To listen to this album in FLAC is to respect the original intent of Keith Tippett and his 50 collaborators. It is to accept the chaos on its own terms. The format does not smooth over the rough edges; it sharpens them. It reveals that the apparent cacophony is, in fact, a tightly woven polyphonic tapestry. For those brave enough to enter the centipede’s garden, the FLAC version of Septober Energy offers the closest thing to time travel—a chance to stand in the center of that sprawling, sweating, brilliant orchestra, just as the last note collapses into the abyss. Anything less is merely a rumor.
In the annals of progressive and avant-garde jazz, few documents are as audacious, unwieldy, or breathtaking as Centipede’s sole studio album, Septober Energy (1971). Conceived by British jazz pianist and composer Keith Tippett, this was not merely an album but a manifesto: a single, 45-minute composition performed by a 50-piece orchestra (the "Centipede") that included some of the most innovative musicians of the Canterbury scene and beyond—Robert Wyatt, Elton Dean, Julie Tippetts, and members of King Crimson, among others. To experience Septober Energy in its original compressed formats (MP3 or standard streaming) is to miss the point entirely. It is an album that, in its 2024 high-resolution FLAC (Free Lossless Audio Codec) reissue, reveals itself not as a chaotic free-jazz mess, but as a meticulously layered, shockingly dynamic architectural wonder. Centipede Septober Energy 1971 FLAC
Originally released on the legendary Neon label (a subsidiary of RCA), the 1971 vinyl pressing was a brave but compromised artifact. To fit a 45-minute piece onto two sides of a record, the cutting engineer had to severely limit the bass frequencies and narrow the stereo spread to prevent the needle from jumping out of the groove during the loudest passages. For decades, this was the only way to hear the piece. To listen to this album in FLAC is
The true genius of Tippett’s arrangement lies not in the individual solos, but in the collective texture. There are moments on Septober Energy where five different instrumental groups are playing five different time signatures simultaneously. On vinyl or compressed digital audio, this often congeals into a pleasing but indistinct sludge. It reveals that the apparent cacophony is, in