The Colours of Chloe - Eberhard Weber

Aug

25

The Colours of Chloe - Eberhard Weber

≡ Category: 1970s, Essential, Reviews, World Fusion |
≅ Written by: Michael Kydonieus

JAZZBO NOTES ESSENTIAL RECORDING

Rating:

The Colours of Chloe (released on ECM Records) predates bassist Eberhard Weber’s group Colours by four years, but it’s of a piece thematically. It combines elements of Western classical music, minimalism, and non-blues-based improvisation. Weber’s work is often cited as being the basis of the classic ECM label sound, but it is it’s own thing, really. It’s completely unique in the jazz canon, and thus invaluable and completely irreplaceable.

We start off with More Colours, which features Weber’s writing for the cellos of the Sudfunk Orchestra. In the first rubato section, he uses some of the cellos as a pedal point around which he shifts the harmony in ballsy ways. The cellos drop out and Weber takes a bass solo. He’s got a beautiful singing tone, plangent and with a slight controlled vibrato. He uses glissandos liberally and has fascinating melodic ideas. I couldn’t pinpoint a single modal scale, although Weber is fond of the augmented 4th. Rainer Bruninghaus joins in on piano halfway through the solo with crystaline arpeggios. It’s accompaniment, to be sure, but he’s also soloing at the same time. The cellos take up the theme again to end the tune. It’s just gorgeous.

The Colours of Chloe starts out with a rhythmic ostinato from Rainer Bruninghaus with the melody for the A section being taken up by the bowed bass of Eberhard Weber, doubled with a cello or two. Then we get a B section, an odd, singsongy theme with Bruninghaus singing in a high register on the synthesizer while Weber plucks contrasting low register tones. On the C section, Bruninghaus’ synthesizer and the cellos provide a pillow for Weber to give us one of his patented melodies. Then the cellos drop out and Bruninghaus solos on piano, while Weber on bass and Peter Giger on drums play a more or less conventional role in a jazz trio. Weber takes a turn with an electronically processed bass backed by the cellos, and then we’re back to the jazz trio once again. Weber gives us the C section melody again, and then we get a brief reprise of the A and B sections before the tune fades out, giving the impression of a never ending cycle.

An Evening With Vincent Van Ritz begins with a rhythmic pedal point plucked out by Weber with abstract chordal patterns by the Sudfunk Orchestra cellos with an unidentified singer giving us the melody. Then the bass gives up the pedal point and starts to drift. This leads to a B section which is nothing but a two chord vamp with Weber playing a traditional jazz bassist’s role, along with drummer Giger and Bruninghaus on synthesizer. Ack van Rooyen’s solo on flugelhorn has a tendency towards verbose flatulence, but somehow, he doesn’t ruin the tune. The instrumental patterns of the rhythm section are so lovely, and the timbre of the flugelhorn is so right in the context of the tune, that all is forgiven. The A section briefly reappears before the tune fades out.

A suite of contrasting episodes, No Motion Picture is the longest piece on the program, and probably the least interesting. The first section is a series of no less than six overlapping ostinatos by Eberhard Weber on bass and Rainer Bruninghaus on synthesizer which culminates in a chordal cadenza. This pattern is played several times. A new, slow episode abruptly appears with Bruninghaus taking the melody on synthesizer while Weber plucks constrasting notes in the lower register. The section disintegrates into a rubato when Bruninghaus overdubs freely arpeggiated chords over the theme. Then we get a bass solo from Weber. I could go on, but you’d be reading this review for hours.

Suffice it to say that Weber’s ideas are uniquely his own. And how amazing that on The Colours of Chloe, his first recording as a leader, his concepts should be so completely and thoroughly realized! Even more astonishing, Weber was just getting started. As excellent as The Colours of Chloe is, Weber far exceeded his accomplishment with the three albums he recorded with his band Colours, namely Silent Feet, Yellow Fields, and Little Movements.