John & Alice Coltrane's Visions of Infinity

JOHN & ALICE COLTRANE - INFINITY
Impulse, 1972 (original recordings – 1965, 1966)

Original performances by:
John Coltrane (soprano & tenor sax/ bass clarinet, bells, percussion – 4)
Pharoah Sanders (tenor sax, flute, piccolo, tambourine, percussion – 4)
McCoy Tyner (piano – 2,3)
Jimmy Garrison (bass – 2,3)
Elvin Jones (drums – 2,3)
Rashied Ali (drums – 1,4)
Ray Appleton (percussion – 1,4)

Overdubbed with arrangements featuring:
Alice Coltrane (piano – 1,4, harp – 1,2,3, organ – 1,4, vibraphone – 1,3, tamboura – 2, timpani-4)
Charlie Haden (bass – 1,3,4)
Joan Chapman (tamboura – 2)
Oran Coltrane (bells - 2)

And String Orchestra:
James Getzoff, Gerald Vinci, Gordon Marron, Michael White (violin)
Rollice Dale, Myra Kestenbaum, (viola)
Jesse Ehrlich, Edgar Lustgarten (cello)
Murray Adler (concertmaster)

1) Peace On Earth (9.03)
2) Living Space (10.40)
3) Joy (8.01)
4) Leo (10.08)

All Compositions by John Coltrane. All arrangements by Alice Coltrane.

Original tracks on 1,3 and 4 were recorded at Coast Recorders, San Francisco, California, 1965 & 1966. Original tracks on 2 recorded at Van Gelder Recording, Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey, 1965. Overdubs recorded at The Village Recorder, Los Angeles, California 1972. Produced by Ed Michel; supervised and inspired by Alice Coltrane.

(Discographical information obtained from the official Alice Coltrane website at http://www.alicecoltrane.org/discography2.html)

REVIEW

Alice Coltrane’s controversial ‘re-imagining’ of her husband’s late works is a strange item, seen as tantamount to sacrilege by some fans and critics who resented the fact that she’d dared to take his original performances and superimpose them over lush orchestral backgrounds (incidentally, arranged in collaboration with Ornette Coleman), re-dub the original rhythm section parts, and record new solos on piano, organ, harp and timpani. Tracks 2 & 3 were originally recorded by the 'classic Quartet' (John Coltrane, McCoy Tyner, Jimmy Garrison, Elvin Jones) in 1965, while tracks 1 & 4 were recorded by Coltrane's later ensemble (Pharoah Sanders, Alice Coltrane, Garrison, Rashied Ali, and extra percussionist Ray Appleton). On the 1965 tracks, Alice retains the original rhythm section parts, adding string and tamboura parts only, but on the 1966 tracks, Garrison's bass parts are replaced with new recordings by Charlie Harden, and she herself records new solos.

In the end, I’d say that, as a project, it’s a lot more Alice than John, despite his presence on all of the tracks. If nothing else, it gives an intriguing approximation of what a ‘John Coltrane with strings’ album would have sounded like – and perhaps that would have been his next step in an attempt to create the ‘cosmic music’ that he was after. After all, he repeatedly told Alice of his admiration for Stravinsky, though his experiments seemed to be leading him more into realms of pure rhythm and sound, based on African influences, while Alice demonstrates a more oriental, Indian influence in the exotic harmonies that pour out from luscious string choirs, overlaid with sweeping droplets of sound from her harp. You could say the album is an uneasy fusion of the two influences, but, considering the ambition of what was being attempted, it could have a been a lot worse, and it’s interesting to hear the different feel that Alice gives to the original tracks – grander and more ‘epic’ (if not in length), and even less connected to the world of jazz.

‘Peace on Earth’, the opening track (issued, like ‘Leo’, in its original form, on the rare album ‘Jupiter Variation’), has a more serene feel to it than the original, and the ‘Live in Japan’ versions – whereas, in John’s hands, it became a plea for peace, a prayer at once peaceful yet also movingly mournful, as if he realised that the ideal would never be realised in his lifetime, if at all, with Alice, it becomes a representation of that perfect peace, the paradise rather than the quest for paradise – it’s got a quality of immense stillness, contemplation, quietness, reinforced by the fact that Alice replaces her own original piano solo with a harp solo that exists in a sort of state of suspended animation, moving yet not moving through time; by that, I mean, it concentrates on repeated phrases rather than on developing, or moving, from one phrase to another. The theme of ‘Living Space’ attains an immense, film-score grandeur as Coltrane’s saxophone is accompanied by soaring strings, and, though the solos have more of a conventional jazz feel to them (due to the fact the original rhythm parts, played by the ‘Classic Quartet’, are retained), the fact that a tamboura drones along in the background ensures that the exotic edge is never far away, and the climax, where his repeated figures are undercut by booming timpani, achieves some kind of nirvana that comes from a place that seems very different from that the Quartet were exploring in 1965…

The third piece, ‘Joy’ is perhaps less successful than the other three – the throbbing grandeur/hallucinatory weirdness of the orchestral arrangement sits a bit uneasily with the jazzy thrust of Coltrane’s saxophone and the Classic Quartet rhythm section (particularly Jones’ drumming), but Jimmy Garrison’s central bass solo is effective enough, with its employment of strumming, and impression of deep sobriety and seriousness. Overall, though, there’s so much detail in the background that it detracts from the emotional and technical power of Coltrane’s playing, something that’s less the case on the other tracks. The album close with ‘Leo’, a theme that was immensely powerful in its original incarnation as ‘The Father & the Son & the Holy Ghost’ on ‘Meditations’, and became a concert staple of Coltrane’s last band. Here, the orchestra makes it incredibly dramatic, with the addition of tambourine and timpani giving it a nervous, edgy wildness that’s both exhilarating and frightening in a way that his best late-period music always was. The timpani interlude (played by Alice herself) is a touch of genius – a respite of sorts from the manic energy of John’s bass clarinet soloing, it’s a queasy, unearthly and vaguely sinister, leading into solos by Alice on first piano, then organ, before the theme returns.

While I wouldn’t take this over the originals, I would argue that, in its own right it’s one of Alice’s more successful albums, the tight arrangements saving it from drifting into the meandering meditativeness of some of her work. And it does have a sort of unearthly brilliance about it – maybe that’s just due to its beguiling strangeness, its uniqueness, but, whatever it is, it’s a trip...

[I believe that this album is out of print: you can download it at http://treehouseforearthschildren.blogspot.com/2007/04/john-coltrane-infinity-1972.html]

Albert Ayler - a sell-out?

ALBERT AYLER: MUSIC IS THE HEALING FORCE OF THE UNIVERSE
Impulse, 1969

Albert Ayler (tenor sax, bagpipes, vocals)
Mary Maria (Mary Parks) (vocals)
Bobby Few (piano)
Henry Vestine (guitar on ‘Drudgery’)
Bill Folwell (bass and Fender bass)
Stafford James (bass)
Muhammad Ali (drums)

Free jazz legend Ayler’s last record, apart from the posthumously released ‘Last Album’, which still awaits a re-issue. Along with ‘New Grass’, which saw him performing with backing singers and funk drumming, this saw him move into a more commercial (though still deeply weird) context, and many Ayler fans feel that he was selling out in order to reach a wider audience. Sure, in comparison to, say, ‘New York Eye and Ear Control’, this is practically easy listening, and it isn’t a particularly good record overall – unfocussed, a bit of an uneasy mix of styles, and with some truly embarrassing hippie lyrics from Ayler’s girlfriend/collaborator Mary Maria. But there are plus points – the title track, which sees Ayler’s playing of a yearning figure on tenor sax juxtaposed with Maria’s swelling vocals, is surprisingly effective, and the lyrics aren’t too bad either (though some may disagree – “music is the healing force of the universe. It calls all bad vibrations to fade…sometimes we are in need of spiritual renewal”). You can’t really call this free jazz, though Ayler’s tenor is a bit rougher sounding than on the version recorded in 1970 that came out on ‘Nuits de La Foundation Maeght, Vol. 1’, but it’s still got an utterly unique feel to it, and Ayler’s massive, soulful vibrato is immensely attractive whether he’s moving into the realms of pure sound or sticking to conventional melodic lines.

‘Masonic Inborn (Part 1)’ COULD be called free jazz, but it’s nowhere near as convincing as Ayler’s classic performances in this vein – for one thing, he chooses to play on bagpipes (overdubbed), and, like Ornette Coleman on violin or trumpet, doesn’t really seem to know how to PLAY the damn things! He’s not Rufus Harley, that’s for sure. That said, Bobby Few does get in some nice piano work, and the moment, about half-way through the track, when someone, or something starts making weird high-pitched sounds between a whistle and a vocal and a flute, is worth hearing just for the sheer weirdness of it all.

The remaining tracks (what was the second side of the record) are three more Maria songs and a blues jam to conclude. ‘A Man is a Like a Tree’ picks up the lyricism of the title track, but with a more serene feel to it. It’s pleasant enough, but the lyrics are pretty meaningless (“a man is like a tree. A tree is like a man. They both die and then are born again” – what?), and it’s fairly forgettable stuff, not like the best Ayler moments, where his playing seems to tap into something incredibly raw, and the emotion comes through his horn in such an extraordinarily direct way that it sends a shiver up your spine. The vocals on ‘Oh! Love of Life’ are actually by Ayler – he sings in a high-pitched, quavering voice which, to be honest, doesn’t sound very good, but the intensity he conveys is quite frightening – you can understand the sort of psychology that lead him to kill himself (if that’s what happened). A tormented individual, it seems, turning out something too eccentric and bizarre to reach the wider audience he was presumably seeking. ‘Island Harvest’ is pretty abysmal, to be honest – Maria puts on some embarrassing fake accent and sings some more meandering lyrics, while Ayler flits around behind her.

So far, it’s not looking too good, but the final track saves the record – called ‘Drudgery’, it harks back to Ayler’s earlier blues/R’n’B days, as he blasts away over some mean guitar from Canned Heat guitarist Henry Vestine: not the most obvious choice of collaborator, to be sure – did the label heads force that one on him, or was it his own decision? – but it works. Ayler seems to be enjoying getting right down into some gritty, earthy honking and blowing, as well as nodding to the free jazz elements with some marvellous high-register semi-screaming towards the end of his solo. Bobby Few’s piano work is excellent, Vestine is on top form, and overall it’s actually a really successful track. A tantalising taster perhaps, of what would have happened if there’d been an ‘Ayler plays the Blues’ album, which might have been a better idea than the mish-mash that this record turned out to be. Still, though my critical judgement tells me that I should discard this one (I only really LIKE two of the six tracks, and some of the others are just inept), there’s something about it that still appeals – perhaps just the sheer weirdness of it all. Not really a good introduction to Ayler, nor representative of his output, nor very successful – but an intriguing listen nonetheless.

Freedom of the City Festival 2007

THE FREEDOM OF THE CITY FESTIVAL AND FREE IMPROVISATION

Since the mid-1960s there has been determined and persistent presence in music making that owes nothing to establishment preferences, fashionable nuances or market forces. Experimentalism and improvisation speak of enquiry, curiousity and adventure in music. And, albeit that these practices have had to exist within the corrosive slipstream of the aforementioned tendencies, the search for meaningful and fulfilling musical expression can only become real through and towards self-empowerment.

Eddie Prévost

Last weekend, 6th-7th May, saw the Freedom of the City Festival take place at Finsbury Park, in London. So, on Sunday afternoon I hopped over there on the train to hear the first concert of the four that ocured over Sunday and Monday. There were three sets: first, the free jazz trio of Alan Wilkinson-Joe Williamson-Eddie Prevost; next, Unit (a group featuring three Vietnamese musicians and a couple of white musicians coming from punk and jazz-rock backgrounds); and finally a trio of Matt Davis (trumpet/ electronics), Matt Milton (violin), and Bechir Saadé (bass clarinet).

Freedom of the City is a series of concerts of "radical and improvised music", as it advertises itself, which has taken place annualy since 2001. It's co-curated by saxophonist Evan Parker and drummer Eddie Prevost, two of the leading lights of the British free improv scene, as well as Martin Davidson, founder of the Emanem record label, a hugely important company which releases CDs by many of the most important free improv artists, which is, according to their website, "too good and too adventurous to be considered by most other labels". Emanen's also released recordings of most of the Freedom of the City performances, and I think think maybe I should quote Martin Davidson's sleeve notes to the 1st one of these, from 2001, as they put into words much more eloquently than I can the importance of this music and this festival in particular:

The FREEDOM OF THE CITY festival was set up as an annual event (starting in 2001), in order to showcase the phenomenal London improvised music scene. There has been a significant body of London-based free improvisers for over 35 years, and there must now be somewhere between one and two hundred musicians involved. With the current emphasis on the global, it is easy to overlook the local, if not miss it altogether. The festival provides a focal point for London to celebrate one of its finest and most influential artistic legacies - improvisation in music.

The instigator of this festival, Evan Parker, who spends much of his time performing in other countries, describes London as "the richest improvised scene in the world. The community of musicians based here is the largest, longest established - and arguably the most diverse - of any of the like communities which have sprung up since free improvisation evolved into an autonomous musical genre in the mid 1960s. In this world-wide culture, London is widely understood and appreciated as a wellspring of the tradition and as a source of significant new developments. Indeed, musicians come here from all over the world seeking to make contact, plug in to the creative energy and to contribute their own ideas towards the development of the music.

Yet much of the media and establishment simply ignores this most vital scene, or considers it an aberration of jazz, rather than treat it with the importance it deserves. For example, concert organisers all over the world are in touch with the British Council. Yet it seems the overall demand for London based improvised music massively exceeds the Council's currently allotted budget for this most important field.

Perhaps the musical strength of the London improvising scene is due to what Fred Frith has called "virtuoso listening" - the ability to instantly respond to the other members of a group in such a way that the end result is an entity rather than a motley collection of somewhat unrelated individuals. This ability can now be found in other centres, but it seem to have developed first in London, thanks to the pioneering work of John Stevens and others. This is not to say that all London-based improvisers sound the same or use the same strategies, but some modus operandi and understandings have developed over the decades...

Davidson raises a number of extremely pertinet points there about the neglect which this field of music has to endure, since its conception in the 1960s, a situation which has meant that this truly is underground music. Few free improv artists are very well known - an exception would be the late Derek Bailey, probably THE most famous free improv artist, who's perhaps well known because of the variety of collaborations he undertook with musicians from other genres - for instance, he played with both Pat Metheny and Buckethead. Another exception would be Evan Parker, who plays regular gigs at venues such as the Vortex and also at big venues like the Barbican Hall (where I saw his electroacoustic ensembel at the London Jazz Festival last year). However, even these are probably unknown to the vast majority of the public, and, if that's the case, then the legions of other improvisers are languishing even further in obscurity. I spoke to Evan Parker just before the gig, and the brief comment he made revealed a lot about the situation these musicians have had to face for years now. He said that they had held FOTC at a bigger venue for one year, but not been able to get the funding after that and thus had to have it in the backroom of the Red Rose pub (which is a fairly run-down venue to be fair, though maybe this adds to the atmosphere in a positive way). Apparently the person who turned them down for funding said that this style of music was "old-hat", despite being a fan of medieval music! An anecdote which seemed to me somewhat revealing of the struggles and prejudices experimental and innovative music has to face.

THIS YEAR'S PERFORMANCES

Anyway, onto the performances from this year's festival, and the trio of Alan Wilkinson on tenor and alto sax, Joe Williamson on double bass, and Eddie Prevost on percussion. This trio plays together frequently, and a recording of their performance at last years festival has been released on Matchless Recordings as "along came Joe." (http://matchlessrecordings.com/along-came-joe-prevost-wilkinson-williamson) Their set this year was powerful, intense, concentrated free jazz with plenty of verve and bite, but they knew how to vary things and settled down for quieter moments as well. Berlin-based, Canadian-born double bass player Joe Williamson has been described as THE bassist of the European Improv and Free Jazz scene at the moment, playing in several groups, and demonstrating the typical virtues of a good jazz bassist: flexible, powerful and virtuosic. Indeed, I felt that his contribution tied the music down a lot more to a jazz connection; Prevost fits in with this (he was described as "the Art Blakey of Brixton" earlier on his career!), and his playing got very physical and rhythmically powerful at one point, but he is also capable of a more textural, less rhythmically driven apporach, as can be heard in his work with AMM, the contemplative, minimal group who focus on sounds more than lines in their quiet, ruminative and extended improvisations. Meanwhile, saxophonist Wilkinson played from his gut, wrenching out passionate screams as well as blistering runs, his vocalised approach reminiscent perhaps of Dewey Redman, but very much his own man. As Marc Medwin, writing for the avant-garde music website 'One Final Note', writes, "Wilkinson’s post-Ayler exhortations exhibit infinite control, even in the throws of passionate expression." One could say there was a peculiarly British grittiness about his playing - whatever the case, this was riveting music.

Unit, the band who came up next, were a bit of a strange one, and a bit out of place, in that they have only just started playing improvised music. They emerged from a punk band called The Apostles, formed in 1981, which metamorphosed into first Academy 23, then Unit, founded in 1994. Since 2000, Unit has been through numerous line-ups, each one recording an album musically different from the last, and making it impossible to define them as a 'type' of band - they've tackled everything from post-punk, prog rock, and pop, to avant garde, jazz and free improv. This schizophrenic activity could suggest a pleasing willingness to experiment - or it could suggest a band who've found it impossible to find a voice, more than 10 years since they came into being.

As they say on their website, it was only in 2006 with their album 'Rock in Opposition: Phase 1' that they ventured into the realms of avant-garde soundscapes and free improv, after years of playing primarily conventional pop music / rock works. Their adoption of this idiom seems to be as much due to political motivations as musical considerations, which is perhaps why, to me, and to everyone else I've heard who's expressed an opinion about the gig, they were less compelling than the other artists on the bill. There was maybe a sense that they're just dabbling in this idiom because of its 'underground' associations, often associated with radical and/or left-wing political views, which, though I didn't know when I saw them, would help to explain the directionless of their set, which seemed enormously unfocussed compared to the trio we just heard. As they comment, the second volume of their 'Rock in Opposition' series "celebrates a complete project devoid of all rock and pop cliché, where non-commercial (and by implication anti-capitalist) musical idioms are adopted." This political dimension is revealed explicity in the liner notes to the rock in opposition CDs by Andy Martin. Flautist Cheung Yiu Munn wore a T-shirt with the word 'Satan' underneath a picture of Ronald McDonald, and Martin, playing acoustic guitar, wore a cricket outfit, which added some sort of bizarre and surreal element.

Though their set only lasted 10 minutes more than Prevost/Williamson/Wilkinson, it seemed a lot longer. To me, it was as if it was at an uneasy crossroads between more conventional, even clichéd, jazz-related stylings, and nominally freer playing. Basically, what they were playing just wasn't interesting. The keyboardist sat there looking bemused and not playing for long periods, while electric bassist Dave Fanning kept playing rather tired and repetitious riffs/motifs, never giving the music space to breathe, I felt. Towards the end of the improvisation, though, acoustic guitarist Andy Martin initiated a more rhythmic feel to proceedings, which gave them a bit more focus than the loose, semi-lyrical and soporific meandering that had occurred before, by using his guitar as a drum, tapping on the body with his hands and hitting the strings with a spoon! In addition to this, Dave Fanning started slamming his hand onto the bass strings towards the end to produce a sort of monstrous cross between an electric guitar and a drum.

Unit: Cheung Yiu Minn on flute, Thanh Trung Nguyen on alto sax, Andy Martin on acoustic guitar, Dave Fanning on electric bass, and a keyboardist whose name I've completey forgotten!

So on to the third set, a trio of musicians who I must confess were, like Unit, completely unknown to me, so I wasn't sure what to expect. Unlike Unit, however, I was in for a pleasant surprise. This group consisted of Matt Davis on trumpet and electronics, Bechir Saade on bass clarient and Matt Milton on violin. Davis has played at the festival before, and he and Saade have recorded on a small number of albums, while Milton has yet to record an official album. This was a very interesting set based almost exclusively around sound rather than conventional musical tone, line or form. Very quiet and very intense, it seemed to mesmerize the audience - when they stopped playing, there was a long pause as if they were deciding whether to carry on or not, and the audience wasn't sure either - before the clapping broke the spell and the audience released all the tension they'd built up from practically holding their breaths for 30 minutes.

Afterwards, I chatted to the violin player, Matt Milton, who seems to be doing some really unusual stuff with his instrument (way beyond Leroy Jenkins and Stuff Smith! -in fact, with virtually no connection to jazz violin, or violin playing from any other idiom that I can think of). It was interesting to hear from him about this whole scene of players coming up which escapes notice so easily - as I was talking about earlier, only a select free improv artists gain any sort of public attention, while there are a wealth of other artists out there who it's hard to find unless you're looking. The bass clarinetist, Bechir Saadé, comes from Lebanon, and seems to be doing some really interesting things - on this occasion, it was as if he was deliberately trying to avoid playing conventional tones almost altogether, and instead concentrating on the other, unexplored sound possibilities his instrument had to offer. Hearing him spurred me on to some internet research, and, at a glance, the Lebanese improv scene which he's a part of seems small but potentially very rewarding to look into. Both he and Milton have my space pages under their names, and I guess the internet is one of the best ways for this music to be heard about - my space, despite being run by Rupert Murdoch, is a great resource for people to actually hear what you're doing as well as just reading about it. There's also a wealth of improv available for download, appropriately enough, for free, and with the full consent of artists and venues where the recordings take place. It's a great way to potentially widen the audience for the music, though you're unlikely to stumble across it unless you're really looking. I've posted some of the links I found below.

Anyway, I guess I'm digressing a bit. Back to this third set at FOTC, this was a style of playing that I'd really never heard before. From what I've learned in the past few days, Erstwhile Records and Creative Sources seem to be the two main labels releasing it. The Wikipedia article on Erstwhile notes that "subsequent Erstwhile releases have largely focused on a style of improvisation which could be called 'post-AMM': slow-moving, often rather quiet, making non-standard use of computers and electronics...Such unorthodox methods are often paired with acoustic instruments, which are themselves often defamiliarized by use of amplification and extended techniques (trumpeters Matt Davis [who played at the FOTC gig] and Axel Dorner, for instance, sometimes blow their instruments through the valves rather than the mouthpiece...the aesthetic has slowly found its own audience, though as yet there is not even an agreed-upon name for the genre ('laminal music', 'granular music' 'reductionism', 'the new London silence', 'Onkyo', 'Berlin minimalism', are a few of the terms that have cropped up, though 'eai' - 'electroacoustic improvs' seems to be winning out at present, perhaps for reasons of brevity)."

The wikipedia article also gives a good reason why this style could repay further listening and research, though I've hardly heard any of it, so I'm not in a position to judge. It points out that the style is "controversial because much of the music released on Erstwhile has left behind most resemblences to earlier generations of free jazz and free improv" - in other words, somthing refreshingly new.

But the set by Milton, Saade and Davis wasn't just interesting because of this background, of which I knew nothing at the time. The sounds and textures created are both uncategorisable and an absorbing listening experience - all 3 practitioners seemed interested, above all else, in the sound qualities that they could extract from their instruments, and these qualities were often far beyond the normal range and accomplished practices used to conjure sounds from trumpet, violin and bass clarinet. Seeing a room full of people listening with baited breath to meditative noises which some might hesitate to even describe as music was quite an experience...


LINKS

GENERAL FREE IMPROV PAGES

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_improvisation (Wikipedia page about Free Improv - a good starting point for info)

www.allaboutjazz.com/php/article.php?id=18638 (Another good introduction to free improv, written by John Eyles)

www.corbical.org/dbfree.html (Guitarist Derek Bailey's thoughts on free improvisation)

www.ubu.com/papers/cardew_ethics.html ('Towards an Ethics of Improvisation' by Cornelius Cardew - a classic text)

http://www.efi.group.sheff.ac.uk (European Free Improvisation Pages - an invaluable resource)

ARTISTS, RECORD LABELS & DOWNLOADS

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erstwhile_Records (information about Erstwhile Records & 'the new London Silence'

http://www.myspace.com/mattmilton (Matt Milton's MySpace page)

http://www.bechirsaade.com (Bechir Saade's official website)

http://incaldo.com/interlace/past.html (Interlace - free downloads)

http://www.l-m-c.org.uk (London Musicians' Collective - includes free downloads)

The Trap: What Happened to Our Dreams of Freedom?

Thought I'd just post on Adam Curtis' fascinating thee-part documentary, which aired on BBC2 a few months ago, 'The Trap: What Happened to Our Dreams of Freedom?' Curtis has stated that he's had trouble getting his documentaries released on DVDs due to their extensive use of archive footage and music...which is probably the thing that most gives them their characteristic flavour, but can also be irritating and a bit gimmicky, and almost gets in the way of his argument more than making it - in addition, it feels manipulative. Anyway, despite that, these 3 episdoes are actually thought-provoking and challenge assumptions in thought, which makes a change from a lot of TV output these days. Maybe the exaggerated style is in place to compensate for this, to 'jazz it up' so that it doesn't feel so much that he's delivering a lecture/academic polemic. Anyway, the whole thing's available on Google Video - here are the links.
EPISODE ONE
http://video.google.co.uk/videoplay?docid=8372545413887273321&q=the+trap
EPISDOE TWO
http://video.google.co.uk/videoplay?docid=-7849982478877371384&q=the+trap
EPISODE THREE (broken up into 3 seperate videos)
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-121006630030775636
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=1343199130780182696
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=3291992041130722257&hl