AFTER THE RAIN

AFTER THE RAIN is short, but it's Terje Rypdal's most perfect album.

A collection of achingly beautiful melodies, played on Terje's distinctive, nocturnal-sounding guitar, and accompanied only by minimal piano, gentle synthesizer washes, minimal percussion, and occasional human voice.

The sense of Terje trying to overwhelm us with strong, syrupy emotions (which you may get from some of the man's later albums) is completely absent here. All tunes are extremely delicate in mood. The music is so delightfully melancholic - if you're not in love with anyone when you start playing this, you'll feel as if you were by the time you reach the end! Which doesn't mean that this music is sentimental.

All you get here is pure, unadulterated, 100% natural Rypdal. In my opinion, apart from David Torn and Pat Metheny, T.R. is simply the proggiest guitarist on the ECM label. And AFTER THE RAIN is his earliest masterpiece. So switch off the electric lights, light some candles, listen how the gales roar and enjoy.

Multi-instrumentalist Terje Rypdal offers up an intriguing brand of fusion on After the Rain; whilst most in the fusion scene tended to focus on faster-paced and more energetic playing, Rypdal here seems to be applying a fusion approach to slower and more soothing work. In its better passages, it's like a jazz guitarist trying to produce a minimalistic ambient work; in its less successful passages, it gets rather sentimental, or resembles the general caricature of the ECM sound a little too closely. A pleasant listen and an interesting experiment, though I'm not really sure it's much of a success; certainly, it's not an album I anticipate revisiting regularly.

I consider myself a huge Rypdal fan but this album would be the first going chronologically that I couldn't get into. It's unusual as well for this to be Terje by himself without anybody helping him instrumentally, his wife does add some vocal melodies on a couple of tracks though. The followup to this called "Waves" released in 1978 is another one I gave 3 stars to, I'm just not into this period of his music I suppose. Terje plays electric and acoustic guitars, sax, flute, electric piano, bells and something called string ensemble piano which is where the string sounds come from. I can't get over how much Terje's electric guitar sounds like a violin, very much crying out mournfully much of the time. The music is very ambient and pleasant fitting well with the ECM label.

"Autumn Breeze" is my favourite and like many of these tracks it opens with piano before strings and acoustic guitar join in. Vocal melodies 1 1/2 minutes in as it becomes haunting. This is my favourite part on the whole album. The piano is back leading before 3 minutes as the vocals have stopped, then the electric guitar and strings return for the final minute. "Air" is the only other song I can get into. Electric piano and electric guitar lead the way in this beautiful but mournful piece. "Now And Then" is laid back with acoustic guitar melodies throughout while "Wind" is also relaxed but with flute throughout.

"After The Rain" is slow moving with electric guitar and strings. We do get some vocal melodies 3 1/2 minutes in as well as bells. "Kjare Maren" features electric guitar and piano with atmosphere. "Little Bell" opens with piano as the flute joins in before a minute. "Vintage Year" begins with piano as the electric guitar starts to cry out. "Multer" has strummed guitar to start but then the guitar turns classical sounding. "Like A Child, Like A Song" starts with piano then the electric guitar arrives a minute in as it cries out in a reserved manner as piano continues. It actually brightens 2 minutes in. Piano only 3 1/2 minutes in.

Apparently after the rain we should all have a little nap, or is that during the rain?