Customer Reviews

Rarum 7: Selected Recordings (Dig)

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

There are very few guitarists with individual tonality and phrasing that's immediately recognizable from the first bar. Rypdal is one of those unique sounding musicians (and a peer of Jeff Beck and Eric Johnson to name but two other 'modern' elders of the electric guitar).
Rarum is an interesting cantos, but missing ALL of his trademark remote sounding pieces, such as anything from 'After The Rain', or the extraordinary techno cross-over album 'Greatest Hits' (apart from that Hawaii trance number, the weakest track from the album).
However, this compilation is well worth buying if you want to seriously check out Norway's greatest guitarist.
One objection, the cheap 'indie label' style CD cover. Cardboard dust jackets only last two years before they fall to bits. Not the quality I would expect from the usually superlative ECM label.

The music of Terje Rypdal is unlike that of any other. After experimenting with a wide range of musical styles in the 1960s and early 1970s, he found his uniquely expressive voice (on the electric guitar as well as compositionally) around the time of the earliest of these CD tracks (1974). He's been prolific, daring, innovative, and influential ever since. The tracks on this CD were picked by Terje himself from all of his ECM recordings, and were remastered to 24-bit/96kHz format, and they sound GREAT! Even if you already have the ECM CDs from which these tracks were taken, the optimized sound make this CD worth buying also.

This CD provides a fantastic overview of Rypdal, who has been recording for ECM for 30+ years now. The tracks range from pieces with an "electric Miles" sound to an orchestrated track. While very diverse, the tracks work well together and are unified by his unique,atmospheric tone and excellent compositions. The infamous ECM sound quality is even better due to 24 bit mastering. Informative liner notes as well. Highly recommended.

Many of the ECM artists selected for these anthologies contributed helpful liner notes, sometimes several pages' worth. From guitarist Rypdal, however, we get "a few words." The recordings assembled for this collection span three decades--"Tough Enough" dates from 1971, while the 2nd Movement from Rypdal's Double Concerto for Two Guitars and Symphony Orchestra dates from 1996. Through all of the cuts, regardless of musical genre, Rypdal sounds like a pretty good rock guitarist who aspires to be something more. Not surprisingly, the cuts that work best are the ones where he simply plays rock guitar, such as "The Return of Per Ulv," from 1985's If Mountains Could Sing.