Favorite ECM Records of the 21st Century

[Guy Berger]

On 4/16/2025 at 9:47 AM, mjazzg said:

I like Tord's albums well enough as they are (just don't listen to more than one at a time) but I can see the attraction of putting a rocket under him

I'd never really thought about it like that but as I type I'm listening to Paul Bley's 'Ballads' (an essential ECM for me) and your description is spot on for a lot of Altschul's playing, not all of it as some is carrying the beat if only obliquely. And this album is from 1971.

 

Worth mentioning that album was not recorded for ECM - it was recorded in 1967, ECM just released it a few years later.

There’s a great quote I have trouble sourcing but definitely remember reading, from Branford Marsalis - Led Zeppelin sounded they way they did because they were really into classic American blues (and British folk music).  If you try to imitate them without that same background, you’ll end up sounding like Whitesnake.

Seems applicable here when talking about younger musicians replicating the “ECM sound”.

 

[JSngry]

Consider that in the notion of playing "around"  the beat is implicit that there is a beat there in the first place. Can't blame ECM for that. Sunny Murray maybe 

So I don't blame that, I just note that the overall playing is less physically engaged than I prefer, or maybe even able to engage with. The life experience they communicate is not one that I've had, and to this point Ive no appetite to experience.

But 21st Century ECM ...Enrico Rava!

[mjazzg]

43 minutes ago, Guy Berger said:

Worth mentioning that album was not recorded for ECM - it was recorded in 1967, ECM just released it a few years later.

Thanks, I'm not sure I knew that but I did know that its companion piece was released on IAI so should have realised

43 minutes ago, Guy Berger said:

 

 

[mjzee]

34 minutes ago, mjazzg said:

Thanks, I'm not sure I knew that but I did know that its companion piece was released on IAI so should have realised

I knew that, but you made my point anyway.  ECM wouldn't have released it if that sound didn't appeal to Eicher.

[Guy Berger]

9 hours ago, mjzee said:

I knew that, but you made my point anyway.  ECM wouldn't have released it if that sound didn't appeal to Eicher.

But I think there’s something fundamentally different between the music Paul Bley was recording in 1967, and (some of) the music that ECM is releasing in 2025, despite their stylistic similarities.  Trout mask vs trout mask replica

Back to the original topic.  I’ve been working my way backwards through the Louis Sclavis‘s ECMs and quite a few of them are top notch - my favorite is Silk and Salt Melodies.  Mellow but not motionless.

Edited Saturday at 02:08 AM by Guy Berger

[JSngry]

Paul Bley had played with Sunny Murray.

I'm not sure how relevant "sunny" is to the Scandinavian musical outlook? 

[JSngry]

Barry Altschul, 1965.

 

 

[Rabshakeh]

4 hours ago, JSngry said:

Paul Bley had played with Sunny Murray.

I'm not sure how relevant "sunny" is to the Scandinavian musical outlook? 

Have you ever seen Imagine The Sound? 

There is a long interview with a ropey looking Bley, who goes on at length about the effect of the Taylor / Murrey band on the idea of rhythm in jazz, as a whole. He thinks it rendered piano or guitar into mixed rhythm / melody roles but drummers into a support harmony role. That's an idea that I have heard before in respect of Taylor's own music, but Bley's idea seemed to be that this process was irreversible and applied to jazz generally. It isn't a great interview, because Bley looks like he's about to burst into tears the whole time.

Anyway, I can see the influence from that to the whispery Nordic stuff. It is one influence among many but sure it is a strong part of the mix. Giuffre's 1960s records, new age, anxiety over US influence and Davis' Second Quartet are all obviously in the mix there too.

[mjazzg]

When you looking for influences of the "whispery Nordic stuff" (?!) you can't discount a decidedly European, as in definitely not US, aesthetic perhaps best encapsulated by recordings of Jan Johannson.

I always see and hear ECM as a very European label, the most European of all Jazz labels and that's not exclusively because of its geographical location. To miss this is I think to misunderstand the label. 

 

Released 1964 but maybe the most ECM of albums 

 

Edited Saturday at 08:08 AM by mjazzg

[Rabshakeh]

1 hour ago, mjazzg said:

When you looking for influences of the "whispery Nordic stuff" (?!) you can't discount a decidedly European, as in definitely not US, aesthetic perhaps best encapsulated by recordings of Jan Johannson.

I always see and hear ECM as a very European label, the most European of all Jazz labels and that's not exclusively because of its geographical location. To miss this is I think to misunderstand the label. 

 

Released 1964 but maybe the most ECM of albums 

 

That was what I was going for with my "anxiety over US influence" comment.

But query why it is that whispery rhythm-less expansiveness is the sign of jazz continentalism.

There are plenty of other more obvious European signifiers that they could have picked up on for European jazz: waltz time, brass band traditions and the European classical avantgarde might all have been more obvious contenders. The Nordic folk roots of Scandi jazz get talked up a lot but they can be hard to discern in the 1990s/2000s ECM era stuff. 

I am always a little unsure about Johansson's actual musical influence on "European" jazz. He is talismanic, and he clearly led the way with the idea that jazz could and should have its own Nordic tradition (similar to Under Milk Wood for Brits), but I don't hear that much resemblance between Johansson and e.g. Tord G.

I hear a likelier line of musical influence on the ECM stuff from Giuffre's experiments in removal of rhythm (particularly those European tour records), and Miles Davis' turn towards expansiveness. But fundamentally I think that Jan Garbarek was a just a big seller and, having had a hit, ECM started pumping out product in the same vein, like a more extreme version of every post-Sidewinder Blue Note record having to have at least two boogaloo tracks.

Query whether it is right to even talk about a monolithic European jazz tradition. The legendary European records from the 60s and 70s draw on In A Silent Way, Gil Evans, Don Cherry, Stockhausen, dada, Motorik and Mothers of Invention. They're many things but they not whispery and rhythm-agnostic. 

[Niko]

I'd say that ECM was actually quite broad in all decades ... And it always had great American artists on the label... Pretty sure the biggest seller was Köln Concert... 

Btw, three non-ECM albums that I played a lot recently is that trilogy of albums with Lee Konitz that Jakob Bro recorded before joining ECM... Imho, those are stronger "ECM albums" than the ones he actually recorded for the label... At least, I'd say that he had the ECM thing down before joining ECM

[JSngry]

A quiet manifesto from 1963.

Oh, biggest ECM sellers are surely Jarrett and Metheny?

[JSngry]

I think that "anxiety over US influence" is not a healthy emotion!

I think that desiring a personal identity is a very lofty goal. But having anxiety about what influences you might naturally have is just silly and counter-peoductive. Copying is not good, but embracing your all loves as a part of who you are is beautiful!

We had the same thing here during The Wynton Wars, all this, yes, anxiety over "European" influences in the avant-garde.

What the fuck is wrong with people?

[Rabshakeh]

57 minutes ago, JSngry said:

I think that "anxiety over US influence" is not a healthy emotion!

I think that desiring a personal identity is a very lofty goal. But having anxiety about what influences you might naturally have is just silly and counter-peoductive. Copying is not good, but embracing your all loves as a part of who you are is beautiful!

We had the same thing here during The Wynton Wars, all this, yes, anxiety over "European" influences in the avant-garde.

What the fuck is wrong with people?

That's a good comparison that I had never thought of. The idea of labelling Braxton and CT as "European" is absurd. But that was a successful hit in those days. 

[JSngry]

I suspect there was a bit of racial paranoia underlying it all, both cultures worrying about being subsumed by the other and some showing their worries more overtly than others.

I do think that there are schools of "jazz"  all over the world that seem to pride themselves on the eradication of any Black Accents at all, and all I can say about that is...please don't run into me, because I m not looking where you're going.

And same for the redundification of those anywhere who willfully shut out any outside currents in the interest of "purity". Do all the work you want, but when you stop work, where do you live?

[JSngry]

One of many amusing evolutions of the Wyn Tang Clan was to watch how the claims went from Jazz Is Black Music That Anybody Can Learn To Play to Jazz Is American Music That People Play All Over The World and next thing you know, Wynton is making a record with Willie Nelson because Jazz and Country both came out of Blues.which is the Real American music etc etc etc.

It is all such simplified half- truths that sucked up so much oxygen and impeded so much natural/potential evolutions...

Does anybody in the US dig Heinz Sauer? Other than that he was on that ECM record of George Adams'? Adams later expressed ..reservations about that record, but because of Eicher's controlling tendencies, not because of any of the players.

But yet and still:

A great 21st Century ECM record. Quite great.

 

[Д.Д.]

On 4/20/2025 at 3:28 AM, JSngry said:

One of many amusing evolutions of the Wyn Tang Clan was to watch how the claims went from Jazz Is Black Music That Anybody Can Learn To Play to Jazz Is American Music That People Play All Over The World and next thing you know, Wynton is making a record with Willie Nelson because Jazz and Country both came out of Blues.which is the Real American music etc etc etc.

It is all such simplified half- truths that sucked up so much oxygen and impeded so much natural/potential evolutions...

Does anybody in the US dig Heinz Sauer? Other than that he was on that ECM record of George Adams'? Adams later expressed ..reservations about that record, but because of Eicher's controlling tendencies, not because of any of the players.

But yet and still:

A great 21st Century ECM record. Quite great.

 

The ECM releases not produced by Eicher have always been much more interesting for me - whether this century or previous one. This ⬆️ album is one of those non-Eicher productions (IMHO, the album is weak by the standards of the participants, but it definitely is a step aside from the regular modern ECM routine). Kudos to supposedly dictatorial Eicher for allowing his associate producers (Steve Lake previously, I don't know the names of the more recent ones) to stray quite far from his preferred aesthetics often in decidedly commercially non-viable direction (remember those Hal Russell records?).

Of the few recent-ish releases I skimmed through, I liked this one (produced by Sun Chung) quite a bit. 

Barre Phillips solo one was not that great (I am not sure Eicher / ECM are to blame here). This might have been the only recent ECM CD I bought (I love Barre Phillips!), but I sold it pretty fast.

But really, with a cornucopia of excellent music released on other labels these days, I don't see a point of following what ECM does. For me at least, the label is essentially irrelevant.         

Edited Monday at 03:38 PM by Д.Д.

[clifford_thornton]

That Cyrille is indeed good -- saw that band a couple of times.