Silent 国分友里恵

Wakeman's first of many albums for President Records, this was recorded with a rock band featuring Rick Fenn of Mason-Fenn on guitar, ex-Strawbs bass player Chas Cronk, and perennial Wakeman sideman Tony Fernandez on drums…

It is scarcely two years since everything suddenly went quiet, and we all found ourselves living in a "Silent World". For Wolfgang Haffner, the most prominent German drummer of our time, things came to a particularly abrupt halt, not least because his regular schedule is so packed and his habitual work-rate is so prolific. He is normally travelling across all five continents, playing with stellar artists from all kinds of genres; his own exceptional craft as a drummer is to be heard on no fewer than 400 albums. Fortunately, however, Haffner has always considered himself to be at least as much a composer as he is a drummer, so once he had absorbed the initial shock of being grounded at home…taken long walks…watched a lot of TV…it was completely natural that he should devote himself to writing music. And, for once, he wasn’t having to fit it in between other commitments, but could set about it in a concentrated way.

Silent, Listening is a major addition to ECM’s distinguished line of solo piano recordings, featuring one of the outstanding improvising pianists and jazz masters of our time: Fred Hersch. The album features seven original creations and a handful of well-chosen standards, including Billy Strayhorn’s “Star-Crossed Lovers”, Sigmund Romberg’s “Softly, As In A Morning Sunrise”, Alec Wilder’s “Winter Of My Discontent” and Russ Freeman’s “The Wind”, all played with the focus, sensitivity and gracefulness for which Hersch is renowned. Developed with producer Manfred Eicher in the responsive acoustics of the Lugano studio, the album was recorded in May 2023.

Miles Davis's famous mid-1960s quintet, featuring saxophonist Wayne Shorter and pianist Herbie Hancock, was intact until just a few weeks before his new, electric ensemble recorded In a Silent Way. Legendary as a kind of line in the sand challenging jazz fans during the ascendance of electric, psychedelic rock, In a Silent Way hinted at the repetitive polyrhythms Davis would employ throughout the early 1970s. It also partook generously of electric piano and bass and rekindled the tonal palette that Davis had explored famously with Kind of Blue. But In a Silent Way remains a clearly electric jazz record, part ambient color exploration, part rock-inflected energy and vibe, and part outright maverick creativity. Davis takes many long, breathy solos, and they glisten in a burnished blue against his new group's strange admixture of musical moods. –Andrew Bartlett

À la fin des années 60, le son cristallin du clavier électrique Fender Rhodes exerça une étrange fascination sur certains musiciens. Hancock en utilisa un pour la première fois avec Miles et fut étonné par le son qui en sortit, plein, puissant et coloré. En dehors de la science des arrangements de Miles, In A Silent Way doit en partie sa magie au "mood" en phase avec l'époque que génère l'utilisation simultanée des trois claviers électriques de Hancock, Corea et Zawinul. Les fulgurances entrecoupées de silences du trompettiste sont portées par l'alchimie des claviers et des polyrythmies. Lumineuse, cette œuvre dont on retrouve des traces sur Zawinul annonce celles de Weather Report. –Philippe Robert

Miles Davis - In A Silent Way (1969) {2006 DSD Japan Mini LP Edition, SICP 1219}
EAC rip (secure mode) | FLAC+CUE+LOG -> 229 Mb| MP3 @320 -> 93 Mb | Artwork (web)
© 2006 Sony Music Japan / Columbia | SICP 1219
Jazz / Fusion / Trumpet

With IN A SILENT WAY, the elements of popular music, blues and electronics that had been implicit in Miles Davis' previous recordings now came center stage, and the trumpeter never looked back again. IN A SILENT WAY is Miles' BIRTH OF THE COOL/MILES AHEAD/KIND OF BLUE for the rock generation.
Gone are the rhythmic and harmonic trappings of bebop. In their place, Miles conjures a hypnotic, subliminal dance pulse and an airy, celestial drone of electric keyboards. Miles fell in love with the bell tones and flute-like textures of Fender/Rhodes electric pianos, and in the hands of Herbie Hancock, Chick Corea and Joe Zawinul (who doubles on organ), they create layer upon layer of choral texture, in great reverberant washes of color and counterpoint.

Revered purveyors of emotive doom, My Silent Wake, have returned, bearing with them their twelfth full length album, "Lost In Memories, Lost In Grief". Despite featuring some of the heaviest, most intense music that the band have ever recorded, this new testament to their enduring creative powers also draws upon the strange magic that has infused their recent acoustic, folkloric albums - adding something richly organic and steeped in a sense of history to its entrancing elixir of sound. The result is an album which burns with a new, vibrant energy beneath the customary mantle of melancholic majesty, an album that shows My Silent Wake still forging ahead and crafting some of the most affecting and dramatic music imaginable…