"Over the course of the first disc and the second disc's first three tracks (the sum total of the 1970 material) they gradually expand their palette, experimenting with edgier, more fractious playing. By May 1972, when the second half of the Incus 2LP was recorded, this side had come more fully to the fore, in the form of spikily chattering, burbling trio hubbubs - more in line with the then-emergent strain of playing which we now recognise as Incus improv - comprehensively subsumed into the overall fabric of the music. It is tempting to speculate as to what might have induced this progression, natural though it must have seemed at the time. Initially it sounds as though Bailey, the shift in whose playing - from sedate electric to clipped, brittle acoustic, encompassing signature ching-plink scratching flurries (all unnecessary edges dispassionately trimmed) - is the most immediately audible, forcing the issue, pulling Guy with him, and isolating Rutherford somewhat. But by the end of the disc, however, the group reveal themselves as an equally-voiced entity, all three participating democratically in some commendably flexible and increasingly extroverted interplay.

The third disc compiles unreleased live recordings: a London gig which occurred at some point in 1971, and material from three shows on what would appear to have been an October/November '72 German tour; one shudders to think what the hirsutely masculine FMP crowd made of such elusively centre-less music. The London recording shows them having noticeably moved on from the first side of the Incus 2LP, the three cannily and incrementally accreting jagged shards of sound into ever more complex mazes of sharp, quick-witted interplay; and by the time of the German gigs - whose sound quality really isn't the best, though the essentials are audible - the transformation is complete. The trio summon forth scabrous, scalding pile-ups, astutely angling sparks off each other and refracting and deflecting sounds in passages of bustling interchange which positively crackle with mordant wit. As though to purposefully confound, the last track is in context relatively sedate, and in parts strongly hints at the group's initial style, allowing the set to conclude with a neat memory loop. Chapter One provides as much documentation of this phase of this group's existence as anyone could hope for, or require, in the process laying bare the roots and development of a significant strand of a form of improvisational playing whose influence would be felt on a global scale for years to come." - Nick Cain, Opprobrium.

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