NEIL ARDLEY — Kaleidoscope of Rainbows (review)

NEIL ARDLEY — Kaleidoscope of Rainbows album cover

Album · 1976 · Third Stream

3/5 · 2011-06-17
Sean Trane

I was always a bit wary of third-stream artistes, because I’m not exactly one to really enjoy adaptation of classical works (well investigate them out of curiosity, but that’s about it) into whatever other genre (jazz, rock, reggae), unless a spoof or really bringing in completely different approach (like early Tomita or Emerson’s experiments in the 70’s) and likewise of the attempts to write original classical themes and arranging them in jazzy manner. Don’t get me wrong, here, I’m not accusing Ardley of doing either, but I can’t help of thinking of that issue when listening to some of his works, namely KoR. Actually reading the line-up should convince me that such an album is outstanding, because it features the cream of the crop of 70’s British jazz and JR/F: Barb Thompson, Ian Carr & Bertles-Castle-Smith- Sutton-Sellers (of Nucleus fame), John Taylor and Dave McRae (of Mole fame). Actually we could easily call this type of work a “big band third stream” work, given the 17-man formation (not all at once, though) at work on Rainbow.

According to Neil Ardley, KoR is the third step of his trilogy, started with Greek variations and Symphony Of Amaranths, and the present is a work influenced by and working around the Balinese music five note scale. Actually Ardley was commissioned by the city of London for a piece for the Camden Festival of 74 and in its original presentation it was a really big band composition. The present works sees a lighter adaptation of the score recorded in 76. But I assure you there is much more to KoR than those boring and unsubtle five note Bali meanderings. To be quite honest, except at a few odd and short places throughout the album, I don’t hear much Balinese influences. I think it’s more of a musician’s musician thing than something for a more un-professional auditor. Indeed, Neil spends some time in the booklet explaining the subtleties of his incorporation of that Bali scale, but if he has to do so, I’d say that it’s because he’s rather unsuccessful at making it more apparent without being bluntly Balinesean about it; but then again I’m rather profane to musical composition, so this last comment might be off-mark. This seven-movement Rainbow-suite takes on the whole album with an added prologue and epilogue, which therefore announced an ambitious work, and indeed, we’re delivered just that. Actually I’d have thought that both the intro and outro would’ve been atmospheric doodling pieces to frame-up the main body of work, but they’re digging almost right away into the Rainbow themes. Well you can definitely (and almost instantly) hear Ardley’s main influence of Ellington and Evans (Bill) in KoR, but you definitely have an updated version with slightly rockier arrangements and even some synths intrusions (well maybe too strong a word) courtesy of musical director Ardley himself. As far as third stream go, there are indeed some rather classical-symphonic moments as well, and they’re probably the passages where I tend to lose attention and re-focus it once the mood is more fusion-esque. Don’t jump to conclusions either, despite the presence of almost all of the second full Nucleus group line-up, this is not an Ian Carr-sounding album either.

The reissue of the present album with different artwork has seen a bunch of bonus tracks totally unrelated to the original album tagged on to it, and these were recorded some time later: a Tangerine Dream-like solo synth layers & sequencers like the 13-mins Intimate Vistas from 80 and the horribly out-of-place Refracted Rainbow from 91 with Carr and Hiseman, which is much more related to Zyklus than KoR. These “bonuses” actually ruin the pleasure of the original album, as well as suppressing the original artwork for a cheesy and atrociously cheap computer rainbow colour palette. Sometimes more is less, and that reissue is a textbook case of such an expression. Prefer finding this little gem that concentrates on the original recording, as you’ll be enjoying the subtle original artwork instead of the insulting reissue’s sore excuse of cover.