Apart from Clarke, this record is a waste of time and effort. Spanish Phases, where Clarke plays superb ‘flamenco’ bass, is the only worthwhile track, although his acoustic solo on Vulcan and powerful background Fender on most other tracks are enough to remind us of the quality of his Return To Forever work.
He is joined here by a Tony Williams, a drummer of immense skill who can unfortunately be very lacking in taste. Regrettably he chooses to get into his monotonous bag and on Vulcan and Lopsy sounds as if he is deliberately underplaying. Connors and Hammer shoulder the responsibility for most of the remaining solo space and both are slender talents – their pretty sound manipulations and declamatory bursts are asked to replace real melodic development.
There has been a tendency to read into this kind of music properties it does not possess. The glib and facile opening to part two of the Life Suite reminds us of other styles that champion cleverness rather than content. But it is not only in the melodic field that this album is found wanting. Power has a wonderfully athletic drum solo by Williams but elsewhere it is rhythmically backward. A socking afterbeat does not guarantee swing and the rhythm section must accept some blame for making both Connors and Hammer solo with such stiffness and insensitivity. Jon Faddis and Garrett Brown are in the backing brass. It would have been a better album if, in their vastly different ways, they had been favoured to the rock stars!
Discography
Vulcan Princess; Yesterday Princess; Lopsy Lu; Power (20 min) – Spanish Phases For Strings And Bass; Life Suite (20¼ min)
Stanley Clarke (el-bs/bs/pno/fuzz-phaser/ vcl); Jan Hammer (moog/pno/org/el-pno); Bill Connors (gtr/el-gtr); Tony Williams (dm). String section: David Nadien, Charles P. McCracken, Jesse Levy, Carol Buck, Beverly Lauridsen, Harry Cykman, Harold Kohon, Paul Gershman, Harry Lookofsky, Emanuel Green. Brass section: Peter Gordon, David Taylor, Jon Faddis, James Buffington, Lewis M. Soloff, Garnett Brown.
