Customer Reviews

Terje Rypdal

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

 

 

Terje Rypdal (flute, guitar)
Inger Lise Rypdal (vocals)
Jan Garbarek (tenor saxophone, flute, clarinet)
Eckehard Fintl (English horn, oboe)
Bobo Stenson, Tom Halversen (electric piano)
Arild Anderson (acoustic & electric basses)
Bjornar Andresen (electric bass)
Jon Christensen (percussion)


Having been fascinated by Terje Rypdal's work on Afric Pepperbird, I was eager to listen to the record of his debut as a band leader, but also suspicious with a vague fear that his name written at the center of the cover would have induced any guitarist to put himself at the foreground with such an ardor to spoil the kind of balance indispensable to the magic of an album like A.P.

This doubt of mine proved to be completely unfounded: Terje plays here, too, with intelligence and parsimony, almost giving the impression that the role in which he is interested is not that of giving the sound its rudimentary form, but rather of choosing the tone with which it must be lit, to shade its colors, to adorn it with the right atmosphere.

The product is, at times, a blues which is both rough and otherwordly. At other times the music becomes slow, contemplative and without rhythm. These two natures are perhaps the biggest (the only?) drawback of the record, because rather than being finely mixed to add variety and contrast, they are separated to the point that one can pick out ambient tracks and song tracks. Often I was in the right mood to play the catchiest pieces but not the others, that would fit a completely different mood. And I think that those same bluesy pieces would be perfect for a car travel, but at that point you wouldn't have any other choice than continuously skipping between tracks 1 and 5. I found this lack of "mood unity" very problematic and this is the only reason why I'm giving it 3 stars as a whole: read my rate as a 4,5 or even a 5 if you aren't worried by this.

But other than this, "Terje Rypdal" is a very good record. Surely a record that deserves to be studied for the originality and for its contribution to the development of the so called "ECM sound", and to the evolution of european jazz in general.