ECM: C/D, S&D

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

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.