Manfred Eicher's ECM label out of Germany has forever been a source of a fresh listening experiences for me. I did most of my exploration of new music during the seventies and eighties, and I still go to those decades for music that's new to me, however known or obscure its standing in the World. The label has a long list of regulars who return again and again at different stages of their careers, often collaborating with one another and incorporating new influences.
I have about sixty ECM albums, mostly from among their first two hundred issues. Collectively, they make up a good chunk of the progressive, non-commercial, freer part of my vinyl collection. These ten albums are my favorites from among them.
It's fitting that the first album I'll rave about it one I just came across about three weeks ago, in Dr. Disc, a great shop here in downtown Hamilton, where I picked up about twenty used albums. Six of them are ECM and the chance to take up that many discs by mostly unknown artists was easy to take up, because the product from that label is always good, and almost always something unique.
Barre Phillips: Journal Violone II
One of the most wonderful things about all of the arts is how they remind us of the infinity of possibilities, and that creativity is inexhaustible, despite the too ubiquitous human habit of clinging to what we think we already know. Improvisational and experiential music can always brings us to something beyond what we know. And there's a quality it can have - but doesn't always - of feeling new even when recorded and listened to hundreds of times. That's because it carries us to places we aren't accustomed to being, into spaces and angles that we aren't used to inhabiting.
This album evokes all those qualities. It is an instant favorite and I'm looking forward to growing into it.
ECM, as a label, is supreme in inviting its guest artists to explore new combinations of sounds. Very often, the work an artist records for ECM is totally different than what they've recorded elsewhere, or even their other work on the label. I've assumed - though I haven't done the research to confirm - that Manfred Eicher was a producer who invited artists to do what they hadn't previously had the opportunity or the space to do. It usually feels like the musicians have plunged into some dimension just beyond where they've become settled, so that what they produce surprises even them.
Maybe that's only a reflection of how this music feels to me.
Keith Jarrett: Facing You
This may be the first ECM album that ever came into my possession. That would've been in '75, when I was twenty-one and living in Central Square in Cambridge, Massachusetts. There was a used record store called Deja Vu - the first in my experience, and a place I explored whenever I had a few bucks extra from whatever I was gigging. In those days I spent money on rent, books, food, ounces of herb and records. And life was pretty simple. I listened to Eric Jackson's late night radio show, and he was always hipping me to artists that opened my ears in different ways, that brought something alive inside of me that felt like possibility, like newness, like the untried. And I also picked up new tastes from friends, swapping visits and thumbing through each other's small but always growing collections of lps.
One place this album takes me is to church, and into the ecstatic joy that church sometimes inspires. And it doesn't just take you in the front door, bound up in suit and tie and good manners. This is like stepping into the side door of a Baptist church, where the brothers shout and the sisters catch the spirit and roll in the aisles. And in the kitchen, some of the church ladies are preparing suppers for sale: greens and fried chicken and cornbread. Jarrett takes his solo piano on journeys to wherever his mood and spirit and thundering or tickling fingers take him.
The Koln Concert is of course Jarrett's and ECM's most revered classic and all-time best seller. But this studio album was Jarrett's first solo album, and it's may favorite because of "In Front", the tune I've been referencing.
Keith Jarrett: The Survivor's Suite
I intend to mostly stay away from multiple works by one artist. But Jarrett need this representative of his other most loved performance idiom, that being the small combo. And - respect to the Peacock/DeJohnette tandem, and to the Garbarek/Danielsson/ Christensen quartet - my favorite is his "American" quartet, with Dewey Redman, Charlie Haden and Paul Motian. This is characteristic of their terraforming magic.
Julian Priester: Polarization
I wish there was more of this out there in the World. Julian Priester was onto something with this and his earlier atmospheric beauty. Ephemeral, pulsing, moody. It's long been a late night favorite of mine.
Bennie Maupin: The Jewel in the Lotus
This is undoubtedly one of my three bests on this list. It too is moody, but also sweet, caressing, evocative. This is a prime example of an artist's work diverging from the rest of his discography, which features Head Hunters funk. If I was a smoother guy, this would've been my 'make out' album.
Dave Holland: Conference of the Birds
Here, we're more into the hard bop side of ECM, with Holland mixing it up with Braxton, Rivers and Altschul. This is a great batch of quirky melodies that actually do evoke a social clustering of twittering, squawking, keening birds. Bright and bouncing.
John Abercrombie, Dave Holland & Jack DeJohnette: Gateway
A driving, grooving Set featuring the virtuosity of three masters. If you like it, they reassembled every couple of years until they'd recorded four.
Jack DeJohnette: New Directions
Another of my top three! This impressionistic stew finds DeJohnette with Abercrombie again, and joined by Lester Bowie and Eddie Gomez. They all play their instruments loose and rolling, slippery and smoky, with the leader dancing around and beneath them. Bayou Fever for REAL!
Pat Metheny: 80/81
At the time this came out, I had Metheny pegged as a proponent of music that wouldn't offend the ears of the tourists who want to listen to jazz as a backdrop to their cocktails. This album showed me how transcendentally beautiful his music could be, and that Metheny subordinated his chops to the service of his land and spirit-scapes. "Everyday I Thank You" is truly prayerful.
Chick Corea: Return to Forever
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