JAZZBO NOTES ESSENTIAL RECORDING

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I’ve written a lot about Eberhard Weber as a bandleader elsewhere on this site. Pretty much any of his work with reed player Charlie Mariano and keyboardist Rainer Bruninghaus is well worth owning, and Silent Feet is no exception.

All of this work is basically Eurojazz. It doesn’t have a lot of blues feeling, but has quite a bit of improvisation, usually over modal forms. There are classical chamber music influences and I also detect more than a whiff of minimalism.

The opening number, Seriously Deep, starts off with a pensive, winding minor modal melody. Considering how mellow the tune is, Eberhard Weber’s bass solo is surprisingly aggressive, almost percussive in nature. He sounds like no one else. You can tell it’s him within a few bars. When it’s Charlie Mariano’s turn on soprano sax, his sinuous snaky lines steadily build in intensity, culminating in a descending cycle of fourths which is just pure genius. For the next solo, the group does something a little different. Weber plays a pedal-point, alternating between octaves, with drummer John Marshall playing fills in between. Rainer Bruninghaus sprinkles in arpeggios and scalar runs in and around the mode, his piano sparkling like trees after an ice storm. Then Bruninghaus comps while Mariano and Marshall simultaneously solo over the pedal point. The overall effect, like much of Weber’s music, is hypnotic. At over 17 minutes, Seriously Deep is a long tune, but it never gets boring.

Silent Feet starts with a rubato solo by Weber, which Bruninghaus soons joins. It seems free form but is based around agreed upon harmonic materials. Marshall joins, mostly on cymbals. Slowly, a groove coalesces and the harmony congeals around a single mode. Within those constraints, the improvisation of all group members is free. This goes on for several minutes. Finally, Bruninghaus introduces a harmonic sequence built around a pedal point by Weber and the groove gets more explicit. Unexpectedly, a melody emerges. It’s almost like a nursery rhyme, each note repeated twice. A new harmonic sequences echoes the melody, this time with no pedal point, before returning to the old groove. Then we get the melody again. For Charlie Mariano’s soprano sax solo, we get a vamp built on two chords drawn from the mode. Initially, Mariano stays within the mode, but occasionally he’ll wind in and around it. For drummer John Marshall’s very quiet solo on brushes, Weber introduces a cyclic harmonic sequence. When he introduces another one, Marshall switches to sticks. And so on. The composition develops organically and is utterly involving.

The last tune on the release, Eyes That Can See In The Dark (yes, there are only three), starts as a free improvisation between Charlie Mariano on flute and John Marshall on drums and percussion. Soon enough, Eberhard Weber starts adding accents on bowed bass. Then Rainer Bruninghaus joins in on piano. The improvisation fades away, to be replaced with a very slow melody doubled by Weber on bowed bass and Mariano on soprano sax, backed by Rainer Bruninghaus’ synth textures and John Marshall’s brushwork. Then we get another section, which is a proper chord change based tune, over which Bruninghaus solos.

You get the idea.

Silent Feet is yet another gorgeous album by Eberhard Weber and Colours, the name of his backing band. It doesn’t get any better than this, folks.

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