Eberhard Weber - The Colours Of Chloë (1974 Japanese ECM Vinyl LP)

Eberhard Weber - The Colours Of Chloë | Vinyl LP - 1974 Japanese ECM Records (PAP-9004, Trio Records)

Weber had spent years as a sideman before this. What he brought to his own record was a bass sound nobody else had: a custom-built instrument with an extended upper register and a long, singing sustain that let the bass function as a lead voice rather than a foundation. That sound is the spine of the album, but it is the company he keeps that makes the record what it is. The cellos of the Südfunk Symphony Orchestra Stuttgart arrive in unison blocks that have nothing to do with conventional string sweetening, sitting somewhere closer to chamber writing than to jazz arrangement. Rainer Brüninghaus, an old friend, plays acoustic piano with real clarity and then layers electric pianos and synthesiser into rotating, repetitive figures that were unlike anything on a jazz record in 1973. Ack van Rooyen's flugelhorn keeps the melodic material warm. Peter Giger and Ralf Hübner handle the percussion, Hübner appearing only on the title track. The result is symphonic jazz, picturesque and romantic in places, minimal and harmonically abstruse in others.

"More Colours" opens the album and the title track follows, both anchored by the interplay between Weber's bass and the cello section. "An Evening With Vincent Van Ritz" closes side A. Then "No Motion Picture" takes the whole of side B, nineteen and a half minutes built on Brüninghaus's whirling multi-tracked keyboards with Weber's ocarina carrying much of the melodic weight, an instrument choice that should not work in this context and does. All four compositions are Weber's.

This is the Japanese pressing on ECM PAP-9004, manufactured by Trio Records, on a laminated sleeve.