Cecil Taylor - Silent Tongues: Live At Montreux '74 (1975 Japanese Freedom/Trio Vinyl LP)

Vinyl: VG+
Sleeve: VG+
Obi: None

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Cecil Taylor - Silent Tongues: Live At Montreux '74 | Vinyl LP - 1975 Japanese Freedom/Trio Records (PA-7112, Trio Electronics)

The first three movements are tracked together on A1. "Abyss" opens with spare, widely spaced clusters, Taylor striking single notes and letting them ring before the density increases. "Petals & Filaments" builds from that foundation, the playing getting faster, the clusters tighter, the sustain pedal more active. "Jitney" pushes into the kind of rhythmic intensity Taylor is known for, his hands moving across the keyboard in runs so rapid that individual notes blur together into waves of sound. The combined effect across 18 minutes is of a single, continuous arc from silence to full force. "Crossing" spans the rest of side A and the opening of side B, split in two by the physical limitations of the LP format. It's the longest single movement and the most dynamically varied, pulling back into quiet passages before surging forward again. "After All" fills nine and a half minutes of side B with a more lyrical quality, the closest thing on the album to conventional melody, though Taylor's phrasing never sits comfortably in any regular metre. The two encores ("Jitney No. 2" and "After All No. 2") are shorter, more concentrated versions of earlier material, played to an audience that by this point had been listening for nearly an hour.

Taylor was 45 and had been developing this approach to the piano for over 20 years. He trained at the New England Conservatory, spent the late 1950s and early 1960s making recordings that divided jazz audiences completely, and by the mid-1970s had established himself as the most uncompromising pianist in the music. His approach treats the piano as a percussion instrument as much as a harmonic one. The physical effort is visible to anyone who has seen him play, and it's audible here in the weight and attack of every note. The recording quality is clear enough to hear individual strikes even during the densest passages.

This is the 1975 Japanese pressing on Freedom/Trio Records PA-7112, from the Trio Jazz Mania series, manufactured by Trio Electronics.