Elements - Elements (1983 Japanese Casablanca Vinyl LP)

Elements - Elements | Vinyl LP, 1983 Japanese Casablanca (25S-3009, Polystar Co., Ltd.)

• The debut album from the group Mark Egan and Danny Gottlieb formed after leaving the Pat Metheny Group, with saxophonist Bill Evans (then a member of Miles Davis’s band) and keyboardist Clifford Carter
• Seven original compositions ranging from expansive, open-textured fusion to more rhythmically driven pieces, recorded across two days in the summer of 1982 at Howard Schwartz Recording Studios in New York
• Japanese Casablanca pressing manufactured by Polystar, from the same period as the US release

Mark Egan and Danny Gottlieb were the original rhythm section of the Pat Metheny Group, playing on the first two albums (Pat Metheny Group and American Garage) that helped define ECM’s contemporary jazz sound in the late 1970s. They had been friends since studying together at the University of Miami in the early 1970s, where Egan also studied bass with Jaco Pastorius. After leaving Metheny, they formed Elements in 1982, and this self-titled debut captures what they built with saxophonist Bill Evans and keyboardist Clifford Carter. The Bill Evans here is the soprano and tenor saxophonist (born 1958), not the pianist; at the time of this recording he was a member of Miles Davis’s touring and studio band. Carter was already one of New York’s first-call session keyboardists. The four of them share a taste for open, atmospheric textures that move rather than sit still.

“Color Wheel” opens the album with a driving, cymbal-led feel that recalls the spaciousness of the Metheny Group without imitating it, and the ten-minute “Starward” is the album’s centrepiece, building gradually from a slow burn. “Haena” and “Valley” are the more reflective tracks, while “Conundrum” has a rhythmic density that pushes the group harder. All seven compositions are originals. Scott Yanow described Elements’ music as “a quiet and thoughtful form of fusion, filled with subtle creativity”, and that assessment fits this debut well: nothing here reaches for spectacle, and the interplay between Egan’s bass, Carter’s keyboards and Evans’s soprano is consistently more interesting than any one solo. The album is dedicated in loving memory of Albert Gottlieb. This 1983 Japanese pressing is on Casablanca, manufactured by Polystar Co., Ltd. Catalogue number 25S-3009.