John Abercrombie Quartet - Within a Song (2012) [Official Digital Download 24/88]

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John Abercrombie Quartet - Within a Song (2012) [Official Digital Download 24/88]

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John Abercrombie Quartet - Within A Song (2012)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/88,2 kHz | Time - 61:13 minutes | 1,07 GB
Studio Master, Official Digital Download | Artwork: Digital booklet

This is an unusual ECM release – a journey back to guitarist's guitarist John Abercrombie's formative 1960s influences, in the music of Sonny Rollins, John Coltrane, Ornette Coleman, Miles Davis and Bill Evans. But the implications of the title, and a glance at a postbop superband lineup – saxophonist Joe Lovano, bassist Drew Gress and drummer Joey Baron complete the group – are the clues to its underlying contemporary strengths. Flamenco Sketches, from the Davis/Evans collaboration on Kind of Blue, joins sparing guitar and delicious tenor-sax tentativeness from Lovano. Coleman's Blues Connotation is a snappy, postbop twister that grows rhythmically more devious, Coltrane's Wise One showcases Abercrombie and Lovano's patient narrative-building and sensuous tone, and Evans' Interplay is a cool-school weave that gets raunchier in Lovano's solo. The atmosphere is delicate (Baron, at times, seems barely to be touching his cymbals), but there's a great deal more exuberant swing than on recent Abercrombie sessions – and this all-star group constantly demonstrate how joyous that can sound without winding up the volume.