Dave Liebman - Lookout Farm (1974 Japanese ECM Vinyl LP)

Dave Liebman - Lookout Farm | Vinyl LP - 1974 Japanese ECM Records (PA-7096, Trio Jazz Mania, Trio Electronics)

Liebman had spent 1972 and 1973 inside Miles Davis's electric groups, playing soprano saxophone across most of side one of On the Corner and continuing on through Big Fun and Get Up with It. Lookout Farm was the band he formed on his own account, and this record documents it at the outset. The name of the closing piece, "M.D.," is not coded: Liebman explained in his liner notes that it was written for Miles, that "Pablo's Story" was for Picasso, and that Lookout Farm itself was a place where he had met a friend. What is striking is how much of the Davis vocabulary is here without the record sounding derivative. Don Alias and Badal Roy had both played on On the Corner and both turn up again, and the percussion section running underneath these three pieces gives the album a density and a rhythmic layering that has more to do with Davis's electric period than with anything else ECM was releasing in 1974. "Pablo's Story" fills most of side A across fourteen minutes, opening on Abercrombie's flamenco-inflected arpeggios before Liebman enters on alto flute, and it moves through Latin figures into freer territory as the percussion accumulates.

"Sam's Float" is shorter and harder, with Abercrombie switching to electric guitar and Liebman on flute. Then the whole of side B is given to "M.D." running into "Lookout Farm," twenty-four minutes that give Beirach his most substantial playing on the record and let the rhythm section and the percussionists stretch out at length. Beirach and Liebman would go on working together for decades, and the partnership starts to make sense here. The album sits oddly in the ECM catalogue and that is part of its appeal: it is percussive, electric and hot where the label was already becoming known for space and cool, and it has been rather overlooked as a result.

This is the Japanese pressing on ECM PA-7096, from the Trio Jazz Mania series, manufactured by Trio Electronics, Inc.