the way to listen to this music. Don't try to figure it out right away. Let the waves of sound wash over you first. As you listen more and more, the sense and structure of this music becomes more clear. This is music that can engage the head, but engages the heart first. It is almost shamanic music.

.... For my ears this is the stuff of greatness. .... But I do suggest that no matter who you worship that you occassionally take a radical plunge in a new musical direction. This album is a great radical plunge. ....Play it several times over a few months. It may, God help you, start to make sense. You may start to hear the melodies, the harmonies, the overall structure of the pieces and the skill of the players. Trust me- it is all there to be heard. I love this album. Always have. ....Give Cecil a listen. He is unique and an inspiration to many. You may like what you hear a lot. I did.

Cecil Taylor's work is characterized by hard-hitting, VERY fast piano playing that doesn't conform much to traditional jazz structures of melody or rhythm. It requires having approached jazz through some other course first to appreciate, which in a nutshell means that if you aren't into avant-garde jazz (Ornette Coleman, Archie Shepp, etc.), this is going to sound like so much pounding on instruments. Even when he's doing standards (there are none on this record) they don't fall into any traditional interpretation...they go WAY leftfield, and fans of the avant style wouldn't have it any other way.

If, however, you're a fan of smooth jazz or even just more traditional jazz (Coltrane, Miles, etc.) this record - nay, MOST of Taylor's records - will drive you out the room. Listen to a friend's first and see if you're into it. This is NOT an impulse purchase.

Cecil Taylor forced people to question their beliefs about not only what is jazz music, but what is music at all, and his music is still making people run these thoughts through their minds today. A true avant-gardist, but with an obvious love for the style of Monk and other jazz greats. Taylor must be admired for his uncompromising innovation, and his pure talent on his instrument simply cannot be denied. Unit Structures is one of his brightest shining records and I reccommend it to anyone looking for something to seriously push their limits.

"Unit Stuctures" was the culmination of the development of Cecil Taylor's unique vision. All the brilliant music he has made since then, since 1966, has been the unfolding of that vision. Taylor's solo work is amazing, but I find his ensemble work to be even more impressive because the architecture is more complex. This recording's ensemble includes Jimmy Lyons on alto, who would play with Cecil until his untimely death in 1986, and Andrew Cyrille on drums. That trio was arguably responsible for some of Taylor's best music, including on the "Akisakila" live recording. Here they are joined by 2 bassists and two more horns. "Unit Structures" is not as wild or intense as some of Taylor's later work, but to say it is challenging is an understatement, and I for one never tire of hearing it -- like the greatest art of all genres it always has more to reveal. Never mind the incomprehension of the multitude, aided and abetted by the Ken Burns series, you cannot claim to be familiar with modern jazz if you haven't heard this music! Ornette Coleman, Cecil Taylor and the late Coltrane are the indisputable foundations for all post-bop innovation in jazz -- avoid them like an ostrich if you think innovation is bad. I believe that Cecil Taylor the artist and "Unit Structures" the recording will be seen in the future as some of the finest accomplishments of 20th Century Art.

I got this cd about 2 years ago, and have been digesting it since then. This is not an easy listen, I was actually mad after the first few listens. It really clicked one night when I put it on(headphones) as I was turning in, half asleep, I began to understand the next day. I was listening too hard! The key here is to relax, and have the music in the background. This album is not for everyone, and not for every mood. The best word I can find to describe it is 'abstract'. I usually jam this while playing Unreal Tournament, or something equally as mayhemic!

I heard Steps and the rest of the tune-pieces that go with it on Unit Structures back in the 1960s along with a lot of other LPs that Cecil did such as the one he played on as one of many artists, Jazz Composers Orchestra, which was led by trumpeter Michael Mantler and featured others like Paroah Sanders, Don Cherry and Roswell Rudd.

Since those days, I have often played Unit Structure for more than just nostalgic reasons. Steps and the other tune-pieces were, and still are, a perfect example of how free form music-sounds should come out of your axe (instrument).

As a musician (drummer), who was once a member of the late, vibraphonist Bill Lewis's group, US (Contemporary Music Society) (Bill always dug Cecil) and a poet, who wrote a poem called "Unit Structures - As-Of-A-Now-Section-Poem" as a review/poem for Unit Structures in Distant Drummer newspaper, and for which Cecil, through his manager years ago, once asked me to do with Cecil, all I can say is, Check this out! You'll be in seventh heaven on a slow boat to Mars, floating - scheme to dream, not yet out of bounds, get it, read it, bet it ,said it! 30 years ago, man!

THE Mastermind in Jazz - good old Taylor - made me once again believe in the existence of art. Like Momentum Space or Trance, it really left a deep impression. However, I would have loved him to play the whole album without a stop - like he normally treated his audiance on live concerts he gave.

It's hard to understand why anyone would be proud not to understand something and the listener from Seattle's remark that this music has no form proves he doesn't. What established Unit Structures as a classic is that Taylor paved the way for composition within the sphere of so-called free jazz. Most of this music is tightly ordered (Taylor gets remarkable sonorities from the two reeds especially) and the solos elaborate on the "unit structures." Maybe the trick for a new listener is not to listen too hard, but rather let the music wash over you until you can hear it with some familiarity. I've been listening to Taylor for more about 15 years and for me this album remains one of his most refreshing, enigmatic, and joyful works. Unfortunately, Taylor's liner notes aren't too helpful; for a better understanding of his music, check out Gary Giddins's Visions of Jazz and Ekkehard Jost's Free Jazz.

I bought 'Unit Structures' two years ago on the advice of a jazz aficionado who shrugged his shoulders and recommended it when I asked, "What's a good Cecil Taylor CD to start out on?"

Let me tell you. I've listened to it at least five times while in a conscious, wakeful state, and it is absolutely impenetrable. These days, it sits in my CD alarm clock so that, when the thing goes off every morning, I have to race out of bed to turn the CD off. God, what a dreadful cacophany!

Yeah, I know, I don't 'get it.' It's over my head. Taylor was 'breaking new ground,' he was 'exploring improvisation without form,' 'creating structure without melody.' Well still, even though I've heard all this, I am proud to admit that I don't get it. It don't mean a thing... you know what I'm saying?