JOE FARRELL — Moon Germs (review)

JOE FARRELL — Moon Germs album cover Album · 1973 · Fusion Buy this album from MMA partners
3.5/5 ·
Sean Trane
Third CTI album from the RTF wind man, and featuring again an all-superstar line-up, this time with Herbie replacing Chick, DeJohnette reclaiming the drum stool from Elvin and Stanley holding the bass. Recorded in late 72 in RVG studios, the album sports a weird moonlike eyeball watching over some kind of geometric forest at night, and while one could fear that the album is going to be even further “out there” than its two predecessors; actually it’s probably Farrell’s most accessible to date.

The A-side features two Farrell compositions, the first of which is the almost-12-mins Great Gorge, which has Hancock batting homeruns on either sides of the field at will, but not in the extremely dissonant range; though he does go electronics (something he’d experienced in his recent Mwandishi album, but that was Pat Gleason’s job. The 7-mins+ title track is a much more standard piece, where Farrell shines like a thousand full moons.

Oddly enough, if Farrell had opted to let Chick have space for a composition in Outback, in the present album, he doesn’t do the favour to Hancock, and it’s again a Corea piece that find space, though Herbie does it great justice. If Time Lies is an earthy piano piece, Farrell soars high above in the stratosphere with soprano sax. The album-closing Stanley almost-10 mins composition Bass Folk Song is maybe the album’s most energetic piece, due in no small amount to the young Clarke, who just like DeJohnette were still climbing the jazz notoriety (none of the two having yet recorded as solo artiste). While Stan was only appearing for the first time on a CTI album, JDJ was now almost a CTI veteran, before becoming an ECM pillar.

Again, if you’re looking to the “soft jazz” trademark that the CTI label was best-known for (Benson, Grover, Deodato, etc); you’d better stay away from yet another attention-demanding Farrell album, despite this one being the most fusion-like so far of Farrell’s solo career; though his next one would indulge further in avant and fusion directions.

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