Originally recorded for Chris Blackwell’s Island label in the early 1970s, this pair of albums from saxophonist John Surman saw him taking his music to higher levels of experimentation. The solo Westering Home has Surman offering up a wide range of styles, from the meditational ‘Mock Orange’ to the sea shanty strangeness of ‘Hornpipe’. The newly discovered use of multi-track recording allows him the freedom to utilise other instrumentation in the compositions, as well as build up layers of his baritone sax playing – the best example being the slightly sinister sounding ‘Outside The Scorpion’ where free jazz squeal is surrounded by the advance of a well-drilled, booming bass horn army. Elsewhere ‘Watershed’ adds musique concrete chain clinking to the mix, before the hovering sound of a lone recorder drifts in like a storm-tossed gull. There is an almost painterly quality to the work Surman plays here, as he splashes out colourful miniature sound portraits and abstracted landscapes that have retained their freshness. Morning Glory is a group project with Surman as leader. Here the music feels as though it was deeply influenced by Miles Davis’s electric period, with blurred shades of Bitches Brew billowing through the free jams and jazz fusion explorations. Surman is in fine form (as are the rest of the group), but it is Norwegian guitarist Terje Rypdal who steals most of the thunder. He is especially impressive on ‘Iron Man’ (no, not a cover of the Black Sabbath song) where he explodes into John McLaughlin- esque action, forcing the rest of the group to scurry along behind him until Surman’s screaming soprano sax puts the brakes on this wild ride. Equally impressive is the long ‘Hinc Illae Lacrimae – For Us All (Hence These Tears)’, which sedately sails into a free-blowing tempest of improvisation that is more hard rock than jazz in places. Both records show how Surman was moving away from the music he exhibited on his early records for Decca, and towards a new form of expression and identity. This would later be realised on his work for ECM, and the rest is history. These two CDs return to the start of that new direction.