The Year Of The Elephant

Soul Jazz / AACM / Avant Jazz
premiera polska: 13.05.2013
kontynent: Ameryka Północna
kraj: USA
opakowanie: Jewelcaseowe etui
opis:
Editor's Info:
The Year of the Elephant is the first album by the Golden Quartet as a working band. Their previous album, Golden Quartet, was recorded before the band had ever played out live together. The time in-between the two recordings has given the group the opportunity to perform live and immerse themselves further in Wadada‘s very personal and unique music. “The Year of the Elephant” captures the sound of the band in a way their first recording did not. Their grasp of the music and the bands sound has grown significantly. The band has been a dream of Wadada’s for some time. Its members bridge many different periods of his life, from his beginnings in the AACM with Malachi, to playing with DeJohnette in Chicago before he left for New York City, to Anthony’s early developmental days in Connecticut. Wadada’s writing for this album touches on ballads, blues, improvisational pieces, and funk. The time spent with each person of the Golden Quartet has forged a bond between him and Wadada that invests some of the quieter moments of the CD with an intimacy rarely heard today. The band now truly sounds greater than the individual parts.

All Music Guide:
Trumpeter Wadada Leo Smith moves from Tzadik to the upstart Pi label for the second release with his Golden Quartet, again featuring Anthony Davis on piano, Malachi Maghostut Favors on bass, and Jack DeJohnette on drums. This measured, thoughtful music doesn't fit neatly into the avant-garde category, although its harmonic language is often open-ended and mildly dissonant. Both Davis and DeJohnette are credited on synthesizer, but the sounds they employ are remarkably close to the old-fashioned, analog Wurlitzer. Combined with Favors' resonant, grooving basslines and DeJohnette's loose straight-eighth rhythms -- on the opening "Al-Madinah," for instance -- the result is somewhat akin to Miles Davis in the In a Silent Way period. A similarly diffuse, vamp-based feel underlies "The Zamzam Well a Stream of a Pure Light," while "Piru" is even more spacious, with muted trumpet cries and drifting rubato sonorities. "Kangaroo's Hollow" offers an intimate look at the tight Smith-Davis rapport by featuring them in a stark duo setting. The title track comes the closest to what can simply be called free jazz; starting as a kind of moderate shout-blues, it soon speeds up, with Smith and Davis playing angular unison lines that set the stage for bracing, freewheeling improv. Finally, "Miles Star in 3 Parts" moves from mellow rubato textures to a jumpy, insistent theme, the bassline of which is played by Davis, not Favors -- just one example of how Smith uses the instruments at hand in unexpected ways.
by David R. Adler

All About Jazz:
Trumpeter/composer Wadada Leo Smith put out a CD entitled Yo Miles! a couple of years back, so his debt to the Dark Prince, Miles Davis, is no secret. On this, The Year of the Elephant, his second CD with his Golden Quartet, Mile's influence, especially the sound of the late sixties through late seventies, pervades. In a pared down way. Miles at that time was expanding his pallet. Gutars, bass clarinet, two drummers, sitars, tablas. Smith has simplified things: Trumpet/bass/piano/drum.

Smith's horn work is very Miles-like,the wounded, open horn cry, the plaintive and introspective mute work, the judicious use of silence.

"Al-Madinah", the opener, brings, compositionally, Bitches Brew, to mind, without the extraneous clutter. Jack DeJohnnette, who played on that classic album is here, churning, pulling the sounds forward.

The closer, is an obvious Miles nod, the fifteen minute-plus "Miles Star in 3 Parts".

But there is more. The quartet—these are old pros—brings a progression to what was going on in those late seventies recordings; indeed, each member brings so much to the proceedings, the level of musicality is so high...

Pianist Anthony Davis is a writer of operas when he's not working with The Golden Quartet, and the classical bent he brings in adds a lusterous polish to the sound. On "The Zamzam Well a Stream of Pure Light" (and how that for a Mingusonian title), probably the least Milesian tunes on the CD has an interlude with Davis way up high on the right hand side of the keyboard, plucking little pinpoints of starlight out of the low end dark heartbeats of Malachi Favors Maghostut's bass. That tune the highlight of an extraordinary set of songs.

This one will show up on the year end top ten lists, near the top.
By DAN MCCLENAGHAN


“Passages of collective interaction that are as varied, unpredictable and satisfying.”
By Duck Baker, Jazz Times

“This is exploratory, passionate jazz that’s made with love and skill by four singular talents; a supergroup in the truest sense of the word.”
by Peter Marsh, BBC

“Golden indeed; the band’s ethereal textures and incisive lyricism sound like no one else’s.”
by Art Lange, Pulse!

muzycy:
Wadada Leo Smith: trumpet, flugel-horn
Anthony Davis: piano
Malachi Favors Magoustous: bass
Jack DeJohnette: drums

utwory:
1. Al-Madinah
2. Kangaroo Hollows
3. Miles Star / Star/Seed, (i-ii) / Blue Fire, (iii)
4. Piru
5. The Year of the Elephant
6. The Zanzam Well a Stream of a Pure Light

wydano: 2003
nagrano: 2003
more info: www.pirecordings.com