JOE MCPHEE — Rotation (review)

JOE MCPHEE — Rotation album cover Live album · 1977 · Avant-Garde Jazz Buy this album from MMA partners
3/5 ·
snobb
Rotation is rare (never re-released on CD) Joe McPhee's live release from his Swiss concert series.First two album's compositions are just sax solos. Free-form, sometimes explosive, but more often - just speaking man-like short and very various in emotive colors, sad,nervous, funny... McPhee still has some Coleman's melodic influence there, but he is obviously in transition searching for new sounds and forms.

Four rest compositions are even more interesting: McPhee's free improvs partner there is synth player John Snyder. During last some decades synthesizers' use in jazz music has usually a really bad fame as a result of mindless and tasteless exploitation of their sound and possibilities. These four compositions are excellent example how artistic and innovative synthesizer can sound in a hand of real artist!

I can hardly remember similar examples when just sax and synth are equal partners in free jazz (!) improvs, where synthesizer's abilities are used not for cosmic sound-scape or electronic noises around soloing artist, but directly for free-form improvs!And even more - these compositions sound fresh and innovative even now, thirty-five years after they were released!Unfortunately, this period of synthesizers' progressive use was very short and finished very soon ( one can only imagine how different could be music history if show business wasn't discover synthesizer as fast and cheap way to produce money).

Really very interesting release, still more for fans of free jazz and Joe McPhee music though.
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