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Eberhard Weber: Yellow Fields

 A l b u m   D e t a i l s


Label: ECM Records
Released: 1975.11.01
Time:
 43:19
Category: Jazz
Producer(s): Manfred Eicher
Rating:
Media type: CD
Web address: www.ecmrecords.com
Appears with: Jan Garbarek
Purchase date: 2015
Price in €: 1,00





 S o n g s ,   T r a c k s


[1] Touch (E.Weber) - 5:02
[2] Sand-Glass (E.Weber) - 15:34
[3] Yellow Fields (E.Weber) - 10:06
[4] Ne Pas Se Pencher au Decors / Left Lane (E.Weber) - 13:37

 A r t i s t s ,   P e r s o n n e l


Eberhard Weber - Bass
Charlie Mariano - Soprano Saxophone, Shehnai, Nagaswaram
Rainer Brüninghaus - Piano, Synthesizer
Jon Christensen - Drums

Manfred Eicher - Producer
Martin Wieland - Engineer
Dieter Bonhorst - Layout Design
Maja Weber - Cover Design
Gabi Winter - Photography

 C o m m e n t s ,   N o t e s


Recorded at Tonstudio Bauer in Ludwigsburg, Germany in September 1975.



With “Touch” we are immediately privy to a groove-oriented game between piano and bass. The lush, open sound is heightened by the presence of synth strings, prefiguring Weber’s later orchestral collaborations. Charlie Mariano’s soprano floats with positive energy and unbounded enthusiasm as the strings morph into trembling sirens. Jon Christensen adds backbone to otherwise invertebrate music. Weber is subdued in this first track, leaving Mariano to take the lead with a soulful stride toward a quick fadeout, leaving us wanting more of what could have been.

“Sand-Glass” begins with water droplets and the occasional artfully placed rim shot. High notes on bass provide a constellatory framework. Within these borders, seemingly drawn but only imagined, Mariano solos like a comet, his sentiment flaring against a limpid night. Mariano flaps his wings around the fuselage of Weber’s bass line before being rocked to sleep in an electric piano cradle. Inspirations grow more pronounced as Mariano picks up the shenai, a quadruple-reed North Indian oboe that tunnels into the brain like a shawm. We ride this wave until the drums pick us up and drop us back into a shattered world of aftershocks and quieting energy.

The title track is an auditory hermit. With the theme quickly dispensed with, improvisation turns joyful fancy into gorgeous abandon. All the while, discipline reigns as abstractions build into a more melodic whole in which the sound and the message are one and the same. Weber takes a more supportive tack, allowing Brüninghaus a cosmic solo on electric piano. Statements conveyed and time regained, the band wraps up with a fleeting thematic revival amid an interlacing of rhythms and supportive flourishes.

Lastly, we merge onto the “Left Lane,” which opens with a pensive bass, soon joined by electric piano. Christensen defibrillates, turning this slow drive into a cruise. The piano sings in its higher regions before trickling down like rain on a window. Weber returns to spark a new groove, moving from elegiac to jazzy in a flash. A seemingly tame sax solo quickly turns dramatic, opening our hearts to a visceral farewell.

ECM Records



Nobody much noticed a little German record label called ECM, until the 1973 album The Colours of Chloe came out, introducing the Colours band of jazz bassist Eberhard Weber - who played an electric upright instrument with a characteristically plummy and reverberant sound. The music connected with both modern jazz and the looping thematic approach of Tubular Bells - and introduced a new setting for improvisation, over tone-shifts and moods rather than chord-changes and swing. It became the signature sound (and eventually the unfair caricature) of the ECM label. In the company's 40th-birthday year, ECM has repackaged three of the band's best albums from the decade of its emergence, and it's remarkable how fresh it still sounds. Yellow Fields, an exploration of the layering of harmony that is nonetheless energised by engaging vamps and the keening reeds sounds of the late Charlie Mariano, remains the best of the bunch. But its 1977 successor Silent Feet (with the more emphatic percussion style of Soft Machine drummer John Marshall) and 1980's Little Movements aren't far behind. The latter sounds as if it embraces everything from Terry Riley and Michael Gibbs to the Mothers of Invention, albeit discreetly. Colours was a landmark band, and if some of this music sounds familiar, it's because its impact was widespread.

John Fordham - 19 November 2009
© 2015 Guardian News and Media
 

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