ECM: C/D, S&D

jean-louis matinier & kevin seddiki - rivages

^^^
this is another quite beautiful and captivating duo album imo

not sure if Terje Rypdal hits that autumnal spot for everybody but he released his first new album for years last month, sounded p good on my first listen

Yeah, the Rypdal album is fantastic. Reviewed it for The Wire.

Thought this was a cool little piece - Manfred Eicher picks five favourite Blue Note albs:

https://www.wbgo.org/post/field-studies-manfred-eicher-founder-ecm-records-picks-his-top-five-blue-note-albums#stream/0

That's really cool. Thanks for the heads up.

That's a great looking list. The Pete La Roca album is fantastic.

I'm sure I read about it here but can find no mention on the thread. Either way, the live Ghazal album, The Rain makes my hair stand on end.

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/2/22/The_Rain_%28Ghazal_album%29.jpg

Fantastic cover- I'll look this up.

My two most recent discoveries from the 80s back catalogue are Paul Motian's 'It Should've Happened A Long Time Ago' & Marc Johnson's 'Bass Desires', both from 86-87, both featuring Bill Frisell doing a ton of guitar synth stuff, which I can't get enough of these days.

Ooh, gotta check that out

the live Ghazal album, The Rain makes my hair stand on end

Just listened, fucking awesome, thanks. Have you ever heard Ravi Shankar's live thing from the Concert for Bangladesh? Similar vibe to Eternity.

so the Ezra Feinberg album Recumbent Speech from last year is hitting a lot of ECM notes for me. ECM and tubular bells and tortoise and jim o'rourke. All that good stuff.

That Ezra Feinberg album is great.

Just listened, fucking awesome, thanks. Have you ever heard Ravi Shankar's live thing from the Concert for Bangladesh? Similar vibe to Eternity.

God, this album is so good. Not heard that particular Shankar - will check it out for sure.

Wow, thanks for that Jamie (and Chinaski), the Feinberg album really is great!

Tibbetts' Northern Song keeps getting played at our residence, please advise as to how I can keep these low-key heady vibes going please, in the ECm vein...

more tibbetts.

Big Map Ideas is one i really like from him

yes, also very mellow in the vein of northern song. his two more recent ones (natural causes and life of) are probably the most aurally similar to northern song.

but nothing tops northern song.

for similarly sparse ecm / windham hill vibes, i like—

michael hedges — breakfast in the field
william ackerman — it takes a year

i also think one could put together a playlist of 70s leo kottke deep cuts that may be relevant. i might do that later, actually.

Excited for the forthcoming Vijay Iyer with Linda May Hahn Oh and Tyshawn Sorey. Iyer's last ECM was very good indeed.

Swimming with a Hole in My Body (such an oddly mysterious title) is my fave Connors release for ECM.

― pomenitul, Friday, July 31, 2020 9:05 AM (seven months ago) bookmarkflaglink

this is great and fits table's criteria

xp

quite the trio is that, almost guaranteed to be a+. Hafez Modirzadeh's Facets is probably my fave album of the year so far but still it will be nice to hear Sorey back behind a drum kit again.

love Facets, too. Thanks all.

I got to see the Iyer/Oh/Sorey trio at the Jazz Standard about a month before lockdown, playing music from this upcoming album. Based on that and the tracks I've already heard, it's gonna be a pretty forceful album. Looking forward to it.

Facets is stunning - love Modirzadeh's sound world.

Thanks for the recs yesterday, though as much as I love the Connors and Hedges, it's the full instrumental treatment of Northern Song that appeals most to me—

some purist was probably quite ruffled at the time, but this is hittin like holy shit this morning:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lmRm8UYTeNw

(gary burton — "las vegas tango")

also, ya i know this isn't on ecm, but either i'm bad at the search function or there isn't a currently existing gary burton topic (!!??!?!).

There was a post two days ago on the thread entitled "jazz" about Gary Burton reissues.

yeah, i saw that. it's what prompted my recent dive back into his catalogue.

Vijay Iyer's tenure as Pitchfork's favorite jazz artist continues. Long may he reign.

This record is really lovely, has heavy ECM vibes on it
https://schlarb.bandcamp.com/album/time-no-changes

This record moves between WH-ECM-Takoma vibes. Really beautiful record from a promising young musician.

https://yasminwilliams.bandcamp.com/album/urban-driftwood

very nice stock ecm anti-smooth post-bop sounds on dawn by double image from 1979. a quartet fronted by two marimba players! if you like ecm but hate pianos, horns, AND guitars, well friend, do i have recommendation for you. it's actually really good though and worth hearing. especially if you like that melodic mallet sound. kind of leans more towards that introspective thing you expect from ecm, but still some really pretty stuff. the tunes take twists and turns with some passages of absolutely wondrous harmonic conversations between the two ... uh, marimberers? marimbists? marimbobo honkers?

The princely Andrew Male did a nice ECM set at Spiritland a couple of weeks ago. Lots new to me: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/5cImqc3DCXMyIzJj9oLxwe?si=0d2c8ba34f4e4402

He played records rather than Spotify, obviously.

Ooh, I'd love to hear a set like this

Digging through the ECM back catalogue has been a welcome relief to my depression at the moment. There's something so uplifting and transcendent about the ECM sound at its best. Doctors should seriously consider prescribing this stuff imo.

Really enjoying The Colours of Chlöe right now. Eberhard Weber really couldn't put a foot wrong during his best run in the '70s.

Barre Phillips • Mountainscapes

This is a great album.

xp

It's really true, that's exactly what got me through the whole lockdown period in the early days of the pandemic (well that and a healthy amount of whiskey), and yes, The Colours of Chlöe got a lot of play during that time.

Well I’ve fallen, hard. Just ordered a stack of ECM CDs from Discogs and can't wait for them to arrive:

Keith Jarrett - The Survivors' Suite
Steve Kuhn - Trance
Mike Nock - Ondas
Barre Phillips - Mountainscapes
John Surman - Withholding Pattern
Steve Tibbets - Northern Song
Edward Vesala - Nan Madol
Eberhard Weber - The Colours of Chlöe
Eberhard Weber/Colours - Silent Feet

Guess I'm very into the more atmospheric side of the sound. Need to get some more guitar stuff too... John Abercrombie and David Torn are next on the wishlist.

As far as guitar stuff goes, I really got into Ralph Towner's various ECM recordings.

Thanks for the recommendation! Any particular place I should start wth Towner?

Solstice is my favorite, especially since it features Eberhard Weber. He also has some nice duet albums like Sargasso Sea with John Abercrombie and Matchbook with Gary Burton.

That's a great ECM haul, Ghost Club. My favorite guitarist on ECM is Terje Rypdal. All of his 70s records are worth checking out, but I'd prioritize What Comes After (which I hear as an album-length exploration of the sonic world established by Miles Davis on "Yesternow") and Descendre (beautifully spaced-out and synth-heavy masterpiece; some passages are almost Floydian, though this is more futuristic than anything Pink Floyd ever did).

I've listened to a few Rypdal records, very intriguing but he can get a little abstract for me. His classical/jazz crossover pieces, like the title track of Whenever I Seem To Be Far Away, are exceptional.

Ghost club let us know what you think of Tibbetts he is IMO a genre unto himself

Thanks for all the recommendations! I really liked Sargasso Sea, but I still need to spend more time with Solstice.

Terje Rypdal is an interesting artist. He's incredibly versatile wth his sound, so I find him hard to pin down. I really enjoyed Descendre and his album with Miroslav Vitous and Jack DeJohnette. Spot on that there's Floydian moments, J. Sam, but very much more abstract. I need to check out What Comes After next.

Steve Tibbets, oh my! Northern Song is such a journey. The atmosphere he evokes begs solitude and a darkened room. I don't mean to slight it at all when I say it's very meditative and restorative. Parts of it sound like Fahey on opioids, which I very much like.

Steve Tibbets more recent 'Life Of' is fantastic - good article on it here: https://aquariumdrunkard.com/2019/03/04/deep-into-steve-tibbetts-life-of/

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

all been mentioned above, but Connors' 'Swimming with a Hole in My Body' and Metheny 'As Falls Wichita...' and David Darling 'Cycles' are my go-to ecm faves.

I recently purchased a used vinyl copy of Terje Rypdal's Chaser, which is harder-edged power trio stuff, and I feel compelled to c + p this RYM review of it since I found it amusingly OTT for an ECM record.

"SIDE 1: AMBIGUITY - CRANK
ONCE UPON A TIME - HEROIN
GEYSIR - ANGEL DUST
A CLOSER LOOK - COLUMBIAN RED BUD
SIDE 2: ORNEN - MAI TAI'S
CHASER - JACK DANIELS
TRANSITION - WHITE WINE
IMAGI - BLOTTER ACID
JEFF BECK & STEVE VAI ARE TERJE'S LITTLE BITCHES!!THIS IS AVANT GARDE HEAY METAL JAZZ ROCK FUSION ORGASM!!!!!!!!!!!!!CRANK IT AND SPANK IT!!"

see thats the sort of thing i want to see on RYM, not a thousand little wannabe fantano's telling me about angular riffs and polyrhythms

Now I want a record filled with polyriffs and angular rhythms.

i'm not really that into ecm. what you might call beat digger culture / reissue culture / balearic dj culture has certainly given it a boost, and i totally get the urge to reevaluate genres like smooth jazz, fusion and new age. seems like ecm sits comfortably at the intersection of those, they put out a million records so you can always find something in decent shape, plus they have a clean and minimal aesthetic that avoids being clinical by incorporating nature, fits nicely with the clean nature-incorporating minimal aesthetic in favor w/ hip boutiques, trendy record stores and instagrammers

anyway even though i find the label boring in general, i think everyone should check out john abercrombie / dabve holland / jack dejohnette "gateway" and abercrombie / jan hammer / dejohnette "timeless". the covers look as sedate as anything else on ecm, but it's pure jazz-rock fusion shredding, maybe comparable to mahavishnu orchestra but less triumphant in mood, instead it has a more abstracted, cerebral vibe that reminds me of certain mwandishi stuff ("crossings" maybe)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1QDr-atV0Nw

well shit, I have to check out this one

xxp