Karta

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ECM do have a knack for encouraging ad-hoc collaborations and successfully capturing the results, and this album is a good example as any. The two year old trio of bassist Arild Andersen, drummer Patrice Heral and trumpeter Markus Stockhausen were teamed up with guitarist Terje Rypdal by ECM boss Manfred Eicher for this studio session, and decided to abandon their prepared material for the most part to concentrate on improvisation. Out of one and a half hours of improvisation, seven of the eleven pieces that make up the record emerged. Apparently there was a little creative tension initially, but you wouldn't guess that from the result; what we have here for the most part is cohesive and sensitive group improvisation. As you might expect from pretty much any ECM record, the music is cool, poised, exact and laced with moments of unearthly beauty, and it's grown on me with each listen.

The opening 'Sezopen' revolves around the dark ambient swirls of Andersen's processed bass loops, while Stockhausen squeezes long wah'ed notes through the music's core. Stockhausen is as precise and golden toned as usual, firing off impossibly fast curlicues of trumpet or flugelhorn with a precision and articulation that is quite stunning to hear (he also does an extremely good impression of Jan Garbarek's soprano on the closing 'Lighthouse'). Yet his playing is far more 'jazzy' than his previous outings on the label have suggested, particularly the fragile harmon muted musings on 'Legacy'. Andersen is typically inventive and his improvisations are superb - his extended solo on 'Wood and Naphta' is a joy; funky, mobile and intelligent. He's up there with the likes of Dave Holland these days. His use of loops and electronics is effective and restrained too. Heral (this is his ECM debut) is sensitive and supportive, and again, his use of live sampling throws up some interesting shapes, and I'd like to have heard a bit more. The sound of his kit is gorgeous too - as Paul Schütze has pointed out, no-one records cymbals like Eicher. Rypdal is at his best when providing colouration, particularly on the more ambient inclined material, where his grainy, yearning distorted lines recall his work on his own 'After the Rain'. Less typical (of his recent output anyway) is his compressed chordal work on 'Legacy' and the ravishing 'Evocation', where he shadows Stockhausen's lines and meshes perfectly with Andersen's semi walking bass. As Andersen notes, their interplay recalls thir work in Jan Garbarek's quartet some thirty years ago. Terje is less convincing when he rocks out, as on the overlong 'Wild Cat', but I suspect it's partly Manfred Eicher's reluctance to lay off the reverb which tends to flatten the dynamics of the more animated group playing. A very ECM record, then, but also a very good ECM record. (Next time Manfred, get Markus to bring his dad...)