Ralph Towner - Diary (1974 Japanese ECM Vinyl LP)

Vinyl: VG+
Sleeve: VG+
Obi: None

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Ralph Towner - Diary | Vinyl LP - 1974 Japanese ECM Records (PA-7090, Trio Electronics)

Only two of these eight tracks are unaccompanied guitar solos. "Entry In A Diary" and "Mon Enfant" (the one traditional piece, arranged for classical guitar) are played without overdubs, and they're the most intimate moments on the album. Everything else uses layering. "Dark Spirit" opens with Towner's 12-string guitar over his own piano accompaniment, the two instruments occupying different halves of the stereo field. "Images Unseen" replaces the piano with gongs, creating a sound closer to gamelan than anything in jazz. "Icarus," the piece that has followed Towner through his entire career (two lunar craters were named after it and "Ghost Beads" by the Apollo 15 astronauts), works as a 12-string and piano duo, building from a simple melodic figure into a passage of plucked harmonics against clusters of piano notes that sounds like two musicians playing at the same time rather than one man overdubbing. "Ogden Road" is the longest track at nearly eight minutes and uses the same guitar-piano format to stretch further. "Erg" turns the guitar into a percussion instrument, with Towner playing the body and strings rhythmically rather than melodically. "The Silence Of A Candle" closes the album with solo piano, no guitar at all.

Towner recorded this in April 1973 at ECM's studio, with Kurt Rapp and Martin Wieland engineering and Manfred Eicher producing. He had studied classical guitar in Vienna with Karl Scheit and was already recording with Oregon (whose Winter Light you'll also find in our catalogue), but Diary was the first time he had an album entirely to himself. ECM's own description cites Bill Evans as the primary jazz influence, alongside classical and Brazilian music. The overdubbing technique draws a comparison to Evans's Conversations With Myself, though the instruments and aesthetic are completely different. This is the 1974 Japanese pressing on ECM PA-7090, from the Trio Jazz Mania series, manufactured by Trio Electronics, Inc., released the same year as the original German edition.