Collin Walcott - Cloud Dance (1976)

Essentially John Abercrombie's Gateway Trio with a very different lead voice, in the form of Orgeon/CODONA's multi-instrumentalist (here focusing on his considerable talents on sitar) Collin Walcott (1945-1984).  This stunning record was recorded in the same month as Gateway's debut, right in the white heat of ECM's golden age with a lineup who perfectly merge jazz with Indian musical forms.  

 

Lengthy explorations giving the quartet full chance to shine, like opener Margueritte, sit alongside miniature features for Walcott and Dave Holland such as Prancing and Eastern Song.  Abercrombie is by turns liquid and languid (Night Glider, the lovely title track) and throughly electrified (Scimitar).  Walcott's sublime playing remains the star of this album, and would continue to occupy a unique space in the ECM sound world (including with a reformed Oregon) until his tragic accidental death at the age of 39.

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Collin Walcott at SGTG:

Miles Davis - On The Corner

Egberto Gismonti - Sol De Meio Dia

Egberto Gismonti - Sol De Meio Dia (1978)

Some classic ECM Gismonti in his second album for the label, to follow on from last Friday's post of Academia Da Danças.  Where that album was one of Gismonti's most sophisticated in its arrangements and production, Sol De Meio Dia (Midday Sun) is stripped down to the bare essentials, in keeping with his other ECM releases.  The two albums do, however, start with the same song.

The version of Palácio de Pinturas that opens Sol De Meio Dia is a sublime duet between Gismonti and Ralph Towner.  Towner's Oregon bandmate, and another ECM stalwart until his untimely death in 1984, Collin Walcott is up next, laying a bed of insistent tabla for Raga.  There's plenty of Nana Vasconcelos on board for this album too, until Gismonti takes a solo spotlight on piano for the utterly gorgeous Coração.

The second half of the album brings together four songs in the kind of suite typical of 70s Gismonti, and starts with one of his most enduring compositions, Café.  Later covered by Norma Winstone, here the melody line is taken by Jan Garbarek, foreshadowing the hugely successful Magico trio with Charlie Haden.  After no less than 12 minutes of this, and further sparring with Towner, the suite then furrows deeper into Gismonti's overall inspiration for Sol De Meio Dia: the time he'd spent with the peoples of the Xingu river region in the North of Brazil.  All in all, one of Gismonti's very best albums; can't recommend it enough.

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Previously posted at SGTG: 
Academia Da Danças
Circense
Sanfona
Dança Dos Escravos
In Montreal (with Charlie Haden)

Miles Davis - On The Corner (1972)

Someone mentioned late 60s-70s Miles in the comments recently, which made me dig this one out.  When On The Corner got its Columbia Legacy reissue in 2000, it became my introduction to Miles Davis' electric period - and holy crap, what a choice for diving into his post '68 journey to the outer limits of jazz fusion.  Already getting a hammering from establishment jazz critics for setting his sights light years farther than theirs, by 1972 the James Brown/Sly Stone-influenced Davis cared less than zero with On The Corner, its straightahead funk cacophony and its cartoon cover by illustrator Corky McCoy (Miles' idea being to appeal to a younger African-American audience).

If On The Corner was meant to be a record to groove to, that's not exactly easy at the outset, as the odd rhythm (the sixteenth-notes on the hi-hat are the key to following it) cuts in mid flow.  The title track - the first three minutes of the opening suite - is the kind of full-on fury that would lead to scorching live documents like Dark Magus and Agharta a few years later, with John McLaughlin's guitar and Collin Walcott's sitar wah-wahing like fighting lions.  Even as the larger 20-minute track opens up to give a bit more space, the subsequent sections deftly spliced by Teo Macero (wonder if he was ever aware of Tago Mago?), the groove doesn't calm down until the very end.

The head-shaking of the jazz critics continued as the rest of the album - that's 34 minutes - proceeded to hinge around one single bassline.  I must admit on early listens this did make me tune out, particularly on the 23 minute Helen Butte/Mr Freedom X - big mistake.  To follow these tracks closely is to hear infinite variations from the assembled players (Miles himself sticks mostly to electric organ, in his Fela-like lead shaman role), and an abundance of clever editing and other studio trickery, influenced by both Stockhausen and Paul Buckmaster  Essential, life-affirming deep groove music that the rest of the world is still catching up to.

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