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Jan Garbarek: It's OK to Listen to the Gray Voice

 A l b u m   D e t a i l s


Label: ECM Records
Released: 1985
Time:
 42:36
Category: Jazz
Producer(s): Manfred Eicher
Rating:
Media type: CD
Web address: www.garbarek.com
Appears with: Keith Jarrett, Eberhard Weber, The Hilliard Ensemble
Purchase date: 2012
Price in €: 1,00





 S o n g s ,   T r a c k s


[1] White Noise of Forgetfulness (J.Garbarek) - 8:22
[2] The Crossing Place (J.Garbarek) - 9:10
[3] One Day in March I Go Down to the Sea and Listen (J.Garbarek) - 5:32
[4] Mission: To Be Where I Am (J.Garbarek) - 8:08
[5] It's OK to Phone the Island That Is a Mirage (J.Garbarek) - 5:49
[6] It's OK to Listen to the Gray Voice (J.Garbarek) - 4:41
[7] I'm the Knife-Thrower's Partner (J.Garbarek) - 0:54

 A r t i s t s ,   P e r s o n n e l


Jan Garbarek - Tenor Saxophone, Soprano Saxophone
David Torn - Guitar, Guitar Synthesizer, Dx7
Eberhard Weber - Bass
Michael Di Pasqua - Drums, Percussion

Manfred Eicher - Producer
Jan Erik Kongshaug - Engineer
Barbara Wojirsch - Cover Design

 C o m m e n t s ,   N o t e s


1985 CD ECM Records - ECM 1294

Recorded December 1984.



It's OK to Listen to the Gray Voice is an album by the Norwegian saxophonist Jan Garbarek released on the ECM label and performed by Garbarek, David Torn, Eberhard Weber and Michael Di Pasqua. Here Garbarek is approaching the extremes of his style, appearing once again with the Jan Garbarek Group. All pieces on this record are titled after quotes from poems by Tomas Tranströmer, and though the actual connection to these poems remains tenuous at best, they do add a provocative element to the pieces themselves, which beg for at least some programmatic interpretation. Multi-instrumentalist David Torn is primarily responsible for the more aggressive edge this record takes. His guitar lines explode with energy and tension, giving Garbarek a more off-center field to play in — and considering his penchant for excessive restraint, this is a welcome environment to hear him in". The Allmusic review by Mark W. B. Allender, giving the album four stars.



Here Garbarek is approaching the extremes of his style, appearing once again with the Jan Garbarek Group. He has his usual stark, meditative pieces, interspersed with some cutting-edge work, occasionally spinning just enough out of control to be exciting. And in other places he ventures headlong into the syrupy fields of Kenny G.-land. All pieces on this record are titled after quotes from poems by Tomas Tranströmer, and though the actual connection to these poems remains tenuous at best, they do add a provocative element to the pieces themselves, which beg for at least some programmatic interpretation. Excellent bass work by Eberhard Weber, particularly on the more avant-garde pieces (e.g., "The Crossing Place" and "One Day in March I Go Down to the Sea and Listen"). Multi-instrumentalist David Torn is primarily responsible for the more aggressive edge this record takes. His guitar lines explode with energy and tension, giving Garbarek a more off-center field to play in -- and considering his penchant for excessive restraint, this is a welcome environment to hear him in. The title track features Garbarek squealing high on his soprano sax over a bed of spooky chord changes. Low points on this record find the group entering soft rock territory; the most offensive here is "Mission: To Be Where I Am" -- and at over eight minutes, it's a significant valley. But all in all, the strong work finds Garbarek doing stronger work than he had done for some time and certainly stronger than listeners would hear from him for many years to come.

Mark Allender - All Music Guide



O field as grey as the buried bog-man’s cloak.
An island floating darkly in the fog.
It’s quiet, as when the radar turns
and turns its arc in hopelessness.

 There’s a crossroads in a moment.
Music of the distance converges.
All grown together in a leafy tree.
Vanished cities glitter in its branches.

– From “Elegy” by Tomas Tranströmer (trans. Robin Fulton)

If the title of this classic Jan Garbarek date from 1984 moves you, there’s a good reason for that. Like all of the tunes therein, its nomenclature is culled from the poetry of Tomas Tranströmer, who was just awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature this year. And if anyone has the vocabulary available at his lips to reproduce it without words, it’s Jan Garbarek.

Garbarek albums are, like those of Keith Jarrett, trail markers in the ECM catalogue by which can gauge the label’s evolution in sound and atmosphere, and if this one is any indication, I’d say things were moving along pretty darn smoothly. Garbarek shines brightest in the company of those who have their own sonorous light to bring to an otherwise inarticulable cause, and finds exactly that in guitarist David Torn, bassist Eberhard Weber, and drummer Michael DiPasqua.

Together they string a delicate network of guitar and electronics in “White Noise Of Forgetfulness,” throughout which Garbarek strings a song to complement every warped square of silence. Weber opens “The Crossing Place” with a honeyed solo, to which Garbarek touches his saxophonic torch and sets the darkness aglow like a sparkler in July, ever dancing at the edge of annihilation. Torn’s snaking solo winds beneath a desert sun into the oasis of “One Day In March I Go Down To The Sea.” Here Garbarek takes the notion of sonic postcard to an entirely new level, moving diacritically around images and sentiments with the care of a sable brush. “Mission: To Be Where I Am” comes across as something of a personal anthem, and has a lilting beauty all its own. “Phone The Island That Is A Mirage” features melodious bass work from Weber amid a slowly moving atmosphere. The haunting title track is straight from the heart and would reappear on the saxophonist’s 1998 magnum opus, Rites. The set ends modestly with “I Am The Knife Thrower’s Partner,” a sad and lonely tale—nay, an impression—told by two overdubbed saxophones, each a light upon the horizon gone too soon.

ECM Records
 

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