Category Archives: Touchstones

Charles Lloyd: The Call (ECM 1522)

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Charles Lloyd
The Call

Charles Lloyd tenor saxophone
Bobo Stenson piano
Anders Jormin bass
Billy Hart drums
Recorded July 1993 at Rainbow Studio, Oslo
Engineer: Jan Erik Kongshaug
Produced by Manfred Eicher

With The Call, tenorist Charles Lloyd really began to hit his ECM stride. Having pianist Bobo Stenson, bassist Anders Jormin, and drummer Billy Hart didn’t hurt, either. “It’s a full-service orchestra of love,” Lloyd once said in reference to this lineup. I decline to come up with a more fitting slogan, for the tender ode of “Nocturne” that opens this set of nine originals is bursting with it, that love which bears the weight of dreams on its shoulders and sews itself into the quilt of history, one patch at a time. Stenson rings true, here as throughout, blending us into “Song” with a mélange of pointillism and legato undercurrents as Jormin’s buoyant solo carries us deeper into this moonlit cave. That Lloyd only joins in three quarters of the way through a nearly 13-minute odyssey betrays his humility. His selfless expression uncurls like the fist of a pacifist in “Dwija” while still holding in its relief the possibility of defense. “Glimpse” has its own story to tell, painting a lakeside soiree under hanging lights, each wrapped in fragile paper and lending purpose to a slow dance one wishes might never end. Such bittersweet softness is the album’s emotional eigentone, fashioning a double-edged sword between the urgency of “Imke” and the blissful “Amarma,” the thoughtfulness of which shows Lloyd’s true colors. Our leader is also irresistible in the celebratory “Figure In Blue, Memories Of Duke” (note also Stenson’s complementary touches) and the audio kiss of “The Blessing.” But Lloyd saves the best for last with “Brother On The Rooftop,” an ululating duet with drums that might very well have planted the seed for Which Way is East.

Every great jazz player knows how to tell a story. Yet Lloyd knows not only how to tell a story, but also binds it in soft leather and tools it into a one-of-a-kind symmetry. He needn’t even inscribe it, for his spirit is in the details. Never one afraid to think out loud, he lets us in on everything.

This hefty and delicious slice of cerebral offerings marks the last of ECM’s “Touchstones” releases, whereby the label was beset with the daunting task of boiling down a catalogue of over 1000 to a mere 40 defining titles.

Keith Jarrett Trio: Bye Bye Blackbird (ECM 1467)

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Keith Jarrett Trio
Bye Bye Blackbird

Keith Jarrett piano
Gary Peacock bass
Jack DeJohnette drums
Recorded October 12, 1991 at Power Station, New York
Engineer: Jay Newland
Mastered by Jan Erik Kongshaug
Executive producer: Manfred Eicher

Seeing that Keith Jarrett, Gary Peacock, and Jack DeJohnette all once shared a stage with Miles Davis early on in their careers, it’s no wonder that they should step into New York’s Power Station studio, where the trio first took shape, for this classic tribute session. Recorded just 13 days after the Prince of Darkness’s passing, Bye Bye Blackbird sits above the rest for its sheer profundity of expression. The Keith Jarrett Trio is, of course, not an outfit to take itself lightly: with an average track length of over eight minutes, we can rest assured that every tune will be carried to conclusions far beyond our reckoning.

The title opener welcomes us into a nostalgic world, glimpses of what it must have been like to work with Miles. The high-end musings into which the music evolves speak to the ecstasy that any such musician must have felt at those moments of ethereal access. One cannot help but notice how energetic, for the most part, this session is. Between the swinging “Straight No Chaser” and “Butch And Butch,” there’s more than enough to get excited about. Jarrett is as fine as ever, singing his way through every spiraling change like a child skipping into the magic of “Summer Night.” Here, Peacock plays with a more consolatory air, allowing a tear or two before the 18.5-minute group improv “For Miles” lifts wheels from tarmac. After a spate from DeJohnette and a lush pianistic flowering, the cloud cover of our lingering grief fades with each new shift. The inescapable “I Thought About You” then brings us into the excerpted “Blackbird, Bye Bye,” closing us out with a kiss and a sigh.

Yet for me, the brushed beauties of “You Won’t Forget Me” ring most authentically. A reflective solo from Peacock buoys Jarrett, who stretches his own veils across the stars, cupping an entire city in his hands and keeping all who dwell within it warm against the chill of remorse. We will indeed not ever forget him.

A note on production. The sound of this recording is distinctive—compressed and sere. I imagine it was recorded with very little preparation, and the fact that it was later mastered by Jan Erik Kongshaug indicates an absence of engineers when the tracks were laid down. This gives the music an archival ring, reaching back to the atmosphere of the 60s, without which nothing on this heartfelt album would have existed. Whether calculated or not, I appreciate the throwback. One can feel this music on the verge of exploding, looking respectfully, distantly, and with deference to the past. Suitably recorded for a moment-in-time sort of feel, it is like the capsule of a bygone era unearthed in a silent world.

Anouar Brahem: Conte de l’incroyable amour (ECM 1457)

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Anouar Brahem
Conte de l’incroyable amour

Anouar Brahem oud
Barbaros Erköse clarinet
Kudsi Erguner ney
Lassad Hosni bendir, darbouka
Recorded October 1991 at Rainbow Studio, Oslo
Engineer: Jan Erik Kongshaug
Produced by Manfred Eicher

After a memorable ECM debut with Barzakh, Anouar Brahem recorded this even more memorable sophomore effort one year later. Carrying over percussionist Lassad Hosni, Brahem welcomes Turkish musicians Kudsi Erguner on ney and Barbaros Erköse on clarinet. Erköse, a gypsy music specialist, adds rich colors to an already dense palette, weaving tethers that pull us into tender worlds. His duets with Erguner (“Etincelles” and “Peshrev Hidjaz Homayoun”) stand out as some of the album’s most flowing. The title track brings the patter of clay drums, weaving a gorgeous ney into our vision. (The melodies and rhythms here put this listener immediately in mind of the song “I Love You” from Omar Faruk Tekbilek’s album One Truth.) Captivating. Erguner shines again in “Diversion.” Slaloming through every drummed pillar with the conviction of a bird in search of prey and yet with the delicacy of an angel avoiding such violence, he brings a sense of history to every lilting gesture. “Nayzak” revives the clarinet amid oud and drums for a stunning taste of mountains and the plains. The album’s meat, though, comes in Brahem’s unaccompanied storytelling. From the dawn chorus of “L’oiseau de bois” and invigorating virtuosity of “Battements,” through the tender air “Le chien sur les genoux de la devineresse,” and on to “Epilogue,” there is unimaginable depth of yearning in every twang and strum.

This album is all about the composition, stripped to the barest essentials of melodic craft and burrowing straight into the marrow of our past lives. One of Brahem’s best to date.

Jan Garbarek: I Took Up The Runes (ECM 1419)

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Jan Garbarek
I Took Up The Runes

Jan Garbarek soprano and tenor saxophones
Rainer Brüninghaus piano
Eberhard Weber bass
Nana Vasconcelos percussion
Manu Katché drums
Bugge Wesseltoft synthesizer
Ingor Ántte Áilu Gaup voice
Recorded August 1990 at Rainbow Studio, Oslo
Engineer: Jan Erik Kongshaug
Produced by Manfred Eicher

By 1990, Jan Garbarek had for decades been searching for that one key, navigating a landscape of peaks and valleys, only to find it slumbering within the runes which, with this album, he eponymously took up. A snaking version of Mari Boine Persen’s “Gula Gula” outlines the album’s perfectly proportioned ritual space for a sound that has come to define the Norwegian saxophonist’s output since. With Runes his tone had achieved a luminescence that fell like liquid onto the keyboard of Rainer Brüninghaus.

Balancing note and movement, Garbarek hones something truly special in the five-part “Molde Canticle,” which draws out the album’s deepest anatomies. Above all, the piece is about time. It speaks in a language that moves us. The gyroscopic quality of Part 2 hums around the centrifugal force of Garbarek’s lyricism as he scales ever higher. Part 3 features a singsong solo from bassist Eberhard Weber, who elicits bird-like harmonics from the soft glide of his bow. These enchantments are but a prelude to a round of wind and pianistic musings. Part 4 is a more rhythmic showcase (percussionist Nana Vasconcelos’s influence is also clear on tracks like “Buena Hora, Buenos Vientos”), and features some heavy blowing from Garbarek, at once whimsical and weighty, while Part 5 finds him weaving a simple wave over a harp-like ostinato.

These melodies all have the makings of folk songs (sometimes the other way around, as in “His Eyes Were Suns”), so vivid is each in its evocation of peoples and traditions. The title track is a more groove-oriented spectacle and finds Garbarek freeing himself even further. This leaves only “Rahkki Sruvvis,” another chanting piece with some overdubbed saxes for a final skyward glance.

Many have criticized Garbarek for going soft. I Took Up The Runes proves that he has simply channeled that dynamic energy through different rivulets of intensity. Like smoke, they need fire to soar, but fire in its natural state requires time and care to catch.

A masterpiece.

John Abercrombie: Animato (ECM 1411)

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John Abercrombie
Animato

John Abercrombie guitar, guitar synthesizer
Jon Christensen drums, percussion
Vince Mendoza synthesizers
Recorded October 1989 at Rainbow Studio, Oslo
Engineer: Jan Erik Kongshaug
Produced by Manfred Eicher

Despite the fact of John Abercrombie headlining this curious little album called Animato, the finished product is a real showcase for drummer Jon Christensen and synthesizer virtuoso Vince Mendoza. The latter, who wrote the bulk of the album’s music (the only exceptions being the group improv that begins the set and the Jon Hassell-esque strains of Abercrombie’s “Bright Reign”), fleshes out some of the strokes Abercrombie was already beginning to paint with his synth augmentations in years past. Still, the guitarist is a major melodic force on this date. Where “Right Now” rises from the depths with the torch in his hands, swirling around a fiery center, self-contained yet extroverted, “Single Moon” floats his tenderness over a bass of electronic goodness. Like a skilled R&B singer, he plumbs the ballad to new depths, each new stratum accentuated by the warmth and timeless energy of Mendoza’s tasteful atmospheres. In this vein, the sequencer qualities of “Agitato” make for a bed of ashes from which the guitar rises like a phoenix and duets with drums in powerful conversation amid gorgeous synth lines and a classically inflected refrain. After the swelling interlude of “First Light” we come into the bubbling abstractions of “Last Light,” in which Abercrombie dances like fire on water. The darkly anthemic “For Hope Of Hope” is an audible mirage throughout which Christensen proves a fantastic painter of colors, even as Mendoza deepens them in a continuous pall of time and narrative experience. We end with a lullaby in “Ollie Mention.” This is perhaps Abercrombie at his most sensitive yet somehow spirited as he tumbles over comforting waves into the final recession of the tide.

The inclusion of Mendoza on this album was a stroke of genius. On the one hand he is an extension of what Abercrombie already implies, while on the other he emotes with such distinctness that one feels the session pushed to new territories with every touch. Together these musicians bring a storyteller’s art to these wordless songs, carving a ring of shadow in which the blood of dreams runs bright.

Dave Holland Quartet: Extensions (ECM 1410)

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Dave Holland Quartet
Extensions

Dave Holland bass
Steve Coleman alto saxophone
Kevin Eubanks guitar
Marvin “Smitty” Smith drums
Recorded September 1989, Power Station, New York
Engineer: James Farber
Produced by Manfred Eicher

If you’re like me, then you’re most familiar with this album’s rhythm section from The Tonight Show with Jay Leno. From 1995 to 2006, guitarist Kevin Eubanks and drummer Marvin “Smitty” Smith were the anchors for said program’s house band. I always knew that Eubanks was a talented musician but felt that his insights were often lost in the muddled acoustics of the NBC studio in which they were situated. These conditions also boded ill, in most cases, for the show’s musical acts. In addition, for the most part Eubanks had his distortion turned high in order to achieve a certain brand of punctuation in his bantering with Leno, but I sometimes noticed that when returning from a commercial break he would be finishing a smooth jazz number, the brilliance of which I could only guess at. It wasn’t until I heard Extensions that I realized just how deep that brilliance goes.

Eubanks astounds at every turn of Extensions. Having penned the opening and closing tracks, he has the first and last word on things and brings to the in-between a certain majesty to the scope of his improvisatory paths. His “Nemesis” starts things off just right, giving way from barely plucked stirrings to the controlled vigor of altoist Steve Coleman’s left side drive. Not to be outdone, of course, are Smith and the album’s leader (though you wouldn’t know it from Holland’s many gracious nods to these younger trailblazers), whose interactions give Coleman just the lift he needs to soar with a blistering yet somehow nonabrasive sound. A toffee crisp solo from Eubanks paints here in leaps and somersaults, each a tight circle of deftly contained energy.

Holland himself gives us two tracks, of which “Processional” is the most sumptuous. This arid groove finds the bassist stepping lightly, making way for a starlit solo from Eubanks. Holland opens “The Oracle” with a line so delicate, it almost sounds like a classical guitar. The subtlety of Smith’s stylings at the kit and Eubanks’s bird-like calls work themselves through the curling plumes of windswept dunes, leaving a sonorous trail of footsteps that is redrawn as quickly as it is buried. This nearly 15-minute cut is the highlight of the album and should make a Eubanks believer out of anyone. Holland’s almost spiritually minded solo, detailed like a prayer, still conveys an unparalleled wanderlust before Coleman draws a trail of fire into the refrain. His two tunes, “Black Hole” and “101° Fahrenheit (Slow Meltdown),” are respectively funky and sultry, the latter unveiling fan-chopped smoke and alleys littered with wasted opportunities, singing of a time when one could forget them all in an amber bottle.

The closer, “Color Of Mind,” sports one of Holland’s catchiest bass lines and another astonishing dialogue from Eubanks. It also gives us some downtime with Holland along with Smith, who turns up the heat a notch or two into a sparkling close.

This album is a coming of age in an age of becoming. If ECM’s Touchstones series, of which this is a part, had its own Touchstones, this would be one of them.

Marc Johnson’s Bass Desires: Second Sight (ECM 1351)

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Marc Johnson
Second Sight

Marc Johnson bass
Bill Frisell guitar
John Scofield guitar
Peter Erskine drums
Recorded March 1987 at Rainbow Studio, Oslo
Engineer: Jan Erik Kongshaug
Produced by Manfred Eicher

This sophomore effort from Marc Johnson’s Bass Desires comes nowhere near the octane levels of the project’s wild self-titled debut. This doesn’t mean, however, that Second Sight is no less enthralling. Its strength lies in its personnel. Guitarists Bill Frisell and John Scofield seem so well made for each other that, were they not split between the left and right channels, respectively, they might as well be thought of as some bizarre 12-stringed chunk of genius. How can we, for instance, not be moved by the sentiment of “Small Hands” and the resonant eddies of “Sweet Soul”? The latter, with its touch of Pat Metheny brightness, is especially moving. And let us not bypass the unassuming opener, “Crossing The Corpus Callosum.” Here the guitars dance on edge over the rolling hills of Peter Erskine’s drums and Johnson’s bass. The wealth of extended textures opens vista upon vista of possibility. Frisell is downright glowing in “1951,” which might as well have been an outtake from Naked City’s Radio. A dreamy slice of nostalgia pie if there ever was one, it comes served piping hot with a dollop of electric ice cream to boot. The solos are three-dimensional.

Lest we think this is all too ponderous, Scofield livens the proceedings with an invigorating twofer. The Richard Thompon-esque rhythm guitar in “Twister” is the set’s most spirited. Frisell and Scofield add to each other’s fire as they unabashedly scale the diminished seventh ladder (think Beatles), splitting off into the groovier weave of “Thrill Seekers.” Scofield rules with his solo here, while Frisell winds some of his most insectile threads in the background before slingshotting stardust back through the atmosphere. The band recedes for a fragile solo from Johnson before playing out on the vamp. The jauntiness of this number is superbly contrasted by “Prayer Beads,” a monologue from Johnson, who closes the door with “Hymn For Her.” This last is a dream within a dream. It feels like watching life through a veil of trickling water and finding that hope is already beside you, that its forgiving melodies flow both into and from the heart.

A note on the cover: the helicopter is a foil. Without it, the beach is just a beach. With it, the beach begs to be appreciated.

John Surman: Private City (ECM 1366)

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John Surman
Private City

John Surman bass clarinet, recorders, soprano and baritone saxophones, synthesizer
Recorded December 1987 at Rainbow Studio, Oslo
Engineer: Jan Erik Kongshaug
Produced by Manfred Eicher and John Surman

If the title of Private City comes about as close as one can get to describing the sound-world of John Surman, then that of its first piece, “Portrait Of A Romantic,” does the same for the man behind it. Its quivering recorder blankets us in warmth, fully realized by an electric piano and bubbling as the waters in a forgotten loch. A bass clarinet swims, a creature of myth remembering a time when its kind were plentiful. Thus begins this widely regarded album of incidental ballet music that remains one of Surman’s most personal. The recorder returns, an elusive and mythic voice, “On Hubbard’s Hill,” calling forth steady electronics from the depths of its own dreaming, leaving us to look out on all we’ve done. The familiar sequencer shows its face in “Not Love Perhaps,” climbing itself like a self-generating ladder and carrying with it a sacred form of déjà vu, in which time is but a loop within the heart of learning. Surman’s soprano moves with the grace of a traditional melody that has only now come to the surface of our audible history. “Levtitation” is exactly what he accomplishes with an unwieldy instrument like the bass clarinet. As it splinters into myriad offerings beneath a pregnant moon, an “Undernote” bobs on a current of its own regret. “The Wanderer” is another watery piece, that beautiful soprano melting over a wavering ground of synth lines and bass clarinet, and ending on a distant fanfare. The swaying “Roundelay” exemplifies Surman’s limitless talents, as well as the purity of his notecraft. Led by a fairy-like soprano, it feels like ice-skating along an infinity sign set to music. Last is “The Wizard’s Song,” the album’s crowning jewel, showing us again the inimitable delicacy with which its composer approaches the lower, neglected reeds. Like the ending credits to a movie that lives on even after it is done, the effects keep scrolling in our heads, wandering the darkness until they have reached the private cities inside all of us.

Oregon: Ecotopia (ECM 1354)

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Oregon
Ecotopia

Trilok Gurtu tabla, percussion
Paul McCandless oboe, English horn, soprano saxophone, wind-driven synthesizers
Glen Moore bass
Ralph Towner classical and 12- string guitars, piano, synthesizers, drum machine
Recorded March 1987 at Tonstudio Bauer, Ludwigsburg
Engineer: Carlos Albrecht, Martin Wieland
Produced by Manfred Eicher

The stars of Ecotopia, Oregon’s third and final album for ECM and one wounded by the absence of Colin Walcott, are undoubtedly Ralph Towner and Paul McCandless. One could easily be content in listening to just the two of them for the album’s 50-minute duration, pairing so gorgeously as they do on tracks like “Zephyr.” As it is, we get a rich sound palette that, while a definite shift from what came before, speaks to a mode of experimentation that is therapeutic and adventurous. McCandless’s lines in “Twice Around The Sun” are somewhat lost in the cheapening synthesizer, but make for a light-footed introduction all the same. Thankfully, Glen Moore’s bass and Trilok Gurtu’s percussion steer this vessel into more organic waters. As the group swings in retrograde, Moore works his corona through a shower of bells and stardust. Piano and reeds fall behind silhouetted mountains, leaving Gurtu to ponder the landscape with nimble footsteps, writing the history of a savannah without wind. “Innocente” is the album’s zenith, a wondrous journey in which Towner rides a wave of table beneath McCandless’s lone seagull, who touches wing to water with every chromatic dip. His reeds sound absolutely resplendent, every note a thin ray of sunlight gathered in able grasp. After a brief throwaway improvisation (“WBAI”), the title track vindicates the use of electronics, while the swanky late-night stroll of “Leather Cats” does not. Thankfully, McCandless’s soprano wins out in this conversation. Towner lays down the groovy backbone of “ReDial,” which Gurtu and McCandless are more than willing to flesh out with all manner of delicate venation. Towner outdoes himself and brings his gentle cascade to bear on a smooth finish. “Song Of The Morrow” also makes beautiful use of synthesizers and ends this colorful and classic album which, despite its unnecessary forays into technology, is now assured of its status as one of ECM’s Touchstones.

The Bill Frisell Band: Lookout For Hope (ECM 1350)

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The Bill Frisell Band
Lookout For Hope

Bill Frisell electric and acoustic guitars, banjo
Hank Roberts cello, voice
Kermit Driscoll bass
Joey Baron drums
Recorded March 1987 at Power Station, New York City
Engineer: James Farber
Produced by Lee Townsend

Listening to Lookout For Hope is like wandering into a windblown cowboy town. The dirt is bare, save for the errant tumbleweed that dares set twig in this dustbowl. You wander past the Sheriff’s office. A poster hangs outside the door:

WANTED
FOR ARMED ROBBERY OF GENRE

BILL FRISELL
REWARD: MUSICAL LUXURY

And indeed, Frisell has run off with many a stagecoach prize, fashioning each into a personal politic of twisted charm.

On this, another seminal effort on ECM’s Touchstones, Frisell continued to chart his inimitable sound. The wordless vocals of Hank Roberts in the album’s title opener waver like something from the dream diary of Pat Metheny, with whom Frisell shares much insofar as it is almost impossible to listen to either guitarist without seeing epic films of vivid imagery. But make no mistake about feeble comparisons: Frisell is the only dude on this ranch. From his gentle entrance, we know that his is an axe that melts, revealing thematic contours in negative space. He frees melodies from the chopping block and lets them bump into one another as they will. Roberts’s sinewy cello is a no-brainer. As it extends its forked tongue from this sonic bayou, defenestrating itself in a blissful unraveling, it lands smack in the molasses of “Little Brother Bobby,” where with easygoing persuasion it rocks like a back porch chair before stumbling on through the banjo-infested prophecy of “Hangdog” and into the crystalline vision of the album’s capstone, “Remedios The Beauty.” And where “Lonesome” is a raw slab of Podunk beauty that glistens with Frisell’s acoustic, “Melody For Jack” is a dream tunnel into a trio of miniatures before the warm fuzziness of “Alien Prints” plays us out with understated panache.

Lookout For Hope is a walleyed world replete with hokey profundity and slack jaws. Like a good Stephen King novel, it gets under our skin even as it nourishes it. The titular lookout seems but a toothpick of a shadow on the horizon. But no matter, for by the time the final note has run away we’ve already found our hope.