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Bill Frisell: In Line

 A l b u m   D e t a i l s


Label: ECM Records
Released: 1983
Time:
 42:22
Category: Jazz, Post-bop
Producer(s): Manfred Eicher
Rating:
Media type: CD
Web address: www.billfrisell.com
Appears with:
Purchase date: 2016
Price in €: 1,00





 S o n g s ,   T r a c k s


[1] Start (B.Frisell) - 5:55
[2] Throughout (B.Frisell) - 6:52
[3] Two Arms (B.Frisell) - 4:00
[4] Shorts (B.Frisell) - 3:08
[5] Smile on You (B.Frisell) - 4:07
[6] The Beach (B.Frisell) - 6:06
[7] In Line (B.Frisell) - 4:36
[8] Three (B.Frisell) - 4:17
[9] Godson Song (B.Frisell) - 3:57

 A r t i s t s ,   P e r s o n n e l


Bill Frisell - Acoustic & Electric Guitars
Arild Andersen - Electric & Double Bass on [1,4,6,8,9]

Manfred Eicher - Producer
Jan Erik Kongshaug - Engineer
Sascha Kleis - Cover Photo, Design, Photography

 C o m m e n t s ,   N o t e s


1983 LP ECM Records - ECM 1241
1991 CD ECM Records - ECM 1241 (Europe)
1994 CD ECM Records - ECM 1241 (USA)

Recorded August 1982 at Talent Studio, Oslo



I had the great fortune of seeing Bill Frisell by his lonesome in the summer of 2009 at Northampton’s Iron Horse, where he employed a rather modest set of equipment consisting mainly of digital pedal delays, unfolding from one guitar a ghostly map of sound. This process of self-generation seems to have always been at the heart of his musical output, and no album approaches that feeling as intimately as In Line. His sound is so full that bassist Arild Andersen’s reverberating swaths of darkness reveal an inner voice of the guitar in “Start” and carry Frisell’s suggestive lilts to distant conclusions. Andersen’s role is not to be ignored, sharing as he does a sensual conversation with Frisell in “Three” and providing a tearful backdrop to “Godson Song.” Here, Frisell’s guitar also gently weeps, slithering under the bass’s watchful eye, ever at the edge of naivety. The intertwining electrics of “Two Arms” tighten like a finger trap into a wormhole toward “Shorts,” which recalls childhood with its unintended (?) allusion to “Three Blind Mice.” These brief flashes of nostalgia make their way carefully down the spiral staircase of “Smile On You” and out onto “The Beach,” a stunning soundscape for processed electrics that moves like a train through a tunnel and crests atop Andersen’s slithering harmonics. The title track steps out of the album’s default monochrome with the gamelan colors of its detuned acoustics. The more clean-cut leads take us farthest in a final blissful gasp.

Yet if we’re going to talk about bliss, then our lips must shape the word “Throughout,” which names the album’s most inescapable embrace. This piece would also provide the basis for Gavin Bryars’ heavenly 1986 adaptation, Sub Rosa. The chord progression itself speaks volumes and gives breath to the lead electric as it sings with all the restraint at its disposal.

Like an opera singer who cuts through all the trained vibrato now and then with that single crystalline note, Frisell’s phrasings tremble on a watery surface, glinting occasionally with the light of a distant sun. In that light is hope, and this hope one encounters ECM’s core philosophy of silence. If you only own one Frisell album, make it this.

ECM Records



This is the closest Bill Frisell has come to an actual solo album, though he is joined on half of the set by bass player Arild Andersen. Frisell's electric and acoustic guitars are multi-tracked throughout. The title piece uses light dissonances to especially shimmering and vibratory effect.

IN LINE was produced by Manfred Eicher, whose customary pristine clarity makes an ideal setting for Frisell's subtly nuanced playing. Each of the nine pieces is distinct, but they also lend themselves to an over-arching feeling of connectedness. There is a real album identity to this work. Though quiet and meditative as both a guitarist and a composer, Frisell's style is broad enough to allow for a range of emotional settings - from introspective to celebratory.

All Music Guide



For his first recording under his own name, Bill Frisell, then ECM Records house guitarist, presented nine of his compositions in the most personal way, going it alone on four pieces with just overdubs of his guitars and playing the other five in duet with bassist Arild Andersen. The 1982 recording is a remarkable debut, filled with such light and calm that its originality might go overlooked. Frisell was already defining an original style in the mix of acoustic and electronic elements, simplifying melodic materials while bending pitch toward another dimension. There are new relationships between time and technology, too, with time slowing down, multiplying, and building up in layers. Frisell uses chorus and delay to expand his musical universe, shaping the envelope of his guitar sound to suggest backward movement and heighten the impression of malleable time and space. "The Beach" approaches a kind of absolute stillness with layers of continuous organlike sound from the guitar, a soundscape broken only by the birdlike cries of Andersen's high-pitched bowed bass. "In Line," a more animated piece, gradually displaces a repeating Oriental pattern with swirls of folklike chords. The loose unison theme of "Three," almost bop in a world of funhouse mirrors, triggers particularly good dialogue between Frisell and Andersen, who's an ideal accompanist in his appearances here, providing secure, empathic support.

Stuart Broomer - Amazon.com



There's a lot of Frisell out there to listen to from the last 33+ years of his solo career as a master jazz axeman - most of which is still on my to-do list, having so far only approached his catalogue in my capacity as an ECM nut.  After loving his work as a sideman to Eberhard Weber and Jan Garbarek in the late 70s/early 80s, I grabbed his three ECM solo albums, of which this one remains my favourite.

There's no Weber here, but another ECM bass regular, Arild Andersen, provides a subtle underpinning to about half the album.  Frisell is mostly muted and understated too on his first time out as leader, nimbly picking out a bunch of gorgeous melodies.  On 'The Beach', he expands his palate with layers of delayed guitar sound to create a stunning soundscape that marks the album's high point for me.

As with a handful of other ECM albums, the CD reissue replaced the original artwork with something much more nondescript and mid-80s, so I've plumped for the original LP cover for this post of In Line.  So I actually stand corrected in saying there's no Weber here - as with about a dozen other ECM releases, the original cover was by Maja Weber, late wife of the great bassman.

Alan Burns
slowgoesthegoose.blogspot.co.at



In Line is the debut album by Bill Frisell which was released on the ECM label in 1983. It features four solo performances by Frisell and five duets with bassist Arild Andersen. The Allmusic review awarded the album 3 stars.

wikipedia.org
 

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