Ornette Coleman & Prime Time
Tone Dialing

THE REVIEW

A Bach Prelude played with an electric guitar on polyrhythmic backgrounds. A phone number is dialed, a voice on the other end of the line answers: "harmolodic?". Hip hop and free funk. Two guitars, two basses, drums, and tabla, playing together, or against each other? And in the end, who cares? Pure musical orgasm.

A black leather hat. A white plastic saxophone. A jacket that seems to have been taken directly from an abstract painting exhibition. But does such an unstoppable torrent of notes really emerge from this tender and affable gentleman? This enchanting voice, lyrical, heartrending? And this would be the icon of difficult music, the bogeyman of unlistenability, the "mamma mia the free jazz"?

Do the purists turn up their noses? Coleman like Miles Davis, who sold his soul to electricity and easy money? We've heard this before...

Bebop and calypso. Languid ballads of sinister beauty. Atmospheres of a poor party and urban jungle grooves. Anarchy and layering of rhythms, hypnotic trance. A mosaic of decomposed, jagged, shining guitars. Leaps forward and a desire to dance. A bustling sound universe over which Coleman's saxophone towers, penetrating, unpredictable, unique.

Harsh music, angry music? None of this. An ode to life and, lo and behold, to joy. For those who have never heard anything by Ornette Coleman, this could be a dazzling surprise: provided they abandon fears and prejudices, bypass the brain, breathe rather than listen to this music, absorb it through the pores of the skin, feel it vibrate along with the rhythms of their own body.

"Sound Is Everywhere". Ornette's sound is everywhere. Let it dance around your head as much as it wants, please.