Jazz Record Albums

Some old friends there and also some interesting suggestions I haven’t tried – excellent, thanks very much. 

I’ll add a few ECM favourites of my own to the pot:

Jan Garbarek Quartet, Afric Pepperbird (1970):  One for free-jazz buffs, this has Garbarek on reeds and flute with Terje Rypdal’s electric guitar, Arild Anderson on acoustic bass and Jon Christensen on drums.  I doubt either Garbarek or Rypdal ever got much further out than they did on this album, which features plenty of atonal scrawling and scrabbling from Rypdal competing for space with Garbarek’s barrage of worrying squawks and squeals on long blowouts like Beast of Kommodo and Blow Away Zone.  The rhythm section also lays down a quite dense and chaotic base for Garbarek and Rypdal to operate over, and much of the time it’s no easy listening exercise (although it will not scare modern noise-rock fans much I guess).  There are some rather pretty passages in the music as well and even some fairly mellow guitar from Rypdal, but even so you need to be in the right mood for this one really (you and possibly your neighbours, as this record has to be played loudly or not at all).

Dave Holland Quartet, Conference of the Birds (1973):  A kind of free-ish but often beautifully melodic acoustic jazz, with both Sam Rivers and Anthony Braxton on reeds / flute and Barry Altschul’s percussion.  I find it difficult to describe the music, which really repays close listening - there is so much going on with these four musicians, particularly when the horns / flutes are improvising together over the constantly inventive rhythm section.  Barry Altschul’s percussion work (he uses a whole array of small percussion instruments and marimba as well as drums) is phenomenal on this album, at certain points he seems to have three arms and a separate brain controlling each one.  For this alone I think the album is worth a listen for anyone who digs interesting drummers like Chris Cutler, Bill Bruford or Dave Kerman even though this is purely a jazz album with no discernible rock influence at work.  As a side note, the third track opens with an unaccompanied passage from Holland on acoustic bass - listen from 0:47 seconds to hear a bass motif which would later introduce a well-known song by a band named Nirvana.  Probably a coincidence I would guess.  I’m listening to this album as I write this post and thinking it just might be my favourite acoustic jazz album of the whole seventies…

Ralph Towner, Solstice (1974):  Another all-acoustic session, with Garbarek and Christensen again and the mighty Eberhard Weber on bass.  This is my favourite Ralph Towner record (and also has some classic Garbarek).  Mainly these are serene, beautiful compositions with limpid improvisation, but the group also plays with real energy and rhythmic verve when the tempo moves up a notch.  I read somewhere that the Solstice group was seen as ECM’s answer to Oregon - Towner was in both groups - but on the strength of this album I prefer Solstice.  There is a subsequent Solstice album on ECM whose name escapes me, but the original is the one to get.  I have this on an old LP and the sound is particularly good even by ECM’s standard, with Towner’s guitar and Garbarek’s sax luminously present in recorded space. 

Tomasz Stanko Septet, Litania - Music of Kryzstof Komeda (1997):  Yet another acoustic jazz session - am I getting too off-topic for the site here? - but I can’t resist including it because it’s so good.  On one level this is mainstream post-bop jazz, but given a distinctively European flavour - the players are Polish and Swedish and the music is that of Polish composer Kryzstof Komeda, including music written for the Roman Polanski films Knife In The Water and Rosemary’s Baby.  It is lifted way out of the normal run of straight ahead jazz albums by the fascinating and often melancholic writing, lovely arrangements for the septet, and superb group feel among the players.  The liner note points out that many of these guys – Stanko on trumpet, Bernt Rosengren and Joakim Milder on saxes, Bobo Stenson on piano, Palle Danielson on acoustic bass, Jon Christensen on drums and occasionally Terje Rypdal on guitar - have been playing together for thirty years.  This seems to show on the record, as there is very little ego on display - there are great solos here but no grandstanding, it is all in the service of the music.  I would actually defy anyone who loves music, even if they have no normal interest in acoustic jazz, to put this record on in circumstances with no distractions, and fail to be utterly drawn in.

Nils Petter Molvaer, Khmer (1997):  This is a type of jazz / trip-hop fusion album, possibly quite similar to the one mentioned by Dick in his post above although I have not heard that recording.  This genre seems to be a bit of a Norwegian speciality with various artists including Molvaer, Bugge Wesseltoft and Eivind Aarset who seem to frequently collaborate on each other’s projects (see e.g. Wesseltoft’s album Moving on Jazzland and Aarset’s  Electronique Noire on Jazzland / Emarcy, both of which are worth checking out if you like this type of thing).   I think Khmer is an excellent example of this type of music - these are mood pieces really but very effective ones, with some vaguely east Asian flavours to go with the Scandinavian main course.  The music does not sound at all dated after ten years and there’s some excellent playing from Molvaer among others.

I realise that I’ve gone badly outside the stated remit of this thread in this post since it does not mainly deal with jazz-rock, but I hope people will forgive my enthusiasm to proselytise for some great music.  Listening without frontiers! 

I will try to make up for it by posting a couple of proper jazz-rock recommendations to this thread later.