Jan Garbarek Quartet Afric Pepperbird LP

Tracking Angle Rated 9/10 Music, 9/10 Sound!

Luminessence, ECM's new audiophile vinyl reissue series, is a kaleidoscope, shedding light on the jewels of the label's deep catalogue in elegant, high-quality editions. The hallmarks of the series: original and evocative music, imaginatively played and sensitively produced. The recordings underline the scope and variety of ECM's world of sound and the LPs are presented in different formats.

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Recorded in Oslo in September 1970, Afric Pepperbird was released on New Year's Day in 1971. Half a century later, it still conveys the freshness and excitement of discoveries being made. The album signaled the arrival of four Norwegian improvisers - Jan Garbarek, Terje Rypdal, Arild Andersen and Jon Christensen - at the fledgling ECM label. It was the start of a lifelong association with each of the musicians, whose influence was soon to reach far beyond the borders of their homeland. In extended passages on Afric Pepperbird, with Christensen and Andersen stretching out, it's quite often Rypdal effectively holding the center with taut chords. Everybody is roaring here, with Garbarek deep into his free jazz vocabulary. "Garbarek should be heard," wrote reviewer Joe Klee in DownBeat. "I would venture that not since Django Reinhardt has there been a European jazz musician so original and forward-looking as this young Norwegian."

Afric Pepperbird is a pretty wild ride. Loose-jointed, fragmented, alternately joyfully noisy and lyrically serene. Free jazz meets Scandinavian sense of structure. Greater would come, both in music and in sound, but it's hard to beat the freshness and excitement on display here. Garbarek and Rypdal were yet to find their voices, sounding all the wilder and more searching for it. All four would soon move on to more mature and coherent work, developing their individual styles to become leading names in European jazz and in the ECM roster.