Jazz

Edward Vesala/Sound & Fury: Invisible Storm (ECM 1461)

| Tyran Grillo

Edward Vesala
Sound & Fury
Invisible Storm

Jorma Tapio alto saxophone, bass clarinet, flute, percussion, bass flute
Jouni Kannisto tenor saxophone, flute
Pepa Päivinen tenor, baritone and soprano saxophones, flute, alto flute
Matti Riikonen trumpet
Iro Haarla piano, harp, keyboards
Jimi Sumen guitar
Edward Vesala drums, percussion
Marko Ylönen cello
Recorded May/June 1991 at Sound & Fury Studios, Helsinki
Engineer: Jimi Sumen
Produced by Manfred Eicher and Edward Vesala

The late drummer and musical visionary Edward Vesala was a strange bird. As one of the few whose records became less accessible the more composed they were, he marked his path by leaving not breadcrumbs but entire loaves, piping hot and ready to serve. His was a fresh sound, a living sound that, as the moniker of his ensemble implies, thrived also on the richness of fury.

Invisible Storm is a suite of sorts. I see it as existing in two diurnal parts, though the split and its nature, assuming any, may rightly lie elsewhere for every listener. The first half opens the album’s daytime musings, shooting its eyes wide open from the start with the guttural menagerie of “Sheets and Shrouds” before a lachrymose violin and soprano sax woo us in “Murmuring Morning.” Next is “Gordion’s Flashes,” which lays a pleasant tangle of horns and electric guitar over an infectious savannah beat from Vesala, who further shows an aptitude for color as he adds samples of jackhammer and other mundane sounds from an eyedropper filled with chants and stale rituals. Harpist Iro Haarla threads gentler promises throughout “Shadows on the Frontier,” only to have them taken away by children smelling of patchouli and innocent observation. It is they who weave the set’s most masterful narrative, a cinematic flipbook of ghost towns and gravelly dreams that unfolds with the grace of a Philip Glass opera scarred by backstage secrets.

Which brings us to “In the Gate of Another Gate,” a transitory palindrome that opens us to the courtyard of “Somnamblues.” The latter is a ponderous matrix of distortion and metallic whispers that plunges us into the album’s nighttime anxieties. “Sarastus” lumbers through its porous moods riding the back of a roller rink organ, while “The Wedding of all Essential Parts” and the title track offer even more ponderous reflections, given shape by Haarla’s needlework and Vesala’s snare. Reprieve comes in “The Haze of the Frost,” a chain of snow owl talon-prints, rendered by flutes alone, which unearths a slab of mockery in the concluding “Caccaroo Boohoo.”

Because nearly every moment of Invisible Storm (with the possible exceptions of Vesala’s constant hitting and some of the reed work) feels carefully written out, one is confronted with the fullness of his philosophy. In the less straightforward projects like Nan Madol we encounter a sound-world so extraterrestrial that we cannot help surrendering ourselves to its rules. Here, however, Vesala draws much from personal, earthly experiences, choosing from a shoebox filled with hard-won postcards. For this reason, I recommend giving the earlier out-to-lunchers a taste test before downing this fiber-rich brew.

<< Veljo Tormis: Forgotten Peoples (ECM 1459/60 NS)
>> Ralph Towner: Open Letter (ECM 1462)

Hal Russell/NRG Ensemble: The Finnish/Swiss Tour (ECM 1455)

| Tyran Grillo

Hal Russell
NRG Ensemble
The Finnish/Swiss Tour

Hal Russell tenor and soprano saxophones, trumpet, vibraphone, drums
Mars Williams tenor and soprano saxophones, didgeridoo
Brian Sandstrom bass, trumpet, guitar
Kent Kessler bass, bass guitar, didgeridoo
Steve Hunt drums, vibraphone, didgeridoo
Recorded November 1990 at the Tampere Jazz Happening and the Internationales Jazz Festival Zürich
Finnish recording: Antti Sjöholm, Finnish Broadcasting Company
Swiss recording: Martin Pearson, Radio DRS
Norwegian mix: Jan Erik Kongshaug, Rainbow Studio, Oslo
Album compiled/produced by Steve Lake

Hal Russell deserves an entry in the dictionary under the word free, for how can the mindful listener feel anything else when steeped in the incendiary playing of the late Renaissance man. The Finnish/Swiss Tour, recorded during his first European tour in November of 1990 at a tender 64, was my second Hal Russell experience, after The Hal Russell Story. Looking back on this discovery, which as of this review can be counted in days, I wonder how I never encountered Hal Russell until only recently. Then again, often the most perspective-altering music seeks us out only when the time is ripe, does it not?

Russell famously picked up his first saxophone at age fifty: pure happenstance but love at first play. As a drummer he beat along with the greats: John Coltrane, Miles Davis, Benny Goodman, Sarah Vaughan…the list goes on. With a songbook of over 400 original compositions and a spirit to match, Russell seems a veritable John Zorn of creative genius. Yet that genius lies as much in his demeanor as in his explosive tendencies on stage. Thankfully, if almost impossibly, he shares that stage here with the NRG Ensemble, a brilliant quartet consisting of Mars Williams on reeds, Brian Sandstrom and Kent Kessler on basses and guitars, and Steve Hunt on vibes. With this support network shining his guillotine at every turn, Russell is sure to leave not a few heads rolling in his wake.

Such metaphorical language might leave one under the false impression, however, that this is confrontational music meant to baffle and alienate. Nothing could be further from the truth. What we have is an ethos that thrashes with flailing but open arms, welcoming all who would listen into an amusement park of thrilling rides. We encounter, for example, the ecstatic tenors of “Hal The Weenie,” which according to our illustrious leader shoot the breeze in honor of Halloween, thus slicing up a most twisted Jack-o’-lantern of free jazz brilliance that has the crowd in gleeful awe, and us before our stereos in envy for not having been there when it all went down.

Rusell is, without a doubt, the center of attention, if not always in the playing (Williams’s blasting tenor siphons much of that credit; just spin “Ten Letters Of Love” and know) then in the writing, for his name lies behind every shattered tune. His dialoguing with Williams in “Raining Violets,” an acrid romp through some intense melodic flowers indeed, is strangely comforting and proof positive of the irresistible nature of these goings on. For go on we do, lost in the labyrinth of a didgeridoo’s darkest visions in “For MC” (featuring Russell on a lovely muted trumpet) and found dreaming a “Dance Of The Spider People.” Williams beguiles us in this web of wonders with a luscious soprano, Kessler providing the ostinato before the whole thing cracks like stressed glass in slow motion to the tune of its own masochism. “Linda’s Rock Vamp,” on the other hand, skewers its kabobs one instrumental morsel at a time and roasts them over raging conflagration of attention. Russell’s deft solo on vibes opens the floor in “Temporarily.” The ensuing debate gets raucous fast, rivaling even the British Parliament with its overwhelming tenors.

Yet one moment above all defines the Finnish/Swiss experience in the blink of an eye. It occurs after Russell and Williams have just finished the introductory crosstalk of “Monica’s Having A Baby,” tumbling like a jellyroll aflame into a pile of abstraction. Though we are breathless, a quick “thank you” from Russell is all it takes for him to dive headfirst into the incredible aliveness of “Aila/35 Basic.” The offhandedness of this transition speaks, actually, to the seriousness of his humor, and betrays an artist totally comfortable in his skin.

No survey of this record would be complete without a bow before the totem of “Mars Theme.” For this hot ticket, Russell jumps from drums to tenor to trumpet to soprano faster than you can say “Red Bats With Teeth” (cf. David Lynch’s Lost Highway), for Bob Sheppard’s solo in that classic fever dream is precisely what comes to mind. It is a bridge into the high-octane menagerie of a castle scarred by barbed wire, its towers reaching an apex of intensity so bright that we cannot help but close our eyes and dream of what Russell might still sound like on the other side.

John Abercrombie: November (ECM 1502)

| Tyran Grillo

John Abercrombie
November

John Abercrombie guitar
Marc Johnson bass
Peter Erskine drums
John Surman baritone and soprano saxophones, bass clarinet
Recorded November 1992 at Rainbow Studio, Oslo
Engineer: Jan Erik Kongshaug
Produced by Manfred Eicher

Named for both the month its was recorded in and for the mood it maintains, November is a cogent record from guitarist John Abercrombie’s trio with bassist Marc Johnson and drummer Peter Erskine, along with special guest John Surman. The English reedman lends his fluid considerations to the album’s deepest moments, and nowhere so engagingly as in “The Cat’s Back,” thus opening a cloudy and sometimes pensive set of mostly group originals. Abercrombie’s quiet sparkle ushers in the gravid quartet sound of this improvised prelude, Surman tipping the scales with bass clarinet against the weight of Erskine and Johnson’s joyous communication. Those timeworn ululations scramble themselves in “Rise And Fall,” a veritable Rubik’s Cube of baritone utterances. The legato soprano of “Ogeda” also inspires particularly soulful picking from Abercrombie, who pulls from the gumdrop strums of “Come Rain Or Come Shine” and “Prelude” a scroll of ideas. These come to life inside rings of celestial fire, each a meteorite in freefall. Meditation throbs at the heart of “J.S.,” a lavish piece boasting starry turns all around. After this look inward, we get something more extroverted in the foot-tapping beats of “Right Brain Patrol.” Despite small beginnings, it ends up spitting pale fire as if it were breath itself into “John’s Waltz.” Over Erskine’s calm ripples, Abercrombie grabs the tail of Johnson’s solo for one of his own, deploying a parachute held by chromatic tethers. “To Be” reprises Surman’s bass clarinet, played here as if it were the last of its kind. Its voice paints the night with that gentle resignation only loneliness can bring, a heartening and mournful sound that recedes from “Big Music,” which finishes the album with ice-skating melodies and tight syncopations.

While everyone on November listens to the others with equal acuity, I find this outing all the more enjoyable for what Johnson does to its sound. After having only encountered him in denser projects like Bass Desires, it was a real pleasure to hear—in the title track, for example—the intimacy of his craft. His duet with Erskine on “Tuesday Afternoon” is a real gem in this regard and provides a guiding lens for this exquisite studio date.

<< Bach: 3 Sonaten für Viola da Gamba und Cembalo (ECM 1501 NS)
>> Ketil Bjørnstad: Water Stories (ECM 1503)

Hal Russell: Hal’s Bells (ECM 1484)

| Tyran Grillo

Hal Russell
Hal’s Bells

Hal Russell tenor and soprano saxophones, trumpet, musette, drums, vibraphone, bass marimba, congas, gongs, bells, percussion, voice
Recorded May 1992 at Rainbow Studio, Oslo
Engineer: Jan Erik Kongshaug
Produced by Steve Lake

Hal’s Bells is a rare thing: an artist’s first solo recording made in his last year. This astonishing statement is a panorama of Hal Russell’s succinctly indefinable career (for the best attempt at such, look no further than The Hal Russell Story), which the hapless listener finds realized in the breadth of his one-man band abilities. From drums (his starter instrument) to bass and horns, his kit has room for no other. A congregation of marimba and bells in “Buddhi” speaks with childlike innocence before cracking open an egg of reeds and Chinese gongs. Such contrasts prove quotidian in a space where the fuel-engaged tenor of “Millard Mottker” and “Strangest Kiss” can hug the muted trumpet goodness of “Portrait Of Benny” without a blink of hesitation. Soprano skills are on full tap in “Susanna.” Even as he twists himself into all manner of contortions, Hal maintains an astounding level of precision in the highs and sets off a lovely spate of vibes against some thread-through-needle drumming. “Carolina Moon” has much to say in 390 seconds, howling like a pack of wolves in desperate need of attention but which instead converges on “Kenny G.” While the latter’s endearing abandon is as far from its patron saint as can be, it nevertheless rings with a relatively free and breezy timbre. The enticing solo of “I Need You Now” furthers the album’s mission from restlessness to meditation and unmasks a deceptive repose in “For Free” (which might as well be Russell’s motto). The great vibes—in all respects—of this track work toward a blubbering finish sure to leave you breathless and in want of the elixir that is “Moon Of Manakoora.” This vocally blessed excursion into outer space is a straight shot to that marsh in the sky where, no doubt, Russell’s squealing energies continue to mount, ever amphibious and slithering their way through territories unclean yet oh so stunning.

The rewards of Hal’s Bells might never have been known to us were it not for Steve Lake, who has seen fit to produce a selective body of work for ECM in the interest of preserving sometimes-underappreciated artists, and we have him and Manfred Eicher to thank for believing in Hal, now immortal in the digital afterlife.

<< Heiner Goebbels: La Jalousie (ECM 1483 NS)
>> Michael Mantler: Folly Seeing All This (ECM 1485)

Michael Mantler: Cerco Un Paese Innocente (ECM 1556)

| Tyran Grillo

Michael Mantler
Cerco Un Paese Innocente

Mona Larsen voice
Michael Mantler trumpet
Bjarne Roupé guitar
Marianne Sørensen violin
Mette Winther viola
Gunnar Lychou viola
Helle Sørensen cello
Kim Kristensen piano
The Danish Radio Big Band
Ole Kock Hansen conductor
Recorded January 1994 at the Danish Radio, Studio 3, Copenhagen
Recording and mixing engineer: Lars Palsig
Produced by Michael Mantler

Beginning has us singing
and we sing to make an ending

Michael Mantler’s Cerco Un Paese Innocente (I search for an innocent land) pays tribute to the father of modern Italian poetry, Giuseppe Ungaretti. Subtitled “A Suite of Songs and Interludes for Voice, Untypical Big Band and Soloists,” this seamless construction feels anything but untypical in the comforting plush of its instrumentation and attention to soundscape. The present recording is also significant for bringing Copenhagen-born vocalist Mona Larsen back together with the Danish Radio Big Band, who debuted her as soloist in the seventies to wide renown. Larsen’s diction, in combination with her already broad palette, imparts life to dead limbs and electrical impulses to still hearts. Through it we know the touch of many landscapes, their peoples, their flora and fauna, reaching through our bodies toward the setting sun at our backs. This same sun warms the field’s worth of fragrance that wafts through the swell of orchestral goodness in the piece’s introduction. Yet the voice of “Girovago” (Vagrant) does not feel that touch, is forced to wander, forever a stranger, from land to land. A clarinet plays, stringing a trail of possible futures, all of which disappear into the first of five intermezzi, each an anointing of melodic oil that smacks of the perpetual. Curtains part to reveal the starlight of “Stasera” (This evening) and Larsen’s Francesca Gagnon-esque acrobatics. “Perché?” (Why?) ties an operatic ribbon around the index finger of Part 2. It is the tale of a dark heart lost in its desire to erase the scars of travel. “Sempre Notte” (Everlasting night) turns the dial further inward and walks through cascading gardens, from which hang sad and sorry tales of yesteryear like so much totora reed left to dry. The depths of “Lontano” (Distantly) evoke the poet’s blindness in a landscape of fiery hands. The music here seems to explore those sparkling pockets of air in which our dreams still breathe. Breathing, however, comes at a cost in Part 3, where the soaring orchestration of “Se Una Tua Mano” (With one hand) euphemizes the harm of curiosity trembling beneath its veneer. “Is surviving death living?” Larsen sings, prompting mental implosion through Ungaretti’s unwavering mortal concerns. The halting rhythms of “Vanità” (Vanity) further paint a world of startlement and shadows, its rubble soldered back together by the warmth of Mantler’s trumpet into “Quando Un Giorno” (When a day) and the invigorating “Le Ansie” (Fear). In these we encounter life as smoke, at once agonizing and brimming with potential. Gloom lives in these soils and nourishes the churning dramaturgy of Part 4, of which “È Senza Fiato” (Motionless) darkens like an arc of twilight, led by a shooting star of electric guitar into “Non Gridate Più” (Outcry no more). This sweeping transition rakes its fingers through silent grasses and hushes the mouths of the dead, in whom only the resolutions of “Tutto Ho Perduto” (I have lost all) continue to resound, their childhoods laid to rest by a final word.

One of your hands resists your fate,
but the other, you see, at once assures you
that you can only grasp
tatters of memory

<< Sándor Veress: Passacaglia Concertante, etc. (ECM 1555 NS)
>> Charles Lloyd: All My Relations (ECM 1557)

Jan Garbarek Group: Twelve Moons (ECM 1500)

| Tyran Grillo

Jan Garbarek Group
Twelve Moons

Jan Garbarek soprano and tenor saxophones, keyboards
Rainer Brüninghaus keyboards
Eberhard Weber bass
Manu Katché drums
Marilyn Mazur percussion
Agnes Buen Garnås vocal
Mari Boine vocal
Recorded September 1992 at Rainbow Studio, Oslo
Engineer: Jan Erik Kongshaug
Produced by Manfred Eicher

Twelve Moons may be the fifth Jan Garbarek Group album by name, but its smoothness and level of musicianship mark it as a great leap into the group’s signature sound. Between the sparkling ocean of the two-part title track and a gloriously realized “Witchi-Tai-To” (making its first reappearance since the selfsame album of 1974), Garbarek and his mind-melded band mates have created a record of great scope and mood. Earthen motives mesh with synth textures, breath with lively percussion, folk tunes with modern lilts. By means of his cinematic sweep Garbarek turns aside the bane of an indifferent world in favor of visceral emotional connections. Just when we think those connections have receded, they come back at fuller force, pulling away the darkness like a curtain to reveal the light which has offset it all along. Agnes Buen Garnås (who had previously collaborated with Garbarek on Rosensfole) and Mari Boine lend their mineral-rich voices to “Psalm” and “Darvánan,” respectively, moving from vast droning landscape to haunting duet as might a rainbow split into two. Garbarek’s tenor makes only a few appearances (most effectively in the arcing storyline of “Brother Wind March”). Its voice in “The Tall Tear Trees,” for one, implores the firmament with the conviction of a returning wayfarer who has just spotted home on the horizon. Yet this session is mostly about a soprano whose sky-bound warbling in “There Were Swallows…” (notable also for Eberhard Weber’s whale-like bass) and lullaby strains in “Arietta” seem to take great comfort in the cushiony surroundings. “Gautes-Margjit” is an especially attractive groove that rests itself easily in the cradle of our wonder, bristling with an aliveness of pianism such as only Rainer Brüninghaus can elicit. Garbarek’s soaring tone bleeds pink like tropical clouds afflicted with heat lightning. And let us not forget Manu Katché’s gripping provocations in “Huhai.”

A flawless classic, Twelve Moons offers a rich bouquet for the ears with melodies and rhythms that go straight to the heart of anyone who loves to listen.

<< Red Sun/SamulNori: Then Comes The White Tiger (ECM 1499)
>> Bach: 3 Sonaten für Viola da Gamba und Cembalo (ECM 1501 NS)

David Darling: Cello (ECM 1464)

| Tyran Grillo

1464 X

David Darling
Cello

David Darling acoustic cello, 8-string electric cello
Recorded November 1991 and January 1992 at Rainbow Studio, Oslo
Engineer: Jan Erik Kongshaug
Produced by Manfred Eicher

David Darling’s Cello is one of the most stunning albums ever to be released on ECM in any genre. Its fluid paths feel like home. Darling plows the improvisatory depths of his soul, given free rein in the studio to paint the negative spaces in between those clouds on the album’s cover, ever deeper, ever truer to the core of something alive. Most journeys might take you across some distance to get you to where you’re going, yet few will actually unpack where you are standing with such complex, unabashed glory that one need not take a single step to travel to the end of the universe and back. Cello is one such journey.

The opening “Darkwood I” carries us into a state of bliss unlike any other, finding its interest in the empty spaces of time that define our action and thought alike. “No Place Nowhere” swells with the blessing of life, finding in every shift of light a new window through which Darling casts the details of his destiny through shadow. One finds here a long and winding road into horizon, forever receding, that is the vanishing point in sound, the blessing and the curse of beauty, the sweeping gesture of aesthetic pleasure rolled humbly into a never-ending circle. The bird calls of “Fables” dance in the sky like time-lapsed aurora borealis, twisting our sense of time to the tune of something divine. “Dark-wood II” is a wilting flower, a lakeside flower dropping spores. “Lament” lowers us in swaddling into the slow-motion cradle of the wind, the mountain veil as a crook in a mother’s arm, singing our souls softly to sleep. “Two Or Three Things” evokes Jean-Luc Godard with its softly flowing landscape of water and wind, grass and foam, where swim the vagaries of our modern life against the tide of regression that is our calling into death. This breathtaking journey guides us into a place that is so deeply inside us that we must disappear to find it. “Indiana Indian,” forever my favorite track on the album, begins in a harmonic swirl before loosing a pizzicato chain of finely honed memories. A jazzy half-note swing brings us into the enthralling drama of “Totem.” Here, an ocean of double stops, a tidal wave of lilting lines, leaving an imprint of “Psalm” in the sands. Its protracted antiphony sheds its clothing to reveal “Choral.” This Möbius drop into solitude, where harmony offers the illusory promise of companionship in a world without bodies, whispers at the interstices of our alienation. “The Bell” has the makings of an Arvo Pärt choral work with its microtonal harmonies and tintinnabulations. “In November” rounds a cinematic edge, rolling over into a low and calming thunder and ending with the yellowing strains of “Darkwood III.”

On paper, these might seem little more than chromatic exercises, but in the vastness of Darling’s playing, combined with Eicher’s attention to space, they achieve a meditative state in which the simplest musical utterances become the most profound. Eicher’s touch can be ever felt in the sound and in the melodic elements he has provided, showing us that he is not only a fine producer, but also has a supremely sensitive ear for melody and, above all, time. For this improvised session, Eicher told Darling to go as deep as he could go, thus expressing the spirit of the label at heart, not to mention the spirit of what a musician can achieve when open to infinity.

<< John Surman: Adventure Playground (ECM 1463)
>> Charles Lloyd: Notes From Big Sur (ECM 1465)

Hal Russell/NRG Ensemble: The Hal Russell Story (ECM 1498)

| Tyran Grillo

Hal Russell
NRG Ensemble
The Hal Russell Story

Hal Russell tenor and soprano saxophones, trumpet, drums, xylophone, percussion, gong, narration, vocals
Mars Williams tenor, alto and bass saxophones, toy horns, wood flute, didgeridoo, bells, sounds, narration
Brian Sandstrom acoustic bass, electric guitar, trumpet, toy horns, percussion
Kent Kessler acoustic bass, trombone
Steve Hunt drums, vibraphone, tympani, percussion
Recorded July 1992 at Hardstudios, Winterthur
Engineer: Martin Wieland
Produced by Steve Lake

What do you do when you know too much? 

Improvise!!!

The late and great Hal Russell passed away not five weeks after recording, prophetically enough, The Hal Russell Story, a whirlwind of a tour through the autobiography of one of jazz’s undisputed champions. From the intro, we get Russell’s taste of yore with megaphone amid an engagingly frenetic cyclone of sound, followed by a toy parade in the spirit of the Art Ensemble of Chicago: a romp through childhood’s darkest corners, ending in a trumpet free-for-all and the sketch of a nascent musician caught in the radio waves of life. So begins the 18-part title suite, a pan bursting with golden nuggets of abandon. A bed of drumming supports with mounting intensity a lithe dance of vibes. A swinging sax rises from the depths of a torturously sonorous past. A breezy sort of high-octane energy works its saxophonic magic at every turn with delectable aplomb. Squawks and dark raptures trade verses for curses against some hard-hitting reed work all around. The rhythm section sees Russell eye to eye at every level. Incredible screeches from tenor work over an invisible crowd with utterly attenuated vocal energy. That wonderful rhythm section kicks in at key moments, making headway against the soprano’s ululating tide. Smokier flavors sit side-by-side with empty flutters from bass. From match-lit tributes to late masters to quiet reflections, every nuance speaks as if born again, unsure of the death that gave it life. A growling guitar swept up in unsheathed brass is blown to bits by squealing tenor, letting us down easy into the night, where Miles still wanders, dragging the weighty trailer of his craft. Flowering little suspension bridges of influence and affect bleed into slices of swank. Dramatic pops and scuttling opportunities run rampant. The band’s resolve contracts and expands through haunts and explosions. Freedom principles and fast rules tune themselves to the drama of “Lady In The Lake,” a pensive and strangely declamatory track that nudges us into a distinctive rendition of Fleetwood Mac’s “Oh Well.”

Steve Lake has produced some of ECM’s most exciting recordings, and The Hal Russell Story stands as a crowning achievement. A brilliant album that weaves its personal threads over and under for an honest patchwork. With all of this clear from one studio effort, I can only imagine what the live NRG experience must have been as musicians switched instruments at the drop of a hat in a controlled chaos.

Vaudeville, yes vaudeville (can’t seem to shake the influence).

<< Peter Erskine Trio: You Never Know (ECM 1497)
>> Red Sun/SamulNori: Then Comes The White Tiger (ECM 1499)

Andersen/Towner/Vasconcelos: If You Look Far Enough (ECM 1493)

| Tyran Grillo

If You Look Far Enough

Arild Andersen bass
Ralph Towner guitars
Nana Vasconcelos percussion
Audun Kleive snare drum
Recorded Spring 1988, July 1991, and February 1992 at Rainbow Studio, Oslo
Engineer: Jan Erik Kongshaug
Produced by Arild Andersen

Manfred Eicher strikes gold with yet another inspired melding of musical minds. The microphones at ECM’s Rainbow Studio this time are privileged to witness an emotionally powerful session from bassist Arild Andersen, guitarist Ralph Towner, and percussionist Nana Vasconcelos. The session begins with something of a title track in “If You Look.” From this swell of drones and metallic whispers comes “Svev,” a scintillating piece that finds Andersen in a buoyant mood. “For All We Know” is a stunningly gorgeous duet between him and Towner—a match made in heaven. Andersen’s tender spaces are the perfect sky for Towner to spread his careful, classical wings. “Backé” continues this intimate reflection, only now with Vasconcelos’s auguries providing a more focused berth for Towner’s spindly ruminations. Vasconcelos adds a vocal swoon for effect. These two tracks are the heart of the album and could continue for its full length if they wished. “The Voice” begins with Andersen’s sustained calls, drawn out like cloud wisps on the horizon and providing a long-forgotten plain for the rhythm and tackle of Vasconcelos’s well-traveled feet. Andersen dips into some electronic augmentations, sounding like an infant foghorn with melodic growing pains. “The Woman” is a beautiful little duet for percussion and bass that works its tender embrace one muscle of sentiment at a time. Andersen’s deft monologue of serpents and harmonics carries the conversation over into “The Place” at a more urgent pace, working sidelong into an inspiring spiral. “The Drink” is another transportive duet, swaying like a caravan transport in the unforgiving sun. Next is “Main Man,” which jumps back into the rhythmic deep end with some funkier vibes, while “A Song I Used To Play” is a slow and tender build to Towner’s 12-string ebullience. “Far Enough” is another haunting drone of spectral footsteps that brings us into “Jonah,” a bass solo that smiles with all the wonder of new life.

This album is something of a sleeper ECM hit and worth seeking out for fans of any and all of these musicians. Don’t pass it up.

<< Meredith Monk: Atlas (ECM 1491/92 NS)
>> Messiaen: Méditations Sur Le Mystère De La Sainte Trinité (ECM 1494 NS)