ECM: C/D, S&D

Classics: Jarrett's maniacal virtuoso piano-bashing, Charlie Haden (esp. the "Ornette's band without Ornette" Old and New Dreams), Puntin/Gunnarsdottir, Abercrombie (esp. Gateway), Rypdal, Surman. I can't say I have any ambition to investigate the whole catalogue (one Stephan Micus album is enough, thanks), but there's more to ECM than proto-new-age.

Speaking as one who has now contributed for (tho not to) VERY NEARLY 200 ISSUES K- BLIMEY, I think Wire attitude to ECM has ALWAYS been very ambivalent. R.Cook was probably super-diplomatic — sometimes his genius, sometimes his crime — but the sense was that their success as a label actually somewhat occluded bettah-favoured Euro- indies like eg Black Saint or hat HUT...

Duds: Most of the mannered and Third Stream records that constitute the so-called "ECM sound" (not like I've listened extensively to them, though).

Compare and contrast "Song for Someone" by the Kenny Wheeler big band on Incus with "Music for Large and Small Ensembles" by more or less the same line-up on ECM. The latter sounds like all the life has been bled out of it.

Most atypical, and therefore best, ECM release: "Afternoon of a Georgia Fawn" by Marion Brown; the missing link between "Bitches Brew" and Braxton.

the first two are as beautiful as abstract music ever gets. the Parker discs are remarkable examples of e-a improv, provided that you can get past Eicher's inappropriately spacious production. and Williamson's tribute to Dylan Thomas is rather atypical, both for the musician and for ECM, with nary a hint of ISB's psychotropic excess (or Eicher's cathedral-ceiling echo) to be heard in its solemn, skeletal settings of Thomas' poems.

the hal russell NRG ensemble "the hal russell story".

there are a few others but it's too early and I haven't cared enough about jazz lately to remember.

other good stuff includes gateway, feat. john abercrombie (sp?) who is somewhat similar to bill frisell's at points. also the early, pre-lame, pre-midi pat metheney.

ECM: Found huddled outside a Starbucks beneath the much-maligned umbrella of "NPR Music," or a still-relevant home to transcendent, spacious music with a minimum of fuss? Are they only as good as their classic back-catalogue? Does the New Series wave of innocuous and "tasteful" artistry leave a bad taste in your mouth (or no taste whatsoever)?

IMHO, their Steve Reich issues are some of the finest Reich extant, including the definitive renditions of Music for 18 Musicians, Violin Phase, Octet, etc. I love Anouar Brahem, enjoy Tomasz Stanko, and admire their volume of Silvestrov/Shevchenko's Silent Songs.

That said, I'm not sold on 100% (or even 75%) of what I hear on ECM, but it's one of the few labels that I routinely give the benefit of the doubt if I'm on the fence about wasting $20 from time to time. I'm entirely in favor of their leanings towards artsy European starkness, but I wish Manfred Eicher would learn to get by on less reverb.

I have also been suprised how much parts of Eberhardt Weber albums from the 70s sound like Tortoise.

I think that ECM's huge advertising budget may have been a contributory factor to that particular "ambivalence."

The NY Times and a Seattle paper love the new ECM label album Arco Iris from Moroccan vocalist Amina Alaoui who performs old Andalusian compositions here. I haven't heard it but I am intrigued. Ilxer Sanpaku liked the Jon Balke & Amina Alaoui album Siwan that came out on ECM a year or 2 back.

I also just mentioned it here:
Arabic music (not elsewhere classified)

the other ECM thread

ECM s/d.

Posted this on the Arabic music thread but its an ECM label album

Some of the Amina Alaoui album is a little too samey--melancholy nearly fado-like vocals and minimalist flamenco guitar strumming, but on other cuts her voice is exquisite and the instrumental work just lively enough.

― curmudgeon, Thursday, July 14, 2011 1:12 PM

Is there a comprehensive digital repository for 70s ECM gubbins? Preferably not streaming.

The label has a page on Bandcamp but it's barely a handful of relatively recent releases so far, AFAICT.

Boringly I think iTunes/Amazon are the most reliable. Qobuz have some lossless stuff but it gets pretty pricey: http://www.qobuz.com/gb-en/search?q=ecm&i=boutique&f%5Blabel%5D=ECM+Records#results

ECM stuff rarely turns up on streaming services anyway, the old album shows up for a short while on Apple Music and then disappears again.

I'd definitely pay for some sort of digital ECM subscription, either via Bandcamp or Drip or something - all new releases + curated back catalogue selections.

there's tons that never made it to digital in the first place, right?

Pandora, oddly enough, has a decent ECM catalog.

So ECM appears to have popped up on Spotify. So that's nice. Can't find Julian Priester, but Benny Maupin is there, and AEOC.

Only one AEOC album so far - Tribute To Lester. None of their 80s stuff yet.

Urban Bushmen is there, too.

And Full Force!

Not in the US, at least not yet.

Well whaddya know, loads of ECM stuff on Apple Music in the UK now too. Hooray!

I said preferably NOT streaming damnit, Manfred.

I wish someone would do an exploratory ECM back catalog blog like the Kranky one a from few years back.

US Spotify now has Nice Guys, Urban Bushmen, and The Third Decade up, as well as Lester Bowie's All The Magic!/The One and Only and Works, and Roscoe Mitchell's Nine to Get Ready, Composition/Improvisation Nos. 1, 2 & 3, Far Side and Bells For the South Side.

God dammit, Eberhard Weber's early records are so beautiful, I've had a couple kicking around for years but never afforded them the proper attention, what a fool.

The Colours Of Chloë might just be the most ECM-y record of all.

good call, I was just thinking of something to stream right now.

I wonder if Joni was paying attention, some of Don Juan's Reckless Daughter is very reminiscent of Weber's music.

I started this rather unsuccessful topic some while back.

well shit, I have to check out this one

xxp

it's not a surprise to me that Michael Mann is into Terje Rypdal. A lot of his sound is perfectly in line with noirish existential moodiness, in the best sense.

abercrombie / jan hammer / dejohnette "timeless"

I adore the title track to this but it's probably the least "shready" and most ECMesque thing on the record.

I'm a bit like Goldilocks when it comes to ECM releases; I like a few tracks on each but much of the rest I find either too astringent or too smooth. I've listened to about 40 and maybe my favourites are Bennie Maupin's Jewel in the Lotus and the Annette Peacock record.

xps speaking of Gateway and Timeless, my favorite recent ECM discovery is Colin Walcott's Cloud Dance which features John Abercrombie, Jack DeJohnette, and Dave Holland. So it's basically a Gateway record with Walcott as leader on sitar and tabla. Pensively tripped-out space fusion with a "world music" flavor, all done as tastefully as possible. A proper journey through space and time.

Abercrombie's Timeless is an album I want to like more than I do, mainly because I'm not a huge fan timbrally of the organ Jan Hammer uses on it. I get ELP vibes, which is not what I'm looking for on an ECM record. But I can tolerate it for Abercrombie's shredding, and the synths and piano are cool. Also the title track is a total masterpiece.

and a cool page on his own site i just spotted: https://stevetibbetts.com/my-ecm

― Hmmmmm (jamiesummerz), Friday, October 21, 2022 10:08 AM

a month late, but that's a swell link. thank you for sharing.

here's the playlist btw.

there are a grip is sweet late 70s early 80s Ebehard Weber shows on youtube!!

this one it tite
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XP8_STIT0lE

My difficult in appreciating <i>Timeless</i> is John Abercrombie’s slightly disparaging view of the 1970s fusion portion of his career. This style seemed to be a problem that he only solved at the end of the decade with his more traditional quartet.

xp that's an amazing set, thanks for posting! The Later That Evening band is one of his best combos. I'm also psyched to hear the Colours quartet live in San Francisco 1979.

that SF show is off the chain unbelievable

haven't heard Cloud Dance yet, but I recently fell under the spell of Walcott's Grazing Dreams from around the same time, which has Abercrombie, Don Cherry, Palle Danielsson, etc on it. really amazing, surprised I hadn't heard it, since i love those Codona records ...

saw an amazing Jan Garbarek group show last week at London Jazz Festival - Rainer Brüninghaus on piano (features on all those Eberhard W. lps i love) and Trilok Gurtu on drums/percussion/tons of other things - he in particular being one of the most mindblowing musicians i've ever seen...

perfect sound, 2 hours of non stop goodness. catch them if you can.

Some new titles added to the Touchtone series it seems, including "What Exit" by Mark Feldman.

I'm interested in Third Stream / ECM style jazz and I suppose this thread is the closest, although the boundaries of this kind of fusion are probably wider. I don't understand how this style developed and took over, but it's everywhere isn't it. I had also never realized that Dolmen Music (one of my favorite records) or 18 Musicians were ECM records, but that makes sense.

Anyway, I've listened to Dave Holland, Enrico Rava, Art Ensemble of Chicago, and just now to Eberhard Weber (The Colours of Chloë) which is a beautiful, rich, lively, impressionistic record that plays a little like a prog rock suite. On the other end, I haven't found entry points into Keith Jarrett, Jan Garbarek or Anouar Brahem in the past. So err, that's my statement of intent to keep digging and try to understand the legacy of ECM.

I still think Feldman, Satie, Cage - Rothko Chapel is one hell of a great ECM recording.

I had also never realized that Dolmen Music (one of my favorite records) or 18 Musicians were ECM records, but that makes sense.

Both of those are on ECM New Series, which I think started out as a bit of a side foray into "contemporary classical" rather than "jazz" territory?

i was going to say - i never really associated ecm with third stream! that might be down to my lack of familiarity with ecm and third stream in general, though

still, i always thought third stream was stuff like george russell?

i think of ECM as like, "chill fusion" or maybe something like quiet storm, but with new age influences instead of disco-era r&b influences

A rare treat today. My local record store had a pile of freebies from which I was able to pilfer seven(!) ECM/Japo titles. Most of them are from the early '80s, so a bit off my radar. Really looking forward to listening with a clean slate.

The ones I picked up are:
Dino Saluzzi - Kultrum (1982)
Egberto Gismonti - Solo (1979)
Jan Garbarek Group - Wayfarer (1983)
Herbert Joos - The Philosophy of the Fluegelhorn (1974)
David Holland - Life Cycle (1983)
Eberhard Weber - Later that Evening (1982)
Katrina Krimsky and Trevor Watts - Stella Malu (1981)

Amazing haul! I like Stella Malu a lot. Have seen that Dave Holland in the wild a few times but it has always been priced a little too high for a speculative buy - free is the perfect price!

Svante Henryson has to be the only ECM recording artist that was a former member of Yngwie Malmsteen's Rising Force.

This is one of the more odd musical connections I recently found out about.

One of the great pleasures of record shopping these days is regularly finding forgotten ECM gems for super cheap. A few days ago I picked up a nice vinyl copy of Ralph Towner's second Solstice album, Sound and Shadows for $2. It's darker and more subdued than the first one but just as good to my ears. Lovely flute work from Garbarek on the last track, and Weber's bass is sublimely liquid as usual.

i just picked up Garbarek's Dis the other day for $4, well worth iit

surprised i hadn't heard it before (since I'm a big codona fan), but I picked up Collin Walcott's Grazing Dreams recently — extremely sweet stuff w/ don cherry, abercrombie, palle danielsson, etc.

Really enjoying Kenny Wheeler’s "Around 6" from 1980. The opening track is somewhat stereotypical ECM (i.e. very melodic), and that goes on for several minutes. But then comes an Evan Parker freakout that veers into free jazz. I’m sure this horrified some listeners, but I love it.

Came across this stunning record, Jakob Bro & Joe Lovano's tribute to Paul Motian. Two drummers (Joey Baron and Jorge Rossy) and THREE bassists, but it still manages to be delicate and spacious.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w8lvPNG-vsQ

https://ecmrecords.com/product/once-around-the-room-a-tribute-to-paul-motian-jakob-bro-joe-lovano/#tab_description

Been going through some of my ECM LPs and Rainer Bruninghaus’ Freigeweht feels like a peak of some sort of ECM feeling that I love - beautiful recording, lots of tastefully deployed synths, smooth playing and a production sheen over everything but also real sort of uneasy… like I feel it is reductive to describe this stuff through the prism of Soundtrack-ness, but it could be the soundtrack to some inscrutable UK sci fi film from 1983… like if they had filmed A Dream of Wessex maybe

Anyway it is so good

(ahem)
if you're reading this, you need to check this shit out immediately. stop whatever you're doing. it's on spotify.

fyi-

Profile:

Steve Eliovson (born in 1954 – died March 15, 2020)

South-African jazz guitarist, having recorded his critically acclaimed debut Dawn Dance in 1981, Eliovson completely disappeared from the music industry for reasons as of yet unknown.

The Quiet Funeral of a Great Guitarist - Steve Eliovson - Born: 1954 - Died: 15 Mar 2020

uhm. yeah. i don't wanna start throwing around hyperbole, but it's really good. spare and haunting, but like all of my favorite environmental music classics, a deeper emotional element. a very unique searching quality to the vibe here.

and also- it's another of those ecms that crosses over into takoma/new primitive territory. if you like the more sparse moments of steve tibbetts, dawn dance doesn't come with any higher recommendation.

The opening of Dawn Dance immediately recalls Yes (And You And I) and I think I hear too many influences (oriental, flamenco) to make it work for me, also the rhythm is a little off to me.

Really loving Marc Johnson's solo bass record 'Overpass', maybe the solo bass record I've ever heard (out of not very many, I suppose).

Obsessed (I'd like to post other tracks but only a couple are on youtube, the whole record is streaming though)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PNdB8szK9Rk

Just discovered this 1989 album by AM4, not on YouTube but on streaming channels: wild mix of spoken word, soprano saxes, and piano (prepared and otherwise). Feels like performance art, kind of like Meredith Monk. Enjoying it a lot, including their version of Ornette Coleman' "Lonely Woman."

Wolfgang Puschnig
Alto Saxophone, Alto Flute, Hojak, Shakuhachi

Linda Sharrock
Vocals

Uli Scherer
Piano, Prepared Piano, Keyboards

I just realized there are samples on that ECM page linked above ^^. The opening track is super quiet until about 30 seconds in.

Also just listened to that Marc Johnson track Jordan posted. So good too.

Linda Sharrock

sold

Eazy if you haven't heard that "Paradise" LP she did with Sonny and Ilhan Mimaroglu get it now :)

The opening track is super quiet until about 30 seconds in.

okay wow

if you turn it up to where you can just hear what's going on, the sax when it enters will scar you for life

holy shit

also this is awesome TY

ok not sure anything else on this lives up to the first track
i like it don't get me wrong

Flagging that Paradise LP to listen to soon - thanks! And yeah, the first song ("Streets and Rivers") really is the standout.

Paradise is incredible

I'm on my biannual 'Bennie Maupin's *Jewel in the Lotus* is on ECM!' reconnaissance. What a record.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l4nWCNerR7c

Love that one of Maupin's credits is 'reeds'. Flex.

I've listened to a few Rypdal records, very intriguing but he can get a little abstract for me.

Now I've got around to the expanded Odyssey reissue and this is a lot more full-bodied (or "rock", maybe) than his previous records. Despite the tracks mostly being very, very long they seem more vital than a lot of the other stuff of his I've heard.

It's not on ECM but Maupin's follow-up record Slow Traffic to the Right is an intelligent compromise between some of the virtues of Jewel in the Lotus and the commercial/easy-listening/funky tendencies of the era.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wMIkv0-aQdk

Posted in the obituary thread, but RIP guitarist Ralph Towner.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I6FNcN7KXRU

bummer, i had matchbook with gary burton for a while and enjoyed it. from the obit thread:

Oh man, I've been listening to so much Ralph Towner over the last 5 years. He has tons of good stuff on ECM.

― whimsical skeedaddler (Moodles), Sunday, January 18, 2026 10:52 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

does anyone have a good recommendation or two?

I like the group alb Solstice and the self-explanatory Solo Concert - I could go with a good guide to the Oregon stuff myself...

Second the Solstice album, but I was more into his work with Oregon tbh. The recent archival “1974” live album is really good.

Also watched the Live at Molde Jazz 1975 set on YouTube twice today, so good.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9m7VIHR9lYk

Aforementioned 1975 show, such a treat and love the attentive, beautiful looking Norwegian crowd.