Carla Bley & Paul Haines – Escalator over the Hill VG/G

Carla Bley’s Escalator Over the Hill (1971), with lyrics by Paul Haines, is a sprawling avant-garde jazz opera—or “chronotransduction”—that defies categorization. Recorded over three years with more than 50 musicians, including Jack Bruce and Linda Ronstadt, it fuses free jazz, rock, raga, and theater music into a surreal, kaleidoscopic narrative. Its ambition is matched only by its audacity: chaotic, poetic, and deeply experimental. Initially polarizing, it’s now hailed as one of the most daring recordings of its era