In Space, Nobody Can Hear You Funk

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KEEP IT LIKE THAT – TIGHT
RAINBOW
Terje Rypdal
Terje Rypdal
ECM : 1971

TR, electric guitar, flute; Jan Garbarek, tenor sax, flute, clarinet; Ekkehard Fintl, oboe, English horn; Inger Lise Rypdal, voice; Bobo Stenson, electric piano; Tom Halverson, electric piano; Arild Andersen, electric bass; Bjonar Andersen, electric bass; Jon Christensen, percussion.

Ah, the many flavors of fusion in the early 70s. Best known at the time for his work with Jan Garbarek, here on his ECM debut guitarist Terje Rypdal steps into the spotlight with his unusual take on jazz-rock hybrids. Both more straightahead funky and more atmospheric than early Gabarek, this music points in several directions at once.Â

“Keep It Like That – Tight” – the ideal soundtrack for your post-long weekend reentry to the workaday world. Just keep your head down and the Tertris blocks coming. Let Terje and Co. take you to funky, funky Norway. It’s not unlike the ’72 Miles band with everything but guitar, bass, and drums stripped out and simplified. This is music that feels as though it was created solely for the musicians’ enjoyment, and that that alone was enough to warrant having the tapes rolling.

And speaking of Tetris, at this remove, thirty-five years later, it’s hard to fathom just how important and widespread a cultural marker was the rainbow. It may also be hard to hear the space oddity of “Rainbow,” but for the “bad fusion” sonic fingerprints. While one can make out intimations of a sound that would later crystallize into the aneseptic ECM aesthetic, the organization and textures here are still woolly, weird, and untamed. And, we hope, worth your time.

Here is Doug Watson’s wonderful description of the album from the Kozmigroov list:

Rypdal’s eponymous debut loosely traverses the line between Miles’ Jack Johnson and the first Ash Ra Temple LP. (Hey, someone had to do it…) Altogether more deep-spacey than icy, as Rypdal’s tenure with ECM would ultimately see him become, and if your backbone don’t drop when Garbarek makes his slithering entrance into “Keep It Like That – Tight,” well, you’d best be seeing a doctor about that big bug up yr ass.

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Unrelated to jazz, except maybe for his stellar use of improvisation and counterpoint, Destination: OUT sadly notes the passing of filmmaker Robert Altman. Although he didn’t make his first feature until he was in his 40s, Altman made up for lost time with one of the great runs in cinema – making 13 films during the 1970s! Not all of them were solid gold, but few were dull.

If you’re only familiar with (the somewhat overrated) Nashville and M*A*S*H, be sure to check out such straight-up masterpieces as the brilliantly quirky Raymond Chandler adpation The Long Goodbye, the perfect opium-dream western McCabe and Mrs. Miller, and the persona-switching reverie of 3 Women. And don’t miss other worthy lesser gems like California Split, Thieves Like Us, Buffalo Bill and the Indians, or Sitting Bull’s History Lesson.Â