Sniffy reviews

[francisco]

Here's a contender for sniffiest write-up of the year so far. The long list is available!! ''Pseuds corner, my good fellow and make it snappy'': https://frieze.com/article/fascinati...incompleteness

[Serial_Apologist]

It seems fine to me - thanks for bring it to our attention, francisco. Oh, and welcome to "the bored"!

[Quarky]

Here's a contender for sniffiest write-up of the year so far. The long list is available!! ''Pseuds corner, my good fellow and make it snappy'': https://frieze.com/article/fascinati...incompleteness

Thanks for the link. An interesting review, and bearing in mind Jazz Reviewers always lapse into Hype at the earliest opportunity, it seemed to me objective at times:

The longest piece, ‘Slow Blues’, is both ecstatic and incendiary, featuring two Coltrane solos that utilize hollering high notes as architectural markers – an imposing blues as he would ever record.

Could Coltrane have knitted all this disparate music into a structurally robust album? Perhaps not. But the joy and fascination of this new release is precisely its incompleteness: that the music has not been fashioned into any completed form. Calling it a lost ‘session’ might have been more appropriate, implying a chance to eavesdrop on Coltrane and his musicians trying material out: flexing its boundaries, without any of the pressure of ‘legacy’ that inevitably came with a monumental statement like A Love Supreme.

"Slow Blues" is where I'm at with Coltrane - easily recognisable as a Blues but with a large element of Free Jazz. I've never been a great fan of Coltrane, subsequent to Love Supreme.

[Serial_Apologist]

Thanks for the link. An interesting review, and bearing in mind Jazz Reviewers always lapse into Hype at the earliest opportunity, it seemed to me objective at times:

The longest piece, ‘Slow Blues’, is both ecstatic and incendiary, featuring two Coltrane solos that utilize hollering high notes as architectural markers – an imposing blues as he would ever record.

Could Coltrane have knitted all this disparate music into a structurally robust album? Perhaps not. But the joy and fascination of this new release is precisely its incompleteness: that the music has not been fashioned into any completed form. Calling it a lost ‘session’ might have been more appropriate, implying a chance to eavesdrop on Coltrane and his musicians trying material out: flexing its boundaries, without any of the pressure of ‘legacy’ that inevitably came with a monumental statement like A Love Supreme.

"Slow Blues" is where I'm at with Coltrane - easily recognisable as a Blues but with a large element of Free Jazz. I've never been a great fan of Coltrane, subsequent to Love Supreme.

In "Ascension", "Kule se Mama" and "Meditations", specifically, Coltrane handed over much of the shape, feel and flavour of the music to his younger, freer mentorees, himself enjoying the freedom to be expressionistic rather than continuing the journey pursued up to "Love Supreme" - for the latter's further destination one has to turn to the very last recordings, such as "Expressions" and "Stellar Regions", where one finds the road of expanding modality pursued up to the point where we find someone like Paul Dunmall taking it up 20 or so years later. Others had followed some aspect of Trane's advances - Archie Shepp, Alan Skidmore, Sam Rivers, Evan Parker, Gerd Dudek among them, but it was a multiverse that would take long and a big sense of vision to absorb - Dunmall I would argue has done so the most comprehensively.

[BLUESNIK'S REVOX]

I've got it and I think it's fine. Is it a revelation, does it change my view of Coltrane, the world or the price of coffee? No, but it's very enjoyable, the band are all on form, it's slightly hesitant and unfinished in spots but that's "a session" and it's attractive.

The "Slow Blues" reminds me in shape of the Blues for Elvin on Atlantic from three years earlier. But a lot happened in those three years.

[Alyn_Shipton]

I'm sure all dedicated boardees here heard the interview with Ravi about the album on Jazz Now on 11 June, but if not, it'll be on the Radio i-player for a few more days. And for those who don't (yet) have the album, I'm playing one of the "untitled" tracks on JRR on 28 July. That review smacks of an editor saying to the writer "yes, but what's your line on this?" All I'd say in addition is that when I spoke to Rudy Van Gelder for Radio 3 about the complete warts (outtakes) and all edition of Blue Train, he described it as a "desecration" of an album that he and Coltrane had worked hard to get perfect. If Rudy were alive I'm sure he'd feel the same about one of his safety copies (quarter inch mono, for heaven's sake) being issued. He'd no doubt take offence that it reflected badly on his work because it is just a shadow of the recording genius he usually applied to the finished article, and he'd be mighty unhappy about the snatches of talkback and incomplete tracks. Me, I'm just grateful to hear some moments of the band playing as well as it ever did, and should Mr Clark ever read this, despite the inspired playing of the others, Garrison's bowed solo on that incomplete track is pretty bloody awful. Like almost all jazz bassists except Christian McBride and John Pattitucci, he ought to have left the bow in its case...

[Stanfordian]

When I said I was playing Miles Davis - Sketches from Spain it felt as if I was feeling the force of the sniffy opinion. Surely we should always respect the right of contributors to play whatever they want.

[Serial_Apologist]

I'm just grateful to hear some moments of the band playing as well as it ever did, and should Mr Clark ever read this, despite the inspired playing of the others, Garrison's bowed solo on that incomplete track is pretty bloody awful. Like almost all jazz bassists except Christian McBride and John Pattitucci, he ought to have left the bow in its case...

Or bowed out!

[burning dog]

When I said I was playing Miles Davis - Sketches from Spain it felt as if I was feeling the force of the sniffy opinion. Surely we should always respect the right of contributors to play whatever they want.

Never liked their version of the "Concerto de Orange Juice" but IMO Solea is some of the best ever Miles and Saeta is surprisingly(?) very authentic sounding

[BLUESNIK'S REVOX]

JAZZ FM..."THIS week's featured new music playlist includes John Coltrane's lost album 'Both Directions At Once' - which just reached #15 in the UK album chart!"

Hey, "some of us" remember when "My favourite things" was a French juke box hit on an Atlantic 45! You could play François Hardy then the Johnny Coltrane Combo and then Lou Bennett.

Good times are back again...No, not really.

BN.