The double album Now This Was Clear documents two recordings from 2002 of the singular but short-lived free improvising trio of late visionary German reed player Wolfgang Fuchs (the founder of King Übü Örchestrü, and close collaborator of Sven-Åke Johansson and Alexander von Schlippenbach, who died in 2016), and American, generation-younger double bass master Damon Smith (who heads the Balance Point Acoustics label, then based in Oakland, California) and Chicagoan drummer-percussionist Jerome Bryerton. The first album was recorded live at the Podewil in Berlin in November 2002, during the revived Total Music Meeting Berlin (of which Fuchs was one of its heads), and the second album was recorded live at the Empty Bottle in Chicago in May 2002. This trio released before an album of its
