ECM Releases

Charlie Haden: The Ballad Of The Fallen (ECM 1248)

| Tyran Grillo

1248

Charlie Haden
The Ballad Of The Fallen

Charlie Haden bass
Carla Bley piano, glockenspiel, arrangements
Don Cherry pocket trumpet
Sharon Freeman French horn
Mick Goodrick guitar
Jack Jeffers tuba
Michael Mantler trumpet
Paul Motian drums, percussion
Jim Pepper tenor, soprano saxophones, flute
Dewey Redman tenor saxophone
Steve Slagle alto, soprano saxophones, clarinet, flute
Gary Valente trombone
Recorded November 1982, Tonstudio Bauer, Ludwigsburg
Engineer: Martin Wieland
Produced by Manfred Eicher

Don’t ask me who I am
Or if you knew me
The dreams that I had
Will grow even though I’m no longer here.

Jazz is a music of oppression, or rather about resisting it. As such, it has the potential to liberate listeners—and, perhaps more importantly, performers—in ways that few other genres can. Which is precisely the paradox of the purist: in order to get to the heart of jazz, one must shut up and feel it. Intellectualizing just gets in the way. Charlie Haden is a purist, but it took him years to achieve that title, and his Liberation Music Orchestra represents a coming into his own as a musician, as a human being, as a force of peace and respect.

The LMO took shape at a time of upheaval. The Vietnam War was coming to a head, and the taste it seems to have left in Haden’s mouth could only be washed out with music. Through his sporadic activities with the LMO (the collective has averaged only one album per decade since its inception in the late 1960s), Haden now had a voice with which to purge widening circles of listeners of the warmongering and corruption he saw all around him until, hopefully, those circles began to touch. It was the voice of those who could not speak except through histories, a voice honed in the communal spirit that breathes through every note he’s played since.

Haden never chose his material in the authorial sense; the politics chose him. By the time of The Ballad Of The Fallen, the Reagan administration was pouring military spending into Central America, where Contra death squads left tens of thousands dead and corrupted countless others by covertly sponsoring dictatorial regimes and, by extension, their drug cartels. This brings us to Haden’s purism in another sense: as a onetime narcotics addict long since sober, he knew well the dangers of letting go of music’s hand. And so, through this second recording he and the LMO inscribed a poem of mourning for those who lost their lives in such conflicts, as well in the Spanish Civil War, for he might very well have become an indirect casualty had he not been awakened. Such motivations were never a gimmick in Haden’s hands, and the balanced arrangements, courtesy of Carla Bley, speak to (and for) hearts and minds committed to outreach.

“Els Segadors” (The Reapers), a song of revolt from the Spanish Civil War that would later become an anthem for the Catalan Republic, begins with a somber elegy for brass, which then flowers with the introduction of a funereal snare and glockenspiel. With this somber tone set, the heartrending El Salvadorean song that makes up the title track finds ground in Haden alongside Motian’s drums and the acoustic guitar of Mick Goodrick. The words it only hints at were discovered on the body of a student protester, who along with others died by military hands during a university sit-in. After two darkly lit marches, each insightful horn solo therein a message in a tarnished bottle, we arrive at “Introduction To People.” Bley’s first of two contributions to the album has the sweep of some of the early Arild Andersen quartets and is only enhanced by her rolling pianism and Haden’s ever-pellucid bass. Her second piece is “Too Late,” a pensive duet for piano and bass that frays into majestic horns. It is also the session’s heartbeat.

The Chilean freedom fighters’ anthem “The People United Will Never Be Defeated” lifts us upon a delicate floating carpet of horns, who continue to emote in the heavier “Silence” (Haden’s sole composition and among the session’s more powerful) that follows. In this chain of four-step phrases, we find ourselves lost in the memory of that which we can never know. Goodrick spins chant-like threads throughout “La Pasionaria,” suspended like stars while Dewey Redman plots his tenor along less determinable trajectories. Bley’s keys whip like a sidewinder through this rare breath of hope while Haden emotes as nowhere else. The Catalonian song “La Santa Espina” reprises the martial feeling with which the album began and breaks into a powerful reinstatement from brass.

This is a continuous suite of moods drifting through a passage in foliated time. The album’s resignations are palpable at every turn, each inhaling mourning and exhaling hope. This is death and memory, rebirth and diffusion, the flame of a forgotten past kept alive in the cavity of an unparalleled instrument and its practitioner.

<< Lester Bowie: All The Magic! (ECM 1246/47)
>> Harald Weiss: Trommelgeflüster (ECM 1249 NS)

Keith Jarrett Trio: Setting Standards – New York Sessions (ECM 2030-32)

| Tyran Grillo

2030_32

Keith Jarrett Trio
Setting Standards – New York Sessions

Keith Jarrett piano
Gary Peacock double-bass
Jack DeJohnette drums
Recorded January 1983 at Power Station, New York City
Engineer: Jan Erik Kongshaug
Produced by Manfred Eicher

“I feel we are an underground band that has, just by accident, a large public.”
–Keith Jarrett, on his trio with Gary Peacock and Jack DeJohnette

The piano is considered by some to be a “complete” instrument. On it, one can compose anything from a simple etude to the grandest of symphonies, and its most adored practitioners may be said to be whole at the keyboard. The beauty of a player like Keith Jarrett is that he makes the piano sound so gorgeously incomplete, emphasizing as he does the unfathomable volume of sentiments he would convey through it if given the time. As it is, we get the barest taste of immortality. Jarrett carries the entire weight of any composition in even the most linear of melodic lines. In doing so, he opens doors that few could step through unharmed.

And yet, step through them the rare soul has, and perhaps none so ingenious as bassist Gary Peacock and drummer Jack DeJohnette. When listening to the bliss that rolls off Jazz’s proverbial tongue throughout Setting Standards, however, we must constantly remind ourselves that the three albums collected therein represent the first time Jarrett, Peacock, and DeJohnette had ever stepped into the studio as a bona fide trio. The three men were, of course, far from strangers, but produced such unreal synergy in these unrehearsed sessions that they might as well have been cut from the same cloth. The trio would also prove in a way cathartic for Jarrett, who was already beginning to buckle under the pressures of an increasingly demanding listenership. For this, he turned to the tried and true, if not to the plied and blue, for solace.

With Standards, Vol. 1 (ECM 1255) Jarrett and company set things straight from the get-go by showing us the “Meaning Of The Blues.” This swath of melodious rain is the trio form at its best and never lets up until the very end. DeJohnette’s charcoal sketches in background add a quiet boldness. “All The Things You Are” is a more lighthearted, though no less intense, construction, and haunts Peacock’s nimble fingerwork with a visceral chord progression. Smoothness abounds in “It Never Entered My Mind,” a gentle tune that puts a new twist on the pessimism of balladry by resolving itself at moments into a hopeful groove. A hefty splash of freedom awaits us in “The Masquerade Is Over.” Peacock is on fire here, giving just the sort of fuel that Jarrett sets to such glorious conflagration. The latter’s soloing proves that not only is the masquerade over, but also that these musicians never hid behind masks in the first place. If any single facet of this jewel can be singled out, it is the stunning fifteen-and-a-half-minute rendition of “God Bless The Child” that concludes it. Peacock excels, taking the swing around the bar and back again.

<< John Surman: Such Winters of Memory (ECM 1254)
>> Charlie Mariano: Jyothi (ECM 1256)

… . …

ECM 1289

Standards, Vol. 2 (ECM 1289) is a shaded glen in Volume One’s verdant forest. Its mood is summed up perfectly in the title of the opening “So Tender,” which after a slow intro falls into the unity that so distinguishes this trio. Jarrett dances not on air but on fire in his pointillist lines, while Peacock and DeJohnette both captivate with their subtle, popping sound. “Moon And Sand” is an equally smooth ride through less traveled territories and finds Jarrett in a gentler mood. DeJohnette is also at his most delicate here, drawing circles in the sand with his brush. For “In Love In Vain” Jarrett spins from thematic threads a twin self, who for all his similarities breathes a different sort of politics in one of the set’s finest tunes. With every grunt, Jarrett voices only the tip of his creative iceberg. Peacock delights with a very elastic solo, which no matter how far it stretches stays locked to its theme as if by finger trap. Jarrett is at his lyrical best in “Never Let Me Go,” and skips to his Lou in “If I Should Lose You” before laying down the poetry of “I Fall In Love Too Easily” with a thick, tangible power.

<< Eberhard Weber: Chorus (ECM 1288)
>> Everyman Band: Without Warning (ECM 1290)

… . …

ECM 1276

Prior to the release of Setting Standards, I hadn’t yet encountered the free play session that is Changes (ECM 1276) and what a joyful surprise it turned out to be, for never has the trio emoted in such a blissful mode. “Flying” is a heavenly diptych honed in delicacy and abandon. Here the band describes a decidedly aquatic territory, each tattered thread of melody flowing like the tendrils of a throbbing deep-sea creature whose eyes are its hearts. Jarrett spreads and shoots straight like an octopus, every pad suctioning to a new and exciting motif. Peacock, meanwhile, threads his fingers through a vast oceanic harp, stretching his emotive capacity to its limits. DeJohnette surfaces with a deeply digging solo before we end with Jarrett alone in a quiet, dissipating reflection. Peacock trails his starfish of a bass line through the pianistic coral reef of Part 2, he and DeJohnette inking their solos before hollering their way into an inescapable passion. The set ends in the refractions of “Prism.” And indeed the trio as a unit is not unlike a prism, separating every ray of light into its composite colors, likewise every ray of darkness into its whispered secrets. Jarrett’s expulsions heighten every inarticulable word that he writes, the breath of an energy that cannot be contained. The farther these reveries drift, the more life experience they carry back into the fold when they return.

<< Arvo Pärt: Tabula rasa (ECM 1275 NS)
>> John Adams: Harmonium (ECM 1277 NS)

… . …

In a society gone astray from musical immediacy, it’s safe to point out Jarrett’s nexus as one of the more reliable vestiges where melody still blooms. With an average track length of nine minutes, these are quiet and endlessly interesting epics. Say what you will about Jarrett’s singing, which has sadly turned not a few off from these recordings, but I believe Peter Rüedi puts it best in his insightful liner notes when he says, “His groans and vocal outbursts, considered by many to be a quirk, are in fact nothing but a form of suffering at the thought that the abyss between the piano and sung melody can ultimately never be bridged, not even by Jarrett himself.” To these ears, Jarrett’s voice welcomes us into the intimacy of his creative spirit, so unfathomably expanded in the company of two fine musicians (and even finer spirits) whose talents can’t help but sing in their own complementary registers. And on that note, we mustn’t forget the contributions of Jarrett’s band mates, who constitute far more than anything the mere rubric of “rhythm section” might ever imply. How can we, for example, not shake our heads in wonder at DeJohnette’s consistent inventiveness, which singlehandedly reshaped the idioms at hand. And then there is Peacock, who for me is the bread and butter of the first two sessions. So carefully negotiating his path through various leaps and bounds, he seems to anticipate everything Jarrett throws his way. Just listen to his soloing on “It Never Entered My Mind” and “God Bless The Child,” and these words will mean nothing.

Through the two standards albums, Jarrett put the “Song” back into the Great American Songbook, and in Changes enlarged it with “Prism.” Now given the proper archival treatment in this 3-disc Old & New Masters edition commemorating 25 years of music-making, this unassuming surge of sonic bliss is now ours to cherish at will.

The camaraderie expressed in the booklet’s final session photo speaks for itself:

Marc Johnson: Bass Desires (ECM 1299)

| Tyran Grillo

Marc Johnson
Bass Desires

Marc Johnson bass
Bill Frisell guitar, guitar synthesizer
John Scofield guitar
Peter Erskine drums
Recorded May 1985 at Power Station, New York
Engineer: Jan Erik Kongshaug
Produced by Manfred Eicher

“Samurai Hee-Haw,” the opening track of Marc Johnson’s Bass Desires, is one of the most memorable cuts in the ECM catalogue and a signature one for this transient project. Yet beyond its leader’s deeply rooted bass and Peter Erskine’s key-to-lock drumming, the pairing of Bill Frisell and John Scofield is what truly sets this firecracker a-sparkle. Their combined forces are enough to make one dizzy, and more than once they slip past our expectations by the skin of their teeth. Perhaps nothing could bear the weight of this resounding call to electric arms more confidently than a movement lifted from John Coltrane’s A Love Supreme. Hence “Resolution,” a groovy flower in which Erskine proves his own mettle with a tripped out solo against the metal string game being woven before him. The band turns the tables once more with the keening “Black Is The Color Of My True Love’s Hair.” This Appalachian folk song of Scottish origin finds not new but old life in the stretch of sonic hallway down which it is led. Lest we fall too deeply into elegy, the title track counters with rip-roaring fun. Erskine and Johnson lay down plenty of traction to spare as the two pickers fry the ether with their song. Elmer Bernstein’s “A Wishing Doll” sports a dancing synth guitar that can’t help but put one in mind of Pat Metheny. Flip a switch, though, and suddenly we’re riding Johnson’s “Mojo Highway,” of which the reggae-ish beat and lumpy bass complement smoldering mood swings from guitars.

This is a must for any ECM lover’s collection and ranks among the best of the Touchstones series. Like the title of Scofield’s “Thanks Again” that ends it, it holds up as a sprawling love letter to those on either end of the musical stick.

<< Azimuth: Azimuth ’85 (ECM 1298)
>> Terje Rypdal: Chaser (ECM 1303)

Azimuth: Azimuth ’85 (ECM 1298)

| Tyran Grillo

Azimuth
Azimuth ’85

John Taylor piano, organ
Norma Winstone vocal
Kenny Wheeler trumpet, fluegelhorn
Recorded March 1985 at Rainbow Studio, Oslo
Engineer: Jan Erik Kongshaug
Produced by Manfred Eicher

The equivocal trio known as Azimuth will forever be one of ECM’s most profound. The combination of John Taylor’s pianism and Norma Winstone’s vocals alongside Kenny Wheeler’s soulful trumpeting was just what the 1980s needed to find solace in sound. Taylor’s heart is sure to still yours in “Adios Iony,” from which Wheeler and Winstone draw parallel threads before the slow persuasion of words begins to make itself heard:

…a boat rounds the bend…bearing down…
breathtaking…
three herons stand their ground…swaying…
did you see them land?
moon behind branches…
suddenly bright, clear, frosty

Winstone paints her poetry in talk-singing before leaping into a pool of organ as Wheeler plays us out. “Dream” sleeps peacefully in loving vocal arms.

you and I in a vast deserted square
everything crumbles to the ground
facing you, I slowly slide into the chasm of your smile…

We feel blissfully lost, somehow grounded by love yet pushed ever forward beyond our wildest desires and into humbler shelters. The piano of “Lost Song” then looks us in the eye as if to speak the next title: “Who Are You?” The trumpeting here is liquid mercury. Like Siegfried’s bird, it is a floating commentator, hanging from the thinnest of threads pinched in forested fingers.

…funny to think of the children we were
memories we walked right through
but now you ask,
I’d have to guess that you feel lonely too…

Music and song walk hand in hand into the slow dance that follows. In “Breathtaking,” Winstone touches glaring heights with her vast internal power, drawing her throat into the refractions of a “February Daze.” The Steve Reichian consistency in the keys lends unusual urgency to the group’s ethereal sound, which only further blurs the snapshot rendered in “Til Bakeblikk.” The album’s elixir is made complete with two “Potions,” the second of which sits perched on the softly swinging bar of its aural cage, forever singing, forever wanting, and finding flight only in the concluding silence.

This is Azimuth’s zenith and another significant chapter of ECM’s backstory. It’s easy to see why this album never made it on to the 3-disc retrospective, for to do so would have risked diluting its value as a standalone artifact. Essential for many reasons, not least of all for Taylor, who plays as if he were holding an inanimate body in his hands, tracing its every contour until it comes back to life.

<< Chick Corea: Septet (ECM 1297)
>> Marc Johnson: Bass Desires (ECM 1299)

Chick Corea: Septet (ECM 1297)

| Tyran Grillo

SEPTET

Chick Corea
Septet

Chick Corea piano
Ida Kavafian violin
Theodore Arm violin
Steven Tenenbom viola
Fred Sherry cello
Steve Kujala flute
Peter Gordon French horn
Recorded October 1984 at Mad Hatter Studios, Los Angeles
Engineer: Bernie Kirsh
Produced by Chick Corea

Chick Corea is a musician who plays with X-ray vision, which is to say he’s highly adept at animating skeletons through his improvisatory prowess. And yet, whenever those bones are fleshed out into full-grown compositional organisms, one tends to lose sight of their anatomy. With the exception of Children’s Songs, Corea excels where there is at least a combination of the prescribed and the free. On Septet he is joined by a string quartet, flutist Steve Kujala, and Peter Gordon on French horn. Already in the First Movement, we are confronted with the quartet’s somewhat pedantic role, which is at pains to blend with the otherwise lovely sound forged by Corea and Kujala (not suprising, given that they’d just cut the effervescent Voyage not three months before). That being said, there is a wistful vitality to be had in those occasional moments that said forces do sync, as in the Second Movement. Some gorgeous, abstract pianism distinguishes the opening waves of the Third, which, despite exploring the album’s more fascinating ideas, are quickly curtained by the horn. Things fare far better in the Fourth, with its Bartókian sense of rhythmic acuity, and in the richly varied Fifth. At 10 minutes in length, the latter is also the most fully formed. Tacked on to this picturesque finale is portrait of “The Temple of Isfahan” that could easily soundtrack a documentary about the temple in question, a sacred site to the Zoroastrians who saw its attributive fire as a purifying agent. Like a well-edited film, this piece builds itself through vignettes, which despite never quite connecting as organically as they might have had they been left to speak among themselves, form a larger chain of ideas that must be taken in deep breaths before they can be exhaled as one.

It’s hard to know what to make of this album. What it lacks at the start, it certainly makes up for by the end, but it doesn’t necessarily beg for repeated listening. The musicianship is also top flight, especially the lovely playing of Gordon, who wrenches a gutsy and artful sound from his horn, and in the peerless virtuosity of Kujala. A lovely jewel for the completest, to be sure, but its absence would make Corea’s crown no less bright.

<< Lester Bowie’s Brass Fantasy: I Only Have Eyes For You (ECM 1296)
>> Azimuth: Azimuth ’85 (ECM 1298)

Lester Bowie’s Brass Fantasy: I Only Have Eyes For You (ECM 1296)

| Tyran Grillo

 

Lester Bowie´s Brass Fantasy
I Only Have Eyes For You

Lester Bowie trumpet
Stanton Davis trumpet, fluegelhorn
Malachi Thompson trumpet
Bruce Purse trumpet
Craig Harris trombone
Steve Turre trombone
Vincent Chancey French horn
Bob Stewart tuba
Phillip Wilson drums
Recorded February 1985 at Rawlston Recording Studios, Brooklyn, New York
Engineer: Akili Walker
Produced by Manfred Eicher and Lester Bowie

This debut album from Lester Bowie’s Brass Fantasy is still the outfit’s best. The moment those doo-wop horns saunter in for the title cut, you know you’ve come home. Bowie not only enthralls us with his fortitude, but manages to do so while keeping alive in his muted cone the dying flame of a bygone era. But here is where Bowie & Co. break from the formula that would shade later Brass Fantasy efforts: from hereon out we get nothing but originals. Trumpeter Bruce Purse’s “Think” is the densest of these and is anchored by Bob Stewart’s wonderful tuba lines. Stewart also leaves his mark with “Nonet,” a creeping leviathan of sound that surfaces with a vivacious sense of coalescence. Brother in arms Malachi Thompson offers his “Lament,” which begins in the darkest recesses of the assembled instruments, gurgling like didgeridoos behind Bowie’s freshly gilded warbling. Bowie himself rounds out the set with two tunes. “Coming Back, Jamaica” is a respectful taste of the islands, grafted by chanting voices and supernatural lines, not to mention a tuba solo to end all tuba solos. “When The Spirit Returns,” on the other hand, is a trudge and a half, but one that shoulders a burden of hope which it offers to us with mounting selflessness.

Bowie’s Brass Fantasy is one of the more compelling jazz configurations of the 1980s and holds its rightful place in ECM’s hallowed halls. Nowhere better to start than here.

<< John Surman: Withholding Pattern (ECM 1295)
>> Chick Corea: Septet (ECM 1297)

John Surman: Withholding Pattern (ECM 1295)

| Tyran Grillo

 

John Surman
Withholding Pattern

John Surman baritone and soprano saxophones, bass clarinet, recorder, piano, synthesizer
Recorded December 1984 at Rainbow Studio, Oslo
Engineer: Jan Erik Kongshaug
Produced by Manfred Eicher

As one of the most skilled saxophonists alive, John Surman has gone beyond carving a niche, for he has also redefined the medium into which he carves. And while the breadth of his proficiency is certainly staggering, to these ears it is what he does with the baritone (normally not my favorite reed) that sets him a world apart. One need only listen to its poetry in “Doxology” to find out for oneself. In this multi-tracked chorus, Surman plows the melodic field with taste and care, while his favored sequencer provides a glittering edge to the ashen interior, as also in “Changes Of Season,” where now the heavenly cored tone of a soprano links the stars into an all-encompassing constellation. But listen again to the baritone’s solo flights in “All Cat’s Whiskers And Bee’s Knees” and “The Snooper,” each buoyed by the after-images of a tasteful studio echo, and you will find new delights to savor. Two “Holding Patterns” bookend the album’s remainder with broader electronic wingspans. In these one sees neither people nor their relics in the landscapes below, but hears only the music they’ve left behind. Surman is a one-man saxophone quartet in “Skating On Thin Ice,” through which he brings his at once overcast and sunlit visions to life. “Wild Cat Blues” features the deepest sequence of all, pairing beautifully with Surman’s echoed soprano.

These sonic activities are deeply internal, personal excursions into a territory of forgotten histories. Surman’s music always seems to tell a story that would through words be forever obscured by the uncertainty of memory, yet which in their musical retelling is strangely immediate and unmitigated.

<< Jan Garbarek Group: It’s OK to listen to the gray voice (ECM 1294)
>> Lester Bowie’s Brass Fantasy: I Only Have Eyes For You (ECM 1296)

Jan Garbarek Group: It’s OK to listen to the gray voice (ECM 1294)

| Tyran Grillo

Jan Garbarek Group
It’s OK to listen to the gray voice

Jan Garbarek tenor and soprano saxophones
David Torn guitars, guitar synthesizer, DX 7
Eberhard Weber bass
Michael DiPasqua drums, percussion
Recorded December 1984 at Rainbow Studio, Oslo
Engineer: Jan Erik Kongshaug
Produced by Manfred Eicher

O field as grey as the buried bog-man’s cloak.
An island floating darkly in the fog.
It’s quiet, as when the radar turns
and turns its arc in hopelessness.

 There’s a crossroads in a moment.
Music of the distance converges.
All grown together in a leafy tree.
Vanished cities glitter in its branches.

–From “Elegy” by Tomas Tranströmer (trans. Robin Fulton)

If the title of this classic Jan Garbarek date from 1984 moves you, there’s a good reason for that. Like all of the tunes therein, its nomenclature is culled from the poetry of Tomas Tranströmer, who was just awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature this year. And if anyone has the vocabulary available at his lips to reproduce it without words, it’s Jan Garbarek.

Garbarek albums are, like those of Keith Jarrett, trail markers in the ECM catalogue by which can gauge the label’s evolution in sound and atmosphere, and if this one is any indication, I’d say things were moving along pretty darn smoothly. Garbarek shines brightest in the company of those who have their own sonorous light to bring to an otherwise inarticulable cause, and finds exactly that in guitarist David Torn, bassist Eberhard Weber, and drummer Michael DiPasqua.

Together they string a delicate network of guitar and electronics in “White Noise Of Forgetfulness,” throughout which Garbarek strings a song to complement every warped square of silence. Weber opens “The Crossing Place” with a honeyed solo, to which Garbarek touches his saxophonic torch and sets the darkness aglow like a sparkler in July, ever dancing at the edge of annihilation. Torn’s snaking solo winds beneath a desert sun into the oasis of “One Day In March I Go Down To The Sea.” Here Garbarek takes the notion of sonic postcard to an entirely new level, moving diacritically around images and sentiments with the care of a sable brush. “Mission: To Be Where I Am” comes across as something of a personal anthem, and has a lilting beauty all its own. “Phone The Island That Is A Mirage” features melodious bass work from Weber amid a slowly moving atmosphere. The haunting title track is straight from the heart and would reappear on the saxophonist’s 1998 magnum opus, Rites. The set ends modestly with “I Am The Knife Thrower’s Partner,” a sad and lonely tale—nay, an impression—told by two overdubbed saxophones, each a light upon the horizon gone too soon.

<< Gary Burton Quartet: Real Life Hits (ECM 1293)
>> John Surman: Withholding Pattern (ECM 1295)

Dave Holland Quintet: Seeds of Time (ECM 1292)

| Tyran Grillo

Dave Holland Quintet
Seeds of Time

Dave Holland bass
Steve Coleman alto and soprano saxophones, flute
Julian Priester trombone
Marvin “Smitty” Smith drums, percussion
Kenny Wheeler trumpet, cornet, pocket trumpet, fluegelhorn
Recorded November 1984 at Tonstudio Bauer, Ludwigsburg
Engineer: Martin Wieland
Produced by Manfred Eicher

Seeds of Time presents the Dave Holland Quintet in arguably its finest incarnation. With Kenny Wheeler blowing brass, Marvin “Smitty” Smith on drums, Julian Priester on trombone, and Steve Coleman on reeds to enlighten the senses at every turn, one simply can’t go wrong with this date. For me its brightest stars are Wheeler and Coleman, both of whom paint the album’s most vivid scenes. Coleman’s transportive alto lights up the night against Holland’s metronomic click in “Uhren” before Wheeler pushes us into the deep end, where swims a school of extracurricular percussion. This fantastic start keeps expectations high, though these are ultimately surpassed by what follows. “Homecoming” is another jubilant enterprise, which turns on every dime dropped from Holland’s strings along its precisely winding road. The tightly wound horns unleash one engaging phrase after another, Wheeler in particular kicking up the solo-verse up a notch or two. Holland also punches his time clock with a tight diversion. “Perspicuity” introduces Coleman’s flute into a lacier matrix as Holland walks on air. The opening of the “Celebration” that follows speaks from beyond our time with the voice of an era wrapped in gold. Some of the grooviest bass work around can be found on this track as Holland runs up and down the stairs of an architecture that is purely his own. The title couldn’t be more apt, for celebration is exactly what this formidable band brings to the table every time. “World Protection Blues” seems also to come from a distant time, only now from the future. The quintet builds to fever pitch as lines and spaces fill out one another into a solid color of wonder. A noteworthy solo from Priester to boot, positively swinging with rounded edges. “Gridlock (Opus 8)” is a working argument of modern anxiety. Its confrontations of flesh and technology, of mobility and imprisonment, are cracked open like a forgotten blue egg from the robin’s nest of the Art Ensemble of Chicago. Coleman dances on air as the band takes flight from a hard bop defenestration. Smith’s back-and-forth action here is a high point in the Holland archive. The funkier lines and cowbell-infused gait of “Walk-A-Way” leaves us blissfully prepared for “The Good Doctor.” Here Holland slinks in like a panther into a caravan of flute and horns. “Double Vision” ends on a high note, lassoing our attention (as if the album hasn’t already) to an electrifying hitching post. After the opening blast Wheeler launches forth as Holland and Smith hold down Fort Groove. A flick of register gives us a wormy soprano sax solo, positively soaring over Holland’s firm grounding.

The energy of this music is such that we find ourselves lost in every contortion of its features. Holland is no holds barred without being aggressive, direct without being confrontational, straightforward without ever being staid. Each successive album only seems to further energize his band mates, and with Seeds of Time we know firsthand how he can do the same for his listeners.

A must-hear for those who take their coffee with excitement.

<< Oregon: Crossing (ECM 1291)
>> Gary Burton Quartet: Real Life Hits (ECM 1293)