Customer Reviews

Ring

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

 

 

When I was in college, there was a jazz club in New Orleans called "Rosies." At the time, I was new to the world of jazz, and was hungrily taking in every new experience I could find. One night, I bought tickets to see the Gary Burton band. All I knew was that he played vibes.

Man, oh man. It was a life-altering experience for me. The band was a four-piece: Burton, the as-yet-unknown Pat Metheny, Steve Swallow and Bob Moses. I was floored; it was a whole different kind of jazz from anything I'd heard before. Each member of that group just blew me away, but what I remember thinking about, for days afterwards, was the compositions. Burton had announced, several times, "we're going to play one now by a composer named Eberhard Weber." They were amazing pieces--dripping with atmosphere, equally catchy and challenging. I became obsessed with finding recordings of Weber's music.

Though I eventually discovered and grew to love Weber's solo albums, "Ring" was the first recording of his music that I found, and it was a great introduction. If you're a fan of "Passengers," you'll like this one. This is ECM at its best, a classic collaboration between a great composer/soloist (Weber) and a brilliant interpreter (Burton). In some ways, I tend to like Burton's versions of pieces by Weber, Carla Bley, Swallow and Mick Goodrick even better than the composers' original versions. He always starts with strong material and then transcends it.

Anyway, if you like mid-70's ECM (their prime, if you ask me), you will be well-pleased with this amazing album.

Just fantastic. This combination of musicians in Burton's Quintet of Mick Goodrick (g), Pat Metheney (g), Steve Swallow (b) and Bob Moses (d) - each of whom have wonderful cvs in terms of their own records - plus Eberhard Weber to complement Swallow's bass gives the record some added vibrancy and wonderful colour.

Burton plays the vibroharp with superb delicacy which tops off the spirals of harmonic sound. Each track shifts in mood seamlessly from the one before - with writing credits to Goodrick, Mike Gibbs and Carla Bley before an interpretation of Weber's Colours of Chloe rounds off the record.

An all time favourite jazz record, for a quieter mood. A classic ECM release.

EVERY TRACK IS GREAT, ESPECIALLY WITH THE AWESOME SHM AUDIO FORMAT. MUST HAVE FOR ANY CD COLLECTION, BUT DON'T PAY THESE RIDICULOUS OVER-INFLATED PRICES, I BOUGHT MINE FROM THE MUSIC SPECIALIST ON E BAY, THEY ALSO HAVE A STORE IN GEMM, ANTEATERMUSIC. SAVE YOURSELF A TON OF CASH.
CHEERS!

this should have 10 stars
this is closer to progressive rock than jazz but it is neither

Vibes master Gary Burton assembled some big names for this session, but the results are something less than spectacular. "Mevlevia" has some nice touches of guitar, but is far too mellow for my taste. "Unfinished Sympathy" includes the welcome addition of drums, and also shows Metheny playing much harder and giving the music some much-needed bite. "Tunnel of Love" features Weber playing a slow, plaintive solo on the uppermost reaches of his bass, while the other instruments repeat a simple 2 note theme. "Intrude" starts with an astonishingly restrained drum solo, after which the guitars cut loose, but without more structure, it doesn't really go anywhere. "Silent Spring" is rather too slow and soothing for my taste - the long vibes solo while the guitar repeats the same ponderous chord over and over seems to go on forever and almost put me to sleep. At least Weber's solo was a little more interesting. "The Colours of Chloe" is an atmospheric piece with the guitar and bass playing unison lines; Burton plays one of his better solos while the guitars drive the music forward in a way that happens too seldom on this CD, and Metheny gets in a fine solo as well. A little more of this approach might have saved the whole project, but it was not to be. My feeling is that the vibes are inherently soft and soothing in themselves, and require a very aggressive rhythm section to give the music some punch. Instead, I find most of these tracks suffer from a languid quality that is too often merely boring.