TERJE RYPDAL

Terje Rypdal's second album is filled with inventive soundscapes which are often eerie in nature. I usually say that if it's a rainy day it's time to put on some Rypdal, but this album is best listened to at night.

A beat comes in before a minute on "Keep It Like That-Tight" as guitar sounds come and go. Horns join in at 6 minutes and Jan Garbarek is outstanding here. It settles with piano before 9 minutes. Abrasive guitar follows as piano continues.Terje is lighting it up here. What a way to start ! "Rainbow" is a funny title for such a spooky track. An eerie atmosphere falls on this soundscape and it doesn't leave. Different sounds come and go including flute on this 7 minute ride into darkness.

"Electric Fantasy" opens with atmosphere. Drums, bass and haunting female vocal melodies after a minute.The vocals are repeated over and over. Very cool sounding. Guitar, bass and keys before 9 minutes then Terje starts to rip it up 10 1/2 minutes in. Vocal melodies are back 13 1/2 minutes in. "Lontano II" is dark with creepy sounds coming and going. "Tough Enough" has this guitar melody that is repeated on and off until the guitar starts to solo after 2 minutes. The bass is prominant too. It then settles back 3 1/2 minutes in. This is my least favourite track and almost feels like it doesn't belong.

5 stars for this dark beauty from 1971. Man I love his style.

I've was first made aware of Terje Rypdal in 1992. I bought Odyssey in 1993 and Whenever I Seem to be Far Away in 1994, but it was only very recent that I bought more of his albums (probably because I was concentrating on collecting stuff from other artists). It was only with the advent of the Internet that I was able to find out what he released before What Comes After, and that's Bleak House in 1968 on Polydor, which is extremely hard to find as an original, and this self-entitled ECM debut (he's already appeared on a few ECM albums in 1970/'71, this is his first simply billed as Terje Rypdal). He gets plenty of help, like Jon Christensen (as he seems to be a Rypdal regular), Jan Garbarek, Arild Andersen, Inger Lise Rypdal (Terje's wife at the time), Tom Halversen, Bjørnar Andresen, Bobo Stenson, and Eckehard Fintl. Of course Jan Garbarek and Aril Andersen had made names for themselves, and we know Inger Lise Rypdal's relation to Terje, not to mention Jon Christensen appearing on many of Terje's other albums, some of the musicians seem to be very obscure (Eckehard Fintl, for example) as I can't seem to dig much info on them.

Having been familiar with several of his other (more famous) 1970s albums including Odyssey, I'm so happy to get this early release. It's one of those albums I wished I owned back in when I first heard of him, but that one was hard to find (as many early ECM titles). "Keep it Like That - Tight" tends to use that post-Bitches Brew fusion format here, with lots of similarities (one commented Terje should have replaced John McLaughlin in Miles Davis' band). It starts off pretty calm, but it picks up steam towards the end. "Rainbow" really trips me out. Clearly in the Third Stream, it's basically a very eerie orchestral number sounds like a jazz version of Tangerine Dream's Zeit, it has that similar sinister otherworldly feel. It really trips me out, and in fact I wished this was how side two of Whenever I Seem to Be Far Away was more like. "Electric Fantasy" is pretty tripped out fusion , especially those wordless female voices from Lise. "Lontano II" is another really strange and eerie piece, while "Tough Enough" is a bit more bluesy, almost a Bleak House throwback, but with that contemporary (for 1971) sound. Odyssey may be his best known work, but I feel this 1971 album is actually his best one, and one of the best ECM releases alongside John Abercrombie's Timeless and Julian Priester's Love, Love. Truly one of his most trippy albums. Like I said, an album I wished I knew of and owned back in the early '90s. Great stuff that I highly recommend.

It had been a few years since Terje's previous solo album, his incredible debut, Bleak House (1968) as he'd been studying in graduate school under George Russell--a man whose album George Russell Presents The Esoteric Circle (recorded in October of 1969 and released locally as "Jan Garberak with Terje Rypdal's Esoteric Circle"--considered by some as Jan Garbarak's debut album--but it was not published internationally until late 1971 by Bob Thiele's Flying Dutchman label) is considered one of the most important and influential albums in the history of Norwegian music. George was an American-born jazz musician who had chosen to make his home in Oslo in the early 1960s where he even became a professor at Norway's Conservatory of Music--where Terje and Jan Garbarek, Jon Christensen, and Arild Anderson all met and played in the school's jazz orchestra that recorded George Russell's Electronic Sonata for Souls Loved by Nature (recorded April 28, 1969; released January 1, 1971).

1. "Keep It Like That - Tight" (12:10) spacious-yet-steady syncopated bass and drums over which Terje issues strums of odd distorted electric guitar chords for five minutes. Then there is a dramatic shift (spliced?) into a slightly more straightforward section of same palette, different rhythm pattern, over which Jan Garbarek's tenor sax screeches and wails. At 8:49 the electric piano of Bobo Stenson suddenly rises into the middle of the mix (a blocked track that is now 'faded in'?) but it's Terje's distorted guitar that soon takes over in the lead position with some aggressive and abrasive soloing over the more-Miles Davis-like sound palette. Even some of the rhythmic and palette constructs feel as if they're direct imitations of In a Silent Way and some of Bitches Brew.) (17.25/25)

2. "Rainbow" (7:05) bowed bass and triangle and nut shell shakers open this one with a sinister feel. Oboe and clarinet join in to make a soundscape that feels like an outer space version of a Paul Winter Consort piece. Interesting, eerie, and cinematic. I'd love to see the music charts for this one! (13/15)

3. "Electric Fantasy" (15:45) more "space symphony" music using different instruments to create an initial sonic field to the previous song: drums, electric bass, Herbie Hancock Mwandishi-like electric piano, reverb-effected winds, fast- reverbed (and/or flanged) wah-ed electric guitar chords and even vocalese (courtesy of Inger Lise Rypdal) offer sound into a vacuum: the notes/chords fast-fading off into the distant stars as soon as they're issued. Very cool effects but about as memorable, melodic, or engaging as the previous song--even in the 11th-minute when the release of aggression and volume are ramped up (which all ends in the 12th-minute as everything goes back to the space music of the opening). Weird to claim one's highlight to be the vocalise from the female voice. (26/30)

4. "Lontano II" (3:10) more sinister music, this time feeling more industrial: as if music coming out of the mouths of tunnels or holes in the Earth. Bowed and effected bass and strained guitar chords, finger percussion, but mostly a show of engineering effects. (8.666667/10)

5. "Tough Enough" (4:45) solo electric guitar opening: some fast picking turning into gentle John McLaughlin-like chords, played off of by bassist Bjørner Andresen and Jon Christensen's drums. Though I don't really like this guitar sound and its blues-rock nature, the instrumental play and mix is my favorite on the album: there's actual motion and as if a story is being told as opposed to the spacious generations of soundscapes of all of the previous songs. These guys can play! (8.75/10)

Total time: 42:57

B/four stars; not my favorite Terje album or sound exhibition.