Beyond The Sound Barrier - Wayne Shorter

May

1

Beyond The Sound Barrier - Wayne Shorter

≡ Category: 2000s, Avant-Guarde, Highly Recommended, Post Bop, Reviews |
≅ Written by: Michael Kydonieus

JAZZBO NOTES HIGHLY RECOMMENDED RECORDING

Rating:

By the time Beyond The Sound Barrier was released, Wayne Shorter’s fans knew what to expect from his quartet, which included pianist Danilo Perez, bassist John Patitucci, and Brian Blade on drums. All the pussies who couldn’t handle the cerebral deconstruction of tunes that weren’t all that simple to begin with had long ago run screaming for the hills.

To his credit, Shorter doesn’t care. At this point in his career, he’s adopted a fearless stance. He’s making exactly the music he wants to make, commercialism be damned.

Frankly, I wish Shorter had chosen performances that were a little bit more accessible from the live material that was available. For example, if you were lucky enough to have checked out the versions of Over Shadow Hill Way and Joy Ryder which used to be available on YouTube, they grooved a lot harder than the ones on Beyond The Sound Barrier.

By the way, even the performances Shorter selected for Beyond The Sound Barrier should settle the hash of those who argued that he was writing thinly disguised pop music on his solo recordings for Columbia. Those critics didn’t have ears. In fact, Shorter was writing highly advanced jazz thinly disguised as pop.

Similarly to Footprints Live!, Beyond The Sound Barrier is most enjoyable if you duplicate the experience of going to a concert hall as closely as possible. In other words, pop the CD into your player, sit on the couch, put on your earphones to block out all possible distractions, and concentrate like hell on every nuance.

I particularly enjoyed the duet between John Patitucci on bowed bass and Perez on piano that opens Tinker Bell.

This is not music you’ll be able to profitably play in the background while you do the dishes. The whole point of Beyond The Sound Barrier is the musical interaction and the way the band deconstructs the tunes, not something you can hope to appreciate on the fly while you are engaged in another activity.

Still, Beyond The Sound Barrier is more aggressive and not as interior as Footprints Live!, something that I am personally grateful for. I put this down to the increased confidence of the band. In fact, the YouTube videos of Over Shadow Hill Way and Joy Ryder I wrote about earlier were recorded in 2004, towards the very end of the tour represented by Beyond The Sound Barrier. My guess is that, provided Shorter still has his chops intact, the quartet would absolutely be on fire if you were to see them now.

If they come to your town, I would make a point of checking them out.

Those of you who read this website regularly know that one of my criteria for grading a recording is if it can work equally well in different circumstances. Can you listen to it casually and get something out of it? Does it reward intense listening? Beyond The Sound Barrier works on only one level — absolute concentration. That’s the only reason I’m giving it four stars. The band itself is phenomenal, and Shorter plays as well as he ever has.