Grachan Moncur III
Evolution

Evolution is an album ahead of its time. Not that there wasn't already avant-garde, edgy, and dark jazz in 1963. Coleman was already there, Coltrane and Cecil Taylor had already been through. But the sensitivity of this album is something different, a category unto itself.

Grachan Moncur III is the son of jazz bassist Grachan Moncur II and plays the trombone. In '63, being a trombonist and band leader wasn't exactly common, even if the instrument was often additional in bands, frequently relegated to a supporting role. It would be salsa and people like Willie Colon to bring it to the forefront for the general public later on.
So our band leader already starts with a bit of a disadvantage commercially. Moreover, hard bop feels tight for Grachan. Taking cues from his contemporaries who moved from Hard Bop to Post Bop and avant-garde, he also chooses the path of new sounds. To do so, and to record this LP, he chooses Giants with a capital G like Lee Morgan on trumpet, Jackie McLean on sax (and what, you want to make a post-bop album and not hire McLean, are you nuts?), Bob Cranshaw on bass, Tony Williams on drums, and Bobby Hutcherson on vibraphone.
With a lineup like this, you can't fail. There's so much talent in these six that it almost seems unfair to other record releases.

I'll get to the point. Evolution is a whirlwind mainly of well-defined atmospheres, firmly rooted in everything popular but looking beyond, aiming for an undefined and inscrutable horizon. The six musicians are perfectly in sync in ideas and execution—Jackie and Grachan had already worked together, so it's no surprise, but the other four seem to have really known each other for years and years. Bobby Hutcherson is an exceptional glue and it's so refreshing in a jazz scene largely dominated by piano in the role of "antithesis to brass and rhythm." Lee is Lee; wherever you place him, he always brings out something extra, but here he's practically a chameleon, taking on exactly the same colors as the music they're making. Bob Cranshaw is still accumulating experience but is already a master, you can feel it, of his instrument. Tony Williams is a force of nature, but knows how to restrain himself here, when necessary.
I read somewhere that the six recorded the session while they were high on weed, and it wouldn’t surprise me.

The record contains only four songs, but they're nice and long:

Air Raid opens the album, Hutcherson creates a carpet, and then Williams enters. But you can't quite grasp the energy—it starts slow then something like Jazz Messengers, then it becomes dark, and then enters the groove. And the average listener reaches 1:42, hears dissonances and the absence of the piano, and says <<oh no no>> and presses stop. Anyone who continues will come to a point where suddenly the mood becomes rarefied and suspended, the piece stops in an ethereal space, but then it starts again, even more leftfield than before. Air Raid is indeed like an air raid, a rollercoaster of electrifying moments and disorienting calm.
I often tell my friends who ask me why I like jazz that it’s probably because jazz songs are made of contrasts of emotions, one moment you're in one place, tapping the groove, then a solo starts and takes you to a diametrically opposite destination. This album is what I most often cite as a clear example to support this thesis. Air Raid takes this concept to the square, mathematically speaking.

Evolution is the peak of beauty in the sextet's work. Once again, we start without understanding where our group intends to go.
As if they’re trying to enter the musical ring carpet without quite knowing how to do it, then the prophet-sax arrives to lead them.
They will never quite set foot on that carpet; the entire piece is an anticipation of a climax that doesn't arrive. After the sax, the trumpet tries to lead them, then our trombonist gives it a shot.
The atmosphere is tense, as if a bomb is about to explode at any moment. And when the listener might think a turning point is coming, here's the anticlimax, it's the turn of the vibraphone and the supporting ensemble lowers the volume, almost suggesting that the worst of the evident discomfort expressed by this piece has passed. But Hutcherson is as unpredictable as he is surgical in his gentle and calm assaults. At a certain point, he bounces his mallets as if a basketball had fallen in an empty field. I like the image. When I think of Evolution as a track, I think of a post-apocalyptic scenario, indeed of a particular kind of post-apocalyptic: the last human on Earth. Evolution lives in the silent desolation of the empty metropolis, with the sound of leaves moving in the wind and a basketball bouncing without anyone having thrown it. The children and their mothers are no longer there, everything is... empty. But like all stories of this kind within the genre, there's the constant sensation that whoever survived may indeed be the last human, but not the last creature. Someone is hiding in the shadows.
When the main theme returns to conclude the track, there is absolutely no sense of an ending but of suspension in the infinite, also aided by a final modulation charged with anxiety.

The Coaster, precisely because of its placement on the album, is almost a facade smile to chase away bad thoughts.
The track is much more commercially anchored, but Lee Morgan dares the undareable in certain passages and the others do the same. Together they want to prove that they can pull off a piece almost-single for the masses. But at the same time, they want to somewhat mimic the Hard Bop avant-gardists, cheekily sticking their tongues out in jest.
Unlike the previous two tracks, the instrumental flares are all exposed; you burn your foot by tapping it on the floor to the swing rhythm.

Monk in Wonderland is, guess what, inspired by Monk. Who would have thought? Indeed, it starts with cheerful and carefree "Monkisms," but even in this case, something is off. The dissonances create a spicy sense, the equation doesn't resolve. The rhythmic section appears lopsided, like a house of cards ready to collapse at any moment, and Tony Williams here seems to do whatever the hell he wants.

The first two tracks are indispensable, the other two serve as a digestif. Or at least that's how I interpret them. Overall, this Evolution sounds unrepeatable, for some reason that I have tried to put into words but I can’t quite explain even to myself.