Angular Blues (ECM)
Brian Blade / Scott Colley / Wolfgang Muthspiel
Released March 2020
AllMusic Favorite Jazz Albums 2020
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Wolfgang Muthspiel, whom The New Yorker has called “a shining light” among today’s jazz guitarists, returns to the trio format with Angular Blues, his fourth ECM album as a leader, following two acclaimed quintet releases and his trio debut. Like Driftwood – the 2014 trio disc that JazzTimes dubbed “cinematic” and “haunting” – Angular Blues finds the Austrian guitarist paired with longtime collaborator Brian Blade on drums; but instead of Larry Grenadier on bass, this time it’s Scott Colley, whose especially earthy sound helps imbue this trio with its own dynamic. Muthspiel plays acoustic guitar on three of the album’s tracks and electric on six more. Along with his characteristically melodic originals – including such highlights as the bucolic “Hüttengriffe” and pensive “Camino” – he essays the first standards of his ECM tenure (“Everything I Love” and “I’ll Remember April”), as well as his first-ever bebop rhythm-changes tune on record (“Ride”). Angular Blues also features a single guitar-only track, “Solo Kanon in 5/4,” with Muthspiel’s electronic delay imbuing the baroque-like rounds with a hypnotic glow.
Muthspiel, Colley and Blade recorded Angular Blues in Tokyo’s Studio Dede after a three-night run at the city’s Cotton Club. The album was mixed with Manfred Eicher in the South of France at Studios La Buissonne, where Muthspiel had recorded his two previous ECM albums, Rising Grace and Where the River Goes (both of which featured pianist Brad Mehldau and trumpeter Ambrose Akinmusire). Each of the groups that Muthspiel has put together for his ECM recordings has had a special rapport. About his new trio, the guitarist says: “Scott and Brian share my love of song, while at the same time there is constant musical conversation about these songs.”
The Louisiana-born Blade has been a member of the Wayne Shorter Quartet since 2000, along with recording with artists from Bob Dylan, Joni Mitchell, Daniel Lanois and Norah Jones to Charlie Haden, Herbie Hancock, Chick Corea and Joshua Redman. Since the mid-’90s, Blade has also co-led the gospel-infused Fellowship Band. Regarding the subtly virtuoso drummer, Muthspiel says: “Brian is famous for his sound and touch, that floating way of playing, how he creates intensity with relatively low volume. It’s also a great pleasure for me to witness how sensitively Brian reacts in his playing to whether I play acoustic or electric guitar. I’ve done a lot of concerts and productions with him over the years, including in our guitar-drums duo, Friendly Travelers, as well as on Driftwood and Rising Grace. He always offers complete interaction and initiative, as well as his individual sound. To play uptempo swing on something like ‘Ride’ with Brian was really luxurious, a gift.”
After being mentored by Charlie Haden, Colley was the bassist of choice for such jazz legends as Jim Hall, Andrew Hill, Michael Brecker, Carmen McRae and Bobby Hutcherson, along with appearing on albums by Herbie Hancock, Gary Burton, Pat Metheny, John Scofield, Chris Potter and Julian Lage. Colley, a native of Los Angeles, has released eight albums as a leader. “Scott and Brian have also played a lot together over the past few years, so they know each other well,” Muthspiel notes. “I performed with Scott in New York in the ’90s, and I’ve always felt that he was an extremely giving musician, who – with his warm tone and his flexible, dancing rhythm – simultaneously animated and supported the music. I wrote the bass melody of the new album’s first tune, ‘Wondering,’ especially for him. His sound develops a flow and harmonic movement that is inviting to play on.”
After “Wondering” – which includes extended soloing by Colley that embroiders on Muthspiel’s melody beautifully – comes the album’s title song, the highly trio-interactive “Angular Blues,” so titled for its “rhythmic modulations and strange breaks,” the guitarist explains. “Somehow Chick Corea’s album Three Quartets was an association, but so was Thelonious Monk.” Those first two tracks, as well as the album’s third, “Hüttengriffe,” feature Muthspiel on acoustic guitar, his sound on the instrument both warm and extraordinarily fluent. After that – on “Camino,” “Ride,” “Everything I Love,” “Kanon in 6/8,” “Solo Kanon in 5/4” and “I’ll Remember April” – he plays electric. Muthspiel’s ever-liquid electric phrasing buoys both an emotionally rich original such as “Camino” and the two different turns on his kaleidoscopic “Kanon,” the trio version in 6/8 and the solo, mostly improvised rendition in 5/4.
About his first-time inclusion of jazz standards on one of his ECM albums, Muthspiel says: “I was inspired to record standards with this trio because everything about the way the group plays feels so free, open and far from preconceived ideas, but at the crucial moment a jazz language is spoken, what we do does justice to these tunes. I learned ‘Everything I Love,’ the Cole Porter song, from an early Keith Jarrett album, and I first came to know ‘I’ll Remember April’ from a Frank Sinatra recording. In that latter song, I hardly play solo. It’s more about the head and the vamp-like atmosphere that prevails from the start and is savored again in the end. As in many moments with this trio, it’s about playing with space: leaving it, creating it, filling it.”
Track Listing:
1. Wondering (Wolfgang Muthspiel) 07:20
2. Angular Blues (Wolfgang Muthspiel) 05:55
3. Hüttengriffe (Wolfgang Muthspiel) 05:15
4. Camino (Wolfgang Muthspiel) 07:42
5. Ride (Wolfgang Muthspiel) 03:50
6. Everything I Love (Cole Porter) 06:52
7. Kanon in 6/8 (Wolfgang Muthspiel) 07:41
8. Solo Kanon in 5/4 (Wolfgang Muthspiel) 03:34
9. I’ll Remember April (Gene DePaul / Patricia Johnston / Don Ray) 05:40
Personnel:
Wolfgang Muthspiel: guitar
Scott Colley: double bass
Brian Blade: drums
Recorded August 2018, Studio Dede, Tokyo, by Shinya Matsushita, assisted by Yuki Ito, Akihito Yoshikawa
Mixed by Manfred Eicher, Wolfgang Muthspiel and Gérard De Haro,
Mastered by Nicolas Baillard
Cover Photo: Max Franosch
Design: Sascha Kleis
Producer: Manfred Eicher
Review:
After a pair of quintet offerings with Brad Mehldau and Ambrose Akinmusire, Austrian guitarist and composer Wolfgang Muthspiel returns to the trio format he established on ECM with 2014’s Driftwood. Whereas the previous outings all featured bassist Larry Grenadier, it is Scott Colley who claims the bass chair here. All three members have worked with one another sufficiently to make Angular Blues sound relaxed, natural, and locked in. Blade and Muthspiel have been working together on-stage and in the studio for quite a while; in addition to Muthspiel’s bands, the pair work together in the duo Friendly Travelers. The guitarist and Colley played together often in the ’90s, and the bassist and drummer have worked together in the Steel House trio with pianist Edward Simon. The group cut this date in a Tokyo studio after a three-night, six-set run at the city’s Cotton Club.
The program consists of eight Muthspiel originals and, for the first time on any of his recordings, a pair of jazz standards: “I’ll Remember April” and “Everything I Love.” In addition, the recording marks another first for the guitarist on ECM, in that he employs an acoustic guitar on the three opening pieces. “Wondering” is introduced by Colley’s warm, fluid, wide-toned bass. He both trades and punctuates lines by Muthspiel as Blade dances in five around and through them both. Muthspiel’s solo effortlessly moves between shaped, rhythmic chords and single-string playing. Utilizing Latin and post-bop rhythms, the title track is an involved, complex exchange of vamps and chords with syncopated rhythms and a popping bassline with fine solos from Blade and Colley. “Hüttengriffe” is a quietly majestic, emotionally resonant Americana ballad that sounds at home next to Bill Frisell’s similarly minted material. With “Camino,” Muthspiel’s electric guitar makes its entry and remains present on the rest of the date. The guitarist plays solo slowly and impressionistically over the first 80 seconds before Blade’s whispering cymbals and gentle tom-tom and snare join him. Colley initially walks the backdrop but asserts single notes and minimal rhythmic runs in support. Muthspiel’s solo is elegant, unhurried, and full of harmonic surprises. “Ride” marks the first time the guitarist has ever included bebop rhythm changes on a record and it’s a doozy: Fleet, knotty, engaged and almost funky with double-timed breaks by Blade, a tight solo by Colley, and Muthspiel’s channeling of Barney Kessel and Billy Bauer. “Kanon in 6/8” is delivered as a tight, punchy exchange of interrogatory statements from the rhythm section as the guitarist cascades 16th and eighth notes in a syncopated solo. “Solo Kanon in 5/4” follows, played by Muthspiel with a delay box to recall the spirit of Bach and Scarlatti. Despite its relaxed feel, Angular Blues offers intense musical sensitivity, keen, active interplay and improvisatory flair. With crystalline production and canny collaboration by three jazz masters, Angular Blues adds not only depth and breadth to Muthspiel’s ECM catalog, it’s weighty enough to own a chapter in the history book of jazz guitar trios.
Thom Jurek (AllMusic)
