MICHAEL GARRICK — The Heart Is A Lotus (review)

MICHAEL GARRICK — The Heart Is A Lotus album cover

Album · 1970 · Fusion

4.5/5 · 2011-08-05
Sean Trane

Keeping contact with the now-defunct RCQ, Garrick soldiers on in his solo career and for the present Lotus album, he calls on his usual suspects (minus Harriott, thankfully), but adding new-comer Art Themen and John Phillips (both reedmen) and the superb Norma Winstone on vocals. Indeed, Garrick had been toying around with spoken poetry for most of the 60’s, and these poems appeared here and there on his albums, but by the end of the decade, he’d switched to using sung-vocals (with words) as an instrument, and HiaL is the first attempt, a quite successful one, if I may say. Well Garrick had already experimented with a choir in one of his early album back in 65, but this is so much more advanced. If the whole of the RCQ is on the present album, we can’t say that the musical realm is the same at all, but in many ways it’s at least as good as their later releases. Recorded over two days in early 70’s and graced with an evocative Eastern flower and bird illustration, it was released later that year on the small Argo label, and “recently” reissued in 05 on Cd on Vocalion.

The immediate result of a Harriott-less Garrick album is that it jumps and leaps at least one decade ahead, and HiaL is an amazing album, where you’ll find some spell-binding ambiances, not least because Garrick keeps experimenting with the harpsichord, but loads of flutes and delicious Norma(l) vocals (on 6 of the 8 tracks). The album opens on some harpsichord, some enchanted vocals and tense bass lines, and Carr’s muted-trumpet and Themen’s orgiastic flute transport you directly in the troposphere on a raga-like cloud train, with Norma answering Carr’s trumpet calls and response, while Green’s bass lines are awesome, contrasts-ing with Garrick’s harpsichord, and Tomkins’ drums are over-volumed in a Sun Ra fashion. Fucking awesome stuff!!!

The following Song By The Sea is a full-group orchestration re-take of the Marigold album track, with the poem now sung. It’s too bad that such standard-y jazz tracks as the thankfully-shortest Torrent are present on the album, because they tend to ruin the cohesion and continuity of the musical direction, but it’s just one track. The 10-mins Temple Dancer has a hypnotizing rhythm that could charm a cobra, but Norma’s wailings will humble your dragon mother-in-law’s vicious tongue, while her ugly mutt will chase around the house that muted-trumpeted mosquito.

Across the slice of wax, a jumpy flute and Norma are directly pouncing on your attention, but the track develops is a slow bluesy-jazz (hence the title), but Carr’s trumpet will throw your eardrums in a panic, before realizing another aural orgasm is on the way as Norma’s squeals hers in your ear. The haunting Voices should floor you for the KO count, with everyone pounding notes into your saturated mind. You’ll get a bit of a rest with the Beautiful Thing track, which starts slowly out fine enough, but peaks in Gypsy-type jazz before a bowed-bass ends the tune unexpectedly. The closing Grave Song is another awesome sounds like a march-type thingie at first, but soon evolves into an astounding slow-death end.

The question is: are we still in the jazz-realm (outside Torrent) or are we in the progressive rock idiom, because the variety of climates (jazz & non-jazz) is so extended that the Norma(l) boundaries are happily transgressed and have been sooooo totally erased, that the aural experiences are almost orgasmic. In the British-jazz realm, only Collier’s best album and Carr’s early Nucleus can match this, but this album is sometimes so amazing that I feel like removing the “English” part in that first part of the sentence.