I will be writing a column on Length & Time in music, in each presenting an album and its strategies that pertain to addressing Length & Time.
Town these days is a place where opposing political ideologies confront the other or work with the other to define life and space. Children sing along to mass culture songs, though in love with the humanity in having heard the song on a car ride with a parent on a parent’s day off thanks to the local labor union.
The other side of town, these days, is where profound artistry thrives. Town is the place for song, music with text, and for the musical solo in a song. The other side of town is where pieces thrive, music without texts, along side more poetic songs than those in town. Pieces require plunging into and so sitting for a while at the other side of town despite town’s attraction, often until music’s end.
Murray, Allen, and Carrington are: David Murray, Geri Allen and Terri Lyne Carrington. They are three ambitious musicians whose album’s cover communicates hip as much as any album cover in town. Their album Perfection is of 10 pieces, each a thrilling piece of excellent instrumentation.
The song named “Perfection” is, in terms of the musical technique of its musicians, objectively perfection. In terms of if it pleases a listener is a whole other question though its fast pace and Murray’s Sax parts will hardly bore. “Barbara Allen” is another great piece made from the ballad “Barbara Allen,” at a time the most popular song based on the sale of broadsheets in the US; on the other side of town, pieces are produced from songs and are gorgeous.
“Cycles and Seasons” could have had a simpler name, like “walking down whichever street” and it would have been the case during the heyday of Jazz as popular music (Kind of Blue.) With these musicians at the helm of an album, complexity is King and Queen. Complexity, here, flows well and it is this album’s forte.
These songs are not radio songs though they could be played on radio. They are formatted to stir and jolt with instrumentation and feel much longer than their actual lengths. What they bring to their time is phrasing from that other side of town, where women and men devise and implement ideals to benefit human life.
Buy Perfection
Author: Adolf Alzuphar
