dave bryant's "the eternal hang"

[Guest akanalog]

i read a review of this album in some magazine years ago, forgot about it and then saw it for cheap at a small store recently. it is on accurate records and could possibly be out of print. bryant has been ornette's keyboard player in various prime time bands. and though i do not listen to much coleman at all, i was interested in hearing a keyboard player whom coleman found interesting (since he has used keyboards sparingly since the 50's).

this album on the surface offered me little that i might be interested in-none of the other players were people i wanted to listen to at all-including bob gulotti (who i have liked playing with phish on various occassions but have also disliked greatly when in a more free-jazz arena-like when i used to see him at AS220 in providence occassionaly) and george garzone on saxaphone. i had not heard of the bassist or the percussionist (only on two tracks) and don't recall their name right now. but seeing gulotti and garzone made me think this album would be sort of screeching swingless soulless berklee school made by people from boston jazz. and when i first listened to it, this is exactly what i felt. however, just yesterday i removed this disc from my "sell" pile and gave it another spin and actually really liked it.

bryant uses a lot of cheap sounding synth and organ sounds-they all have that sort of casio feel. i like these kind of tones a lot. most synth work i have heard in recent jazz is sort of cheesy-generally just some warm stringy pad sounding stuff or the standard plinky e-piano or inauthentic organ. bryant never lays down any analog-synth 70s sounding stuff-it all sounds kind of like modern keyboards, but he definitely chooses some interesting tones. somewhat reminiscent of some of sun ra's choices on various saturn albums-though i am no way comparing this music to sun ra's work.

the music can get sort of loud and thrashing, but also swings at points and at other points has a sort of uneasy off-kilter groove which maintains enough of a pulse not to be annoying to me.

another nice thing about this album is that it is constructed so that all the songs flow together-there are abrupt stop and starts but there are no gaps between songs so just when you have had enough of a too intense piece, it suddenly shifts into a more gently moving section. good use of tension and release i guess.

nice stuff with enough variety i will not get sick of it soon (though i also will not feel compelled to play it over and over...)

[Big Wheel]

Good record. I didn't know what to expect when I pressed play but this holds my attention in a way not many of its type do.

[JohnS]

I'm not too fond of this one, it must be those synths, I've never been happy with electronic keyboards.

[randyhersom]

I found it cheap on Half.com and enjoyed it quite a bit. Not too many people mining Sun Ra's "space organ" as a vein of influence.