Don't expect to hear much from Jan here - or indeed from Terje. This is very much a group work, where most of the time Terje is content to provide part of the overall sound-image, which lives in a kind of limbo between jazz-rock and modal jazz. At times - largely due to the electric piano - this reminds me of the first Weather Report album. Rypdal's tone here is light and dry, with lots of wah-wah, and he tends to go in for the "unmetrical chiming" that he provided on Afric Pepperbird, and only occasionally does he surface in a solo that hints at his future directions. Meanwhile Garbarek is well in the backdrop, with a single unremarkable sax solo on the opening track, and purely accompaning roles on Rainbow and Electric Fantasy.
Keep It Like That - Tight: simple bass/drum riff, with guitar-chimes (lots of wah-wah pedal too). Rypdal's tone is very dry, not at all like his later style. The pace changes for the central section, which is another riff-based jam. Here, Garbarek joins in on tenor sax, with the hard edge of his early-days sound, for an unremarkable solo. An electric piano (a la early Weather Report) calls a pause, and then the track launches into a Rypdal solo, featuring a still-dry-sounding prototype of "the wail". The track ends with a brief repetition of the second riff.
Rainbow is completely different: a flowing, free-form thing that owes more to Rypdal's orchestral aspirations. This is a piece for bowed bass, woodwind and tinkly percussion. If some of the woodwind is Garbarek, then its unrecognisable.
Electric Fantasy is the album's magnum opus. Halversen's electric piano twirls under a woodwind choral chant, before Andersen's mildly funky electric bass and Rypdal's wah-wah chimes underlie Inger's ahh-ing. Her voice and the "English Horn" gives the piece the same airyness as Rainbow, but the rhythmic percussion and the bass give it a greater sense of movement. Eventually, Rypdal's chimes increase in volume and frequency, and he breaks for the most scorching solo of the album, before things calm down for more of Inger's aahhs and Terje's wahs, and a return to the woodwind chorale of the opening. (Again, no significant Garbarek presence, though he's no doubt playing the flute or clarinet here.) This is (for me) the one piece that makes the album worthwhile; it has a certain hypnotic charm, and furthermore Rypdal has never really produced anything quite like it since.
Lontano II I find unpleasantly atonal. Rypdal has good fun de-tuning his guitar, over Andersen's whining bowed bass. Sounds like a barbed wire fence on a stormy day.
Tough Enough has a rocky guitar opening theme, that belies the quiet, thoughtful bass and drums underneath. Things get busier, more guitars come in, and suddenly it gets rockier, with a fairly standard Rypdal rock solo over the top. Then (yet again) things wind back down toward the beginning. This sound vanished from Rypdal's ECM albums until Chaser in 1985. I've also heard a scorching version of Tough Enough on a tape of a concert from about that time; it knocks spots off this quite tame album recording.
The first Terje Rypdal album for ECM is historically interesting, especially for followers of Rypdal, but I think it's very much a creature of its time, and it sounds very dated now. Much of its soundscape has been done better since, with Odyssey and What Comes After the closest counterparts.
For Rypdal and ECM collectors only.
(Go to Jan Garbarek album list)