Life Goes On

Here's what we know so far about Carla Bley's Valentine day's release Life Goes On. The great pianist-composer is once again with Steve Swallow on bass guitar and Andy Sheppard, saxophones, the trio together for a quarter century. Recorded in …

Published: 4 Jan 2020. Updated: 4 years.

Here's what we know so far about Carla Bley's Valentine day's release Life Goes On.

The great pianist-composer is once again with Steve Swallow on bass guitar and Andy Sheppard, saxophones, the trio together for a quarter century.

Recorded in Lugano in May last year, the album produced by Manfred Eicher, to be issued by ECM, is made up of three suites: 'Life Goes On'; 'Beautiful Telephones'; and, 'Copycat'.

Reviewing the trio play live a few months ago in London, Mike Hobart in the Financial Times sheds some light on what to expect, Hobart quoting Bley to the effect that “'Copy Cat', was based on 'continuing each other’s thought'. 'Beautiful Telephones' Bley explained that it was named after a remark by Donald Trump when he first walked into the Oval Office. The piece prowled ambiguously with a noirish vibe.''

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John McLaughlin, Black Light, Abstract Logix

From 2015. After a bubbling build a blitz of furious jazz-rock unleashes itself, the power and improvisational resource of John McLaughlin and his band the 4th Dimension undiminished on this their third studio album together. That blistering raw …

Published: 4 Jan 2020. Updated: 4 years.

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From 2015. After a bubbling build a blitz of furious jazz-rock unleashes itself, the power and improvisational resource of John McLaughlin and his band the 4th Dimension undiminished on this their third studio album together.

That blistering raw atmosphere is a feature of the album. Yet beyond the firepower there is a lot of tenderness too say on ‘Being You Being Me’ and above all the tribute to Paco de Lucía on ‘El Hombre Que Sabia’, not forgetting Étienne M’Bappé’s bass introduction to the beautiful ‘Gaza City’. Ranjit Barot on drums (alternating on the instrument with Gary Husband) provides rugged rhythms and a firm architecture to the sprawling McLaughlin compositions heated up elsewhere by Husband’s keyboard stabs and spatial shifts on a track like ‘360 Flip’.

Recorded partly in London, partly in Monaco, this could well be the 4th Dimension’s most significant statement on record and finds McLaughlin and his talented band in riotous form.