Search - Jack Dejohnette :: New Directions

Bayou Fever

Ed Snyder | Fullerton, ca United States | 07/29/2003

(4 out of 5 stars)

"Jack DeJohnette's New Directions was a jazz supergroup (circa 1978) made up of Lester Bowie (of the Art Ensemble of Chicago), Eddie Gomez (known for his work with Chick Corea), John Abercrombie (an ECM guitarist whose previous work had been in the John McLaughlin vein) and, of course, DeJohnette himself on Drums. I would call this music ambient jazz, with an eery, yet beautiful, dreamlike quality.The playing (of DeJohnette, Abercrombie, and particularly Lester Bowie) on this album is revelatory. DeJohnette's cymbal and snare work, recorded here in ECM's pristine clarity, seems to flow directly out of the collective unconcious. He plays endless variations on rhythms, never ceasing to groove, oh so subtly. If you broke his beats down measure by measure, any given measure would be enough for another drummer to fill an entire song.John Abercrombie lays back and plays atmospherics throughout most of the album. He displays very little of the Mahavishnu-esque pyrotechnics he was wont to spew previous to this album. The atmosphere's he creates remind me of Brian Eno's ambient music at times. Maybe he had been listening to Robert Fripp. I don't know. But his playing is beautiful and unique throughout most of the album. In fact, while I doubt many 1980's pop/rock guitarists ever listened to this album, Abercrombie's playing here is an ambient jazz precursor to the playing of people like the Edge (on Unforgettable Fire), or Johnny Marr, or the guitar work on Joy Divisions Closer album. But it is the trumpet of Lester Bowie for which this album most deserves to be remembered. While Lester did much great work in his life, he would often interrupt his best work to express the clown spirit which was so much a part of his nature. Here, though, Lester seems on a mission to express the entirety of his spirit. There's clowning to be sure, but it's framed in the larger picture of "Great Black Music, Ancient to the Future" which the Art Ensemble set out to express.This album contains two tracks which should go down in the history of jazz as classics. Bayou Fever is an extended, almost formless, field-holler with a a humid and surreal atmosphere. On this track Bowie plays the Blues as if he were it's culmination. It's not a blues, but Bowie's feel embodies the blues while, at the same time, being something else entirely. Jack DeJohnette's piano ballad Silver Hollow is exquisite; touching and sentimental, without being sappy. Once again, Lester Bowie steals the show. Who would have guessed he could play this tenderly? His work on this track rivals Miles Davis' playing on tracks such as Blue in Green, Round Midnight, or Someday My Prince Will Come. As I said, I believe this album contains two classic tracks, but I give the album only four stars because, in my opinion, of the albums five tracks, two of them, Dream Stalker and One Handed Woman seem unfocused."