AZIMUTH — Départ (feat. Ralph Towner) (review)

AZIMUTH — Départ (feat. Ralph Towner) album cover Album · 1980 · Post-Fusion Contemporary Buy this album from MMA partners
3/5 ·
Sean Trane
Third (and AFAIK, last) album from this trio-project encompassing hubby & wife Norma Winstone and John Taylor (vocals and keys respectively) along with Canadian, but long-time Brit-scene activist Ken Wheeler on trumpet. Actually there is a twist to Départ, since they are joined by Oregon’s guitarist Ralph Towner, but it’s not that clear if that was a permanent move or just a temporary invitation. I guess we’ll never know since this was to be their last album, to my knowledge anyway and it was recorded some 18 months after Touchstone in late 79 and released early next year. I’d love to tell you that Towner’s arrival in the project drastically changed the group’s direction and strongly affected their soundscape, but alas, it’s not really the case. Yeah, sure; there is somewhat a difference with the added acoustic guitar, but it’s really nothing all that fundamental to the group’s nature. Well let me expand a bit further: yes, musically the group is a bit different, but I don’t feel that it’s so much due to Towner’s presence (well it helps, but it’s probably not determinant) as some of these tracks (six in all, three aside again) are rather different than the previous two albums’; but it’s more to do with Taylor’s songwriting proper exploring a slightly increased set of sonic possibilities, more than Towner’s presence on guitar proper. Not sure I explained myself properly, though. Soooo, IMHO, and all respect due to the great Ralph.

Some tracks develop some eerier soundscapes (in no small part due to Norma’s vocals) than on Touchstone of their debut album, like the four-movement Touching Point suite (counted as individual tracks on the Cd reissue), but my preference goes to the 10-mins+ title-track. The album is book-ended by the Longest Day and its reprise theme. So, in some ways, whatever might make the present album more interesting for the attentive listener might just be the casual listener’s inconvenience as Départ is much less likely to serve as mating music as the previous two albums (not that I warmly recommended them as such), but it also loses the insomnia-treatment qualities of its predecessors, despite not being that much less soporific. Indeed the increased eeriness of the present album diminishes its lullaby qualities. Nevertheless, I find Départ their more interesting album, but this remains still a fairly conventional ECM product, which was not really my thing.
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