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ECM Records Touchstones: Part 2

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By Dan McClenaghan
February 1, 2023
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Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3

This second edition of "ECM Touchstones" explores more of the label's early recordings, repackaged and offered up as a way to present music that had perhaps slipped through time's cracks, into the hard-to-find category. Of these, four were re-released in 2019, one in 2008—32 to 43 years after their original releases. The music on these albums is stylistically diverse and uniformly excellent. All of it has stood the test of time.

Here are five more Touchstone offerings from the collection, without any method to the madness—just sliding them out of the CD shelf for a fresh listen.

John Abercrombie—Night

John Abercrombie
Night
1984

Guitarist

John Abercrombie

guitar
1944 - 2017

" data-original-title="" title="">John Abercrombie has been, since his ECM debut, Timeless, through his 2022 outing, Solo, one of the label's most prolific contributors. He has seemingly recorded with everyone. His 1984 album Night finds him teaming with the undersung keyboardist

Jan Hammer

keyboards
b.1948

" data-original-title="" title="">Jan Hammer, ECM mainstay drummer

Jack DeJohnette

drums
b.1942

" data-original-title="" title="">Jack DeJohnette, and an ECM rarity, saxophonist

Michael Brecker

saxophone, tenor
1949 - 2007

" data-original-title="" title="">Michael Brecker. Night sounds different from most ECM outings, pushing the boundaries of both funk and fusion, the music is gregarious and fun; Brecker brings crispness to the proceedings, and Jan Hammer, on keyboards, gives things a new(er) age polish. His teaming with Abercrombie was criticized by some reviewers of the time. They should listen again and re-think their words. A marvelous, often fun and always engaging album.

Mick Goodrick— Pas(s)ing

Mick Goodrick
Pas(s)ing
1979

Guitarist

Mick Goodrick

guitar
1945 - 2022

" data-original-title="" title="">Mick Goodrick was probably better known to the world as an educator and a sideman than an artist. His discography is slim, with only six albums to his name as a leader. In Pas(s)ing was his debut and his only outing on ECM. Featuring reedist

John Surman

saxophone
b.1944

" data-original-title="" title="">John Surman, bassist

Eddie Gomez

bass
b.1944

" data-original-title="" title="">Eddie Gomez and drummer Jack DeJohnette, the album opens with the placid "Feeble, Fable and Ferns," a tune that gives the leader room to ruminate with a gorgeously-understated solo. Surman brings his soprano and baritone saxophones, as well as his bass clarinet to the recording session, mixing the sounds up, while Gomez is assertive with his bass, and DeJohnette bustles along, lending a subdued undercurrent to the proceedings. A terrific album that could have been lost in time if not for ECM's Touchstones efforts.

Keith Jarrett/Gary Peacock/Jack DeJohnette
Standards Live
1986

Pianist

Keith Jarrett

piano
b.1945

" data-original-title="" title="">Keith Jarrett's Standards Trio did not start here. For the group's beginnings you would have to go back to Standards, Vol. 1 (ECM, 1983). But Standards Live was the first "live" recording by the group. Things took off from there. Mix in the nearly twenty subsequent live Standards Trio albums with a couple of studio discs from the group, and add to that to Jarrett's hugely popular live solo performances, and the world of piano jazz entered new dimensions. Standards Live set the template: a handful of familiar jazz standards and Great American Songbook tunes laid down with reverence and then given free rein by Jarrett and company. Listen to any of his live albums—beginning here—and you may not think of the standards in the same way again. Ever.

Miroslav Vitous —Journey's End

Miroslav Vitous
Journey's End
1983

The high water mark of Czech bassist

Miroslav Vitous

bass
b.1947

" data-original-title="" title="">Miroslav Vitous' career is widely considered to be his work with

Weather Report

band / ensemble / orchestra

" data-original-title="" title="">Weather Report, on the albums Weather Report (1971), I Sing the Body Electric (1972) Sweet Nighter (1973) and Mysterious Traveler (1974), all on Columbia Records. Though the bassist helped define fusion in the early '70s, he has continued after that with a prolific output, adopting an undefinable style all his own, straddling the boundaries between free jazz and mainstream, tinged at times by influences from Czech folk music. Journey's End is a quartet outing, featuring the bassist and reedist John Surman, pianist

John Taylor

piano
1942 - 2015

" data-original-title="" title="">John Taylor and the ubiquitous (on ECM) drummer

Jon Christensen

drums
1943 - 2020

" data-original-title="" title="">Jon Christensen. It is an overlooked early effort brought deservedly to light via ECM Touchstones.

Terje Rypdal & The Chaser—Blue

Terje Rypdal & The Chasers
Blue
1975

Norwegian guitarist

Terje Rypdal

guitar
b.1947

" data-original-title="" title="">Terje Rypdal is a master at making sounds that are both minimalist and orchestral, spacey yet groove-centric, in his crafting of electro-ambiance washing over heavy metal sludge. If Rypdal were a science fiction writer he could be called a "world builder." Each of the eight tunes on Blue, a guitar/bass/drums trio outing, is a world unto itself, where sound vibrates through denser atmospheres creating eerie soundscapes and soundtracks to the risings and settings of some distant planet's multiple moons, tracking these rocky bodies across their inevitable journey's across the night sky.

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