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Following on from the release of Terje Rypdal’s widely acclaimed new album Conspiracy, ECM now reissues four Rypdal recordings from the 1970s -
albums which helped to establish the Norwegian guitarist as a truly original force in creative music.
The albums are the eponymously-titled Terje Rypdal (recorded 1971), What Comes After (recorded 1973), Whenever I Seem To Be Far Away (1974) and Descendre (1979).
Terje Rypdal: guitar, flute; Jan Garbarek: tenor saxophone, flute, clarinet; Eck-
ehard Fintl: oboe, english horn; Bobo Stenson, Tom Halversen: electric pianos; Arild Andersen, Bj rnar Andresen: basses, Jon Christensen: drums, percussion; Inger Lise Rypdal : voice (1971)
Rypdal made his first appearance on ECM as a member of the Jan Garbarek Quartet on Afric Pepperbird (recorded in Oslo in September 1970), and was encouraged by Manfred Eicher to make his own album the following year. Rypdal’s ECM leader debut already maps out several areas of activity that will be of importance in the future, balancing his skills as ecstatic improviser and sound-sculptor, innovative guitarist, composer, and forward-looking bandleader.
The album begins with “Keep It Like That - Tight” , named after one of Miles Davis’s terse performance instructions, which finds Rypdal’s group locking into a tough groove from which inspired solos arise, including a powerful tenor sax feature for Jan Garbarek, and a concluding blues-drenched solo from Rypdal over stabbing electric piano and Christensen’s dynamic drums.
If Bitches Brew provided one template for this approach, Rypdal and his players, with the encouragement of their producer, took that influence somewhere else. Meanwhile “Rainbow” and “Lontano II”, in striking contrast, are tone poems which open windows on Rypdal’s textural imagination and his feeling for sound-colour, before “Tough Enough” returns the listener to the world of urgent jazz-rock. From many angles, it’s a strong performance, and the vivid, panoramic production still feels contemporary.
Tracklist
- Keep It Like That - Tight
- Rainbow
- Electric Fantasy
- Lontano II
- Tough Enough