Tracklist :
1 Gratitude 7:52
Don Pullen
2 Resting On The Road 10:30
Don Pullen
3 Out Of A Storm 8:38
D.D. Jackson
4 El Matador 4:32
Don Pullen
5 Easy Alice 8:10
D.D. Jackson
6 Long Goodbye 8:00
Lawrence "Butch" Morris
7 Common Ground 7:54
Don Pullen
Credits :
Bass – Santi Debriano
Drums – J.T. Lewis
Piano – D.D. Jackson
Tenor Saxophone – David Murray
Transcription By – D.D. Jackson
David Torn's last album for CMP is a collection of rock-oriented ambient guitar pieces. Torn has always been more interested in atmospherics than in guitar pyrotechnics, although he is certainly capable of blistering rock leads, shown most ably here on the tribal piece "Particle Bugs." Torn sings on a few of the pieces, such as the country-blues solo piece "In the Sand of This Day" and the title track, but his vocals tend to be processed and embellish the guitars rather than step into the foreground. His guitar playing and processing is superb. Many of the songs set up an atmosphere of drones and loops, to which he adds all kinds of guitar leads, from Middle Eastern-tinged fast melodic lines to slide guitar riffs to heavy metal distortion. Drum and percussion duties are primarily from samples, which Torn put together into loops and otherwise processed. The most rock-oriented pieces are "Spell Break," which opens with quiet ambient drones and chants but then kicks in with a careening slide guitar, and the live solo "Til You Are Free," which has a loud, distorted melody over a very simple rhythm. Torn closes the album with the beautiful ambient piece "Elsewhere," bringing to the foreground the loops and drones that otherwise lurk in the background. Torn is a consummate stylist and instrumentalist, but this album -- one of the clearest solo statements from this master musician -- also shows him to be a composer and studio wizard. Caleb Deupree
Tracklist :
1 Spell Breaks With The Weather 5:49
Composed By – David Torn
Loops [Drumkit Loop] – Will Calhoun
Vocals [Little Spoken Vocal] – Cannonball Adderley
2 What Means Solid, Traveller? 6:52
Composed By – David Torn
Loops [Drumkit Loops] – Gota Yashiki
3 Such Little Mirrors 7:22
Composed By – David Torn
Loops [Drumkit Loops] – Gota Yashiki
4 Tiny Burns A Bridge 8:41
Composed By – David Torn
5 Gidya Hana 7:27
Composed By – David Torn
Acoustic Bass, Electric Bass [El Bass] – Fima Ephron
Loops [Drumkit Loop] – Steve Jansen
6 Each Prince, To His Kingdom, Must Labor To Go 3:58
Composed By – David Torn
7 Particle Bugs @ Purulia Station / In The Sand Of This Day 7:41
Composed By – David Torn
Acoustic Bass – Fima Ephron
Loops [Drumkit Loop] – David Ruffy
8 In The Sand Of This Day I Will Not Be Free... 3:00
Composed By – David Torn
9 ... Til You Are Free 4:23
Composed By – David Torn
Loops [Drumkit Fill] – Mitch Mitchell
Loops [Drumkit Loops] – Gota Yashiki
10 Elsewhere, Now Than Waving 10:10
Composed By – David Torn
Credits :
Drums – Mitch Mitchell
Producer, Engineer, Mixed By, Guitar [Guitars & Guitar-like Thingies], Loops [Textural & Rhythmic Loops], Sampler [Samples], Voice [Voices], Performer [The Pink Lark, Kotar], Percussion, Viola [Cody's Viola], Bass [Elijah's Bass], Mandolin [Mandolina] – David Torn
This end-of-the-millennium quartet session probably best defines all the inherent contradictions in who ECM attracts to the label -- what kind of musician records for them -- and what concerns these artists and ECM's chief producer (and creator) Manfred Eicher hold in common. This set, although clearly fronted by Markus Stockhausen and Arild Andersen on brass and bass, respectively, allows space for the entire quartet to inform its direction. Héral and Rypdal are not musicians who can play with just anybody; their distinctive styles and strengths often go against the grain of contemporary European jazz and improvised music. Of the 11 compositions here, four are collectively written, with two each by Andersen and Stockhausen. "Flower of the Now" uses space and texture to create a harmonic architecture, skeletal though it may be. Stockhausen states a theme that acts as the syntax for the painterly drumming of Héral and Rypdal's interlocution between all the drifting parties. "Sway" begins with Héral's trans-African drumming, followed by the fury of Rypdal's own brand of guitar improvisation. He edges through musical frameworks of the past in rock, blues, and jazz, cutting them down in the process of playing knotty arpeggios and deconstructed riffs that rely on harmonic rather than lyrical language. When Stockhausen moves into the fray, it's sparingly in stark contrast to Rypdal's splatter and roll methodology and brings things to a near halt, with only Andersen to slip a groove through the band's abstractions. This is a record of "sonics," an area not unlike the forbidden "Zone" filmmaker Andrei Tarkovsky's hero, who guides people through in the film Stalker -- forbidden, wasted, and beautifully desolate. When listeners reach the place in "Auma" where Andersen's bass employs electronic devices to give it an "orchestra" or chamber section quality, they can hear how attentive this crew really is to one another. They move about slowly and purposefully in the musical spheres where sound, language, and harmonic monoliths all give way into something less definite, less shapely or contoured in favor of the unspeakable, the unmentionable, the inarticulate speech of the heart as it enters, through sound's language: one of tension, dynamic, nuance, and texture, the various places where spoken language fails so miserably. In all, Karta is an effort that showcases the very best of its collective: It contains aesthetic grace and elegance as well as great violence and chaos. For all the recordings in "popular" music made at the end of the century, this is the one that sums up best where Western music has traveled these last hundred years, and points to just how far it yet needs to journey in the next thousand. Karta is soulful, tender, and frightening.
-> This comment is posted on Allmusic by Thom Jurek, follower of our blog 'O Púbis da Rosa' <-
Tracklist :
1 Sezopen 4:50
Composed By – Andersen
2 Flower Of Now 9:15
Composed By – Stockhausen
3 Wood And Naphta 2:55
Composed By – Andersen, Stockhausen, Héral, Rypdal
4 Sway 4:24
Composed By – Andersen, Stockhausen, Héral, Rypdal
5 Auma 8:02
Composed By – Andersen, Stockhausen, Héral, Rypdal
6 Legacy 5:18
Composed By – Andersen, Stockhausen, Héral, Rypdal
7 Invocation 4:44
Composed By – Andersen, Stockhausen, Héral, Rypdal
8 Wild Cat 7:57
Composed By – Andersen, Stockhausen, Héral, Rypdal
9 Emanation
Composed By – Andersen, Stockhausen, Héral, Rypdal
10 Choral 3:57
Composed By – Stockhausen
11 Lighthouse 8:40
Composed By – Andersen
Credits :
Double Bass – Arild Andersen
Drums, Percussion, Electronics [Live Electronics] – Patrice Héral
Electric Guitar – Terje Rypdal
Producer – Manfred Eicher
Trumpet, Flugelhorn, Piccolo Trumpet – Markus Stockhausen
Not released for the first time until 1974 but now available in expanded form as a CD, this set of duets by tenor saxophonist John Coltrane and drummer Rashied Ali are full of fire, emotion and constant abstract invention. The original four pieces ("Mars," "Venus," "Jupiter" and "Saturn") are joined by "Leo" and "Jupiter Variation." Coltrane alternates quiet moments with sections of great intensity, showing off his phenominal technique and ability to improvise without the need for chordal instruments. Rousing if somewhat inaccessible music. Scott Yanow
Tracklist :
1 Mars 10:41
Written-By – John Coltrane
2 Venus 8:17
Written-By – John Coltrane
3 Jupiter 5:21
Written-By – John Coltrane
4 Saturn 11:35
Written-By – John Coltrane
5 Jupiter (Variation) 6:45
Written-By – John Coltrane
6 Leo 11:04
Written-By – John Coltrane
Credits :
Drums – Rashied Ali
Producer – Alice Coltrane, Ed Michel
Recorded By – Rudy Van Gelder
Producer [Recording], Tenor Saxophone, Bells – John Coltrane
Altoist Arthur Blythe's first two recordings as a leader, The Grip and Metamorphosis, were recorded at the same concert; all of the two LP's contents are on this single CD. Blythe was already quite distinctive and an impressive improviser at this early stage, a year before he signed with Columbia. His sextet (which consists of trumpeter Ahmed Abdullah, cellist Abdul Wadud, tuba player Bob Stewart, drummer Steve Reid and percussionist Muhamad Abdullah) performs seven of Blythe's challenging originals and "Spirits in the Field" while the 18-minute "Duet for Two" is a free collaboration by the leader and Wadud. Scott Yanow
Tracklist :
1 My Sun Ra 3:22
Composed By – Arthur Blythe
2 Lower Nile 4:01
Composed By – Arthur Blythe
3 As Of Yet 12:35
Composed By – Arthur Blythe
4 The Grip 7:11
Composed By – Arthur Blythe
5 Sunrise Service 7:51
Composed By – Arthur Blythe
6 Metamorphosis 8:08
Composed By – Arthur Blythe
7 Spirits In The Field 8:32
Composed By – Walter Lowe
8 Duet For Two 17:59
Composed By – Arthur Blythe
9 Shadows 7:48
Composed By – Arthur Blythe
Credits :
Cello – Abdul Wadud
Drums – Steve Reid
Percussion – Muhammad Abdullah
Saxophone – Arthur Blythe
Trumpet – Ahmed Abdullah
Tuba – Bob Stewart
"Sometimes solemn, sometimes exhilarating variation of Latin jazz" - (FOYER) ACT Tracklist : 1 Creation 3:58 2 Iluminacio...
