I am almost at a loss to know what to say about this expensive reissue. I can report that all four musicians on hand are consummate in their craftsmanship and sureness of touch, and that there is no doubting their dedication to this kind of music or their ability to bring it off. Taylor in particular has drunk deep of the minimalists’ brew, and every performance is fashioned with delicate precision and melodious care.
It’s just that I hate it – all 140 cloying, airless, arch and self-congratulatory minutes of it. Swing, or anything approaching what I’d call a jazz pulse, is wholly absent; so too is an even rudimentary awareness of dynamic range (a problem with a great many ECM issues, I find). It simply goes on and on down its path of twee, space-focused exquisiteness, to such an extent that after half an hour I wanted to throw something heavy through the wall. To put it another way, sitting through all three CDs at a stretch is analogous to tackling several stone of hand-made chocolates; subtle pleasure soon gives way first to weary satiety and then to intimations of violent nausea and utter misanthropy.
Sorry, everybody – especially the musicians concerned, whom I greatly admire and have much enjoyed in many other contexts. But after this aural purgatory I seized The Atomic Mr Basie from my shelves, and never in my life have Count, Hefti and Lockjaw sounded so good and so properly eloquent of real life and its pleasures.
Discography
(1) Azimuth: Sirens Song, O, Azimuth, The Tunnel, Greek Triangle, Jacob (43.18) – (2) Touchstone: Eulogy, Silver, Mayday, Jero, Prelude, See (44.52) – (3) Depart: The Longest Day, Autumn, Arrivée, Touching Points (From The Window; Windfall; The Rabbit; Charcoal Traces), Depart, The Longest Day (reprise) (52.17)
(1) Kenny Wheeler (t, flh); John Taylor (p, syn); Norma Winstone (voice). Oslo, March 1977.
(2) as (1). Oslo, June, 1978.
(3) as (1), but Taylor plays organ instead of synthesiser, and add Ralph Towner (12-string & classical guitar). Oslo, December 1979.
(ECM 3-CD 1546-48/532 010-2)
