Jack De Johnette
New Directions

It was 1978: fusion as understood in the 70s was drastically changing, preparing for a future leap into electronics. Most bands in the genre like Weather Report, Mahavishnu Orchestra, Return to Forever (perhaps the greatest), had already expressed themselves at their best and had already churned out the greatest masterpieces of what was defined as Jazz Rock. Rock had definitively given way to Punk trends, the great monsters of the Progressive era had renounced the desire to explore and challenge themselves, limiting themselves to lackluster rehashes of themselves or retiring with dignity. How, then, can we frame this album which has little to share with what will be the future and the past of Jazz?

What is proposed in this album, in fact, can be seen as the conjunction of ideas never too deeply explored or developed within the jazz context (apart from exceptions like the Art Ensemble of Chicago or Miles Davis’s Bitches Brew), such as Free, Ambient music, and the collective improvisations similar to those that could be heard in King Crimson’s concerts during the Larks-Red period.

The lineup consists of highly esteemed and renowned musicians, enough to be called a supergroup: John Abercrombie having just released an exceptional album like Timeless, and the incredible album The Gateway with DeJohnette and Holland, Eddie Gomez having dozens of collaborations under his belt, notably with Gil Evans among others, Lester Bowie directly from the Art Ensemble of Chicago, and DeJohnette already highly esteemed and appreciated, suffice it to remember his participation in Bitches Brew without going over his already very intense career.

The album opens with the most beautiful track, “Bayou Fever”: a long ride towards infinity that immediately clarifies the group’s “new directions”: we are at the borderline between Jazz akin to that proposed by the long improvisations of Bitches Brew, and the spatial atmospheres of Ambient music.
This last tendency is mainly attributable to John Abercrombie’s guitar, reminiscent of the free form guitar of Fripp from Moonchild and the melodic openings of his collaborations with Brian Eno, weaving vast soundscapes that serve as a backdrop to Bowie’s free improvisations, never overwhelming but very calibrated and perfectly amalgamated with the rest of the material proposed by the group, and to Eddie Gomez’s double bass, whose excellent work succeeds in harmonizing the exuberance of the other instruments, while remaining extremely imaginative and unconventional. A few words deserve Jack DeJohnette himself, who is not only a composer but also the genius behind a drum kit never played like this before: he is the discreet protagonist who, without being obsessive or a disruptive element, manages to create a colorful drumming, with endless variations yet always maintaining a constant groove, and so it will be for most of the album.
The next track “Where or Wayne” represents, along with “One Handed Woman,” the group’s most free influence: a long chase between Abercrombie’s guitar and Gomez’s double bass, which divides the track into two long solos, the first of guitar, and the second of bass, before engaging in endless phrasing, always supported by drums that, while not being the solo instrument (but here the conventional roles are totally reversed), never stays in the shadows.

The other free track, “One Handed Woman,” is divided into two parts: the first is characterized by a long chase of a double bass that, as if intoxicated by a freedom never allowed before, completely freed from the rest of the group, explores the track regardless of the schizophrenic phrases of the guitar and a Bowie finally at ease in territories very dear to him. All this culminates, in pure Art Ensemble of Chicago style mockery, in a march with an obsessive bass line where guitar and trumpet act as a disruptive element, until, in a total delirium, the group begins to hum the track name, passing it all off as a 40s song.

The third track “Dream Stalker” is more relatable to the first, being a dreamy journey towards ethereal atmospheres, where trumpet and guitar engage in placid phrases without beginning or end.
The final track “Silver Hollow” is the most conventional, or at least the most easily relatable to jazz standards, but it is simply wonderful. Jack DeJohnette abandons the drums to play the instrument he graduated in at the conservatory: the piano. It is disarming to think that a drummer of this caliber can play the piano with such ease and mastery. The result is a very refined ballad, sweet enough, where the protagonist is Lester Bowie, who following yet another great solo by Abercrombie, puts aside his flamboyance, his irreverence, his Latin-influenced and nonconformist trumpet, to create a warm and engaging solo, approaching the typical solos for timbre and sound of Miles from Kind of Blue. The album in its entirety, therefore, appears to us as a completely extemporaneous work compared to the trends of the period, presenting itself as a perfect synthesis of styles that, unfortunately, have never been worthy of proper consideration within the jazz context, but that great musicians, who will make themselves known and heard a lot in the future as well, have wanted to propose with style and originality.