Jazz!

Rip It Up, Issue 63, 1 October 1982, Page 24

Jazz!

Ornette Coleman Of Human Feelings Air 80 Below 82 Antilles What a tremendous year it's been for jazz. Enthralling concerts from the Von Schlippenbach Trio and Mike Nock, ECM continuing to set the pace with a brace of spine-tingling releases and now a limited import of the Antilles label from Festival. These two simply rate as supreme examples of contemporary music. Ornette Coleman is the inventor of the harmolodic style, popularised by James Blood Ulmer. The discipline in Coleman's compositions is plain in this, a longawaited release after a lean period of recording - the sessions are actually three years old. The tunes (and there's melody to spare) are lead away by Coleman's fluent alto, skating along the rhythmic plain, while the Prime Time Band (two drummers, including Coleman's son, two guitarists and a bass player with at least 20 fingers) lay down the parallel funk lines and sympathetic melodies.

The rhythm is irresistible (and danceable), the tunes so logical and accessible. Will this man be a cult figure the rest of his days? I guess so. He's just too good. Air are a trio, comprising Henry Threadgill on alto sax, Frederic Hopkins on bass and Steve McCall on drums. The strength ol their music lies in its simplicity, the unstated being as important as the stated. The sound is a modern urban landscape, often using old bluesbased stanzas as a starting point of expansions. The playing often rises to steaming crescendos. There is fury, passion, elation and finally, peace. Pictures in sound. The compositions are Threadgill's, with the exception of the opener, a sweat retread of Jelly Roll Morton's 'Chicago Breakdown'. Utterly disarming music and a gamut of strong emotions at work. Duncan Campbell