Collection: Elements

Mark Egan and Danny Gottlieb were the rhythm section on the first Pat Metheny Group album in 1978, and when both left in 1981 after four years of touring and recording, they knew each other’s playing well enough to build something of their own without needing to discuss the direction much. Egan had grown up in Brockton, Massachusetts, studied at the University of Miami, and worked through sessions with a remarkable range of musicians before joining Metheny. Gottlieb had studied drums with Mel Lewis and Joe Morello, also graduated from the University of Miami, and had done session work in Miami before the Metheny opportunity. What Elements did with that shared history was build an ensemble that sounds nothing like the Metheny Group: lighter in touch, more spacious, built around the interplay between Egan’s fretless bass and Gottlieb’s open drumming rather than around a guitarist’s melodic vision. The debut album “Elements” (Philo, 1982) introduced the group; “Forward Motion” (Antilles, 1984), the Antilles debut, added saxophonist Bill Evans and keyboardist Clifford Carter to the core duo alongside guest percussionists Manolo Badrena and Don Alias and guitarist Steve Khan, and demonstrated the fuller ensemble approach that defined the group through the 1980s. Their music, documented across Philo, Antilles, Novus and Wavetone through the 1990s, is fusion less technically aggressive than the classic form, more atmospheric, more interested in sound than in velocity. The group remained active in various configurations into the mid-1990s and has continued as a part-time project since.