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Re: ? RE: ECM guitarists?



The discussion of Terje Rypdal's Odyssey got me to listen again to it
after many years. I first heard it in the 1977 when I was I was a
teenage high school student in Wichita Kansas combing the local record
stores for anything that had that spacey 70s extended Miles groove jam
thing going on. Odyssey is a little restrained compared to Miles,
unsurprising for an ECM release I guess, but I'm still enjoying it.
The spacey and sparse soloing and use of bits of noise and distortion
over a repetitive bass isn't that far from modern electronica in some
ways. The trombone is a nice touch, not enough rock bands with a
trombone : )

ECM dropped the most "masturbatory" track from the CD reissue.
"Rolling Stone" is 23 minutes of soloing, stabs of Miles' kind of
organ here and there, and some string synth over the same basic bass
riff. Unsurprisingly, it's out there on the blogosphere along with a
live recording of the same band in 1974 performing the same songs on
the Odyssey album. I haven't heard all of it yet, but what I have
heard is my kind of music. There's no accounting for taste.
http://silveradoraremusic.blogspot.com/2009/01/terje-rypdal-entire-odyssey-album-with.html

Rypdal's two earlier ECM albums, "Terje Rypdal" from 1971 and "What
comes after" from 1973 have a very similar feel to Odyssey. He has an
album from 1968 that's not on ECM called "Bleak House" that is very
different, it's basically a rock and roll record, but not a bad one.
He hadn't developed his singular style of playing then.

Per, I'm jealous, I would have loved to see the Odyssey band live.
It's funny the loudest band I ever heard perform was the Phillip Glass
Ensemble! Absolutely deafening!

I've heard that Miles wanted Rypdal in his 70s band at one point.
Rypdal's 2006 album Vossabrygg is another one I like, an homage to
Miles of sorts, and surprisingly similar to Odyssey considering the
passing of 30 years time. I'd say Odyssey is one of the more important
albums in Rypdal's catalog and shows the deep influence that Miles
Davis had on Rypdal's music.

It's not ECM, but I like the album Rypdal did with Ronni le Tekro.
It's some weird, warped kind of shredding contest.

Of all Rypdal's ECM recordings, my two favorites are 1. Waves and 2.
Descendre. That opening track on Waves with the cheesy drum machine is
just so odd, beautiful, melodic and unique. It's got a strange
"lounge" Herb Alpert kind of sound that really comes out of left
field, but it has aged really well.

Rypdal also does some very interesting Guitar Synth work on Barre
Phillips "Three Day Moon" album on ECM. That's a hard one to find, but
I think it's in print, at least in Japan.

Now that I think about it, it's really amazing that Rypdal never
recorded any solo looping work. The sound of his guitar is perfectly
suited to looping. Oh well.

I'm not a fan of Jan Garbarek, but this early track from his 1971
album "Afric Popperbird" with Rypdal, Arild Andersen and Jon
Christensen was a real treat:
http://cosmiccheese.blogspot.com/2009/05/jan-garberak-beast-of-kommodo-afric.html
-- 
Art Simon
simart@gmail.com
myspace [dot] com/artsimon