Ornette Coleman - Body Meta

Personnel: Ornette Coleman (saxophone); Charlie Ellerbee, Bern Nix (guitar); Jamaaladeen Tacuma (bass); Ronald Shannon Jackson, Denardo Coleman (drums). Recorded at Barclay Studio, Paris, France in 1975. Includes liner notes by Ornette Coleman. Digitally remastered by Quintessential Sound. One of the most important jazz albums of the 1970s, BODY META arrived at a time when many had declared jazz t...

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What a tornado would sound like
if it played instruments. This is Ornette blowing the whole thing wide open. Forget about traditional Jazz, forget about Rock, forget about funk. How about two Drummers, two guitarists, and Jamaaladeen Tacuma who might as well be two bassists just wailing. Then on top of it all, Ornette blowing like the wind. You don't know where he is going, but he is going there, and the band is coming along with him, propelled by his improvisations. The heads are great. Voice poetry, the album opener, is perhaps the most interesting. First an eiko eiko like drum beat with guitar chords hit emphasizing the beat. Then the bass and second guitar enter, playing off each other and making no attempt to hold things down, as the beat is already established. Finally, after several minutes of increasing tension, enter Ornette. Perhaps his most dramamtic entrance. More than a dramamtic entrance, Ornette's exposition of the head of this song is one of his finest moments, and his dive into improvisation is immediate and signals the arrival of a completely new music. More than music, I see prime time (The name ornette gave his fusion band - which debuts on this album - and yes, it's a bad pun) as a force of nature. This is a challenging album, and probably not a good introduction to Ornettes music (See in all languages), but it is a gem.

posted by peter