I really like Ben Ratliff.
(From the NYTimes)
November 11, 2004
JAZZ REVIEW | CHICK COREA ELEKTRIC BAND
The Cluttered but Valiant Sound of a Space-Age Trip to the Stars
By BEN RATLIFF
The most winning part of Chick Corea's artistic personality is that he seems to believe entirely in whatever he does, and undeniably, incontrovertibly, almost hungrily, enjoys himself. (Louis Armstrong was similar.) Pared-down art, gloppy art - he likes them both. He is a rebuke to the bulky superego that floats above jazz.
So I can tell you cheerfully that I didn't like the music at the Blue Note on Tuesday, where Mr. Corea's recently re-formed Elektric Band is playing the new compositions from "To the Stars" (Concord), a new album based on the characters and action of an L. Ron Hubbard science-fiction novel from 1950. (Mr. Corea is a longtime member of the Church of Scientology, and the book has been reissued by his publisher, Galaxy, as a cross-marketing with the disc.) Here was full-on jazz fusion, 1970's-style grandiose, with crazily chromatic synthesizer lines and ghastly pre-set synthesizer sounds. The gesture was nearly heroic, but the aesthetics are cluttered and gaudy.
I did like the driving, collective muscle of the band, though, very much. They kicked off with "Check Blast," the album's first song, exploding with a power chord and three rhythmic changes in the first 20 seconds, then a proliferation of handed-off solos; the sheet music for this tune, and several others in the album, must go on for pages and pages.
The band's new electric bassist, Ric Fierabracci, continues the tradition of busy players in Mr. Corea's work. The drummer, Dave Weckl, worked with him, constructing clobbering Afro-Cuban rhythms, or tattooing several of his 10 cymbals over a jazz-funk beat, or playing the extra drum racks in what amounted to an hourlong clinic. And Eric Marienthal played alto saxophone with a gelatinous, poppish tone, masking the grain of individuality.
Stuffed with rhythmic knowledge and changing its identity too quickly to assume much depth, the music reduced down to two elements. Mr. Corea himself, at the piano and the Fender Rhodes keyboard, hammered out fascinating phrases with hard, rhythmic clarity. Frank Gambale, the electric guitarist, played the difficult music with an impossibly ripping legato - including a kind of flamenco in the piece "Alan Corday." Whenever either improvised a phrase, no matter whether it suggested rumba or prog-rock or bebop, listeners were pleasantly unsure how it would begin or end.
The Chick Corea Elektric Band plays through Sunday night at the Blue Note, 131 West Third Street.
― Hurting (Hurting), Thursday, 11 November 2004 18:12 (twenty years ago)
To the Stars" (Concord), a new album based on the characters and action of an L. Ron Hubbard science-fiction novel from 1950. (Mr. Corea is a longtime member of the Church of Scientology, and the book has been reissued by his publisher, Galaxy, as a cross-marketing with the disc.) Here was full-on jazz fusion, 1970's-style grandiose, with crazily chromatic synthesizer lines and ghastly pre-set synthesizer soundsThis record is plain shitty. As a tribute to L. Ron Hubbard, it's loving. The record is taken from when Hubbard was sci-fi writer from what's known as the "golden age." That's when authors wrote for a penny a word. As a consequence, Hubbard compensated by pumping out stories inflated to thousands upon thousands of words.
He was the single primary exponent of the style and did achieve a measure of fame through it.
The Chick Corea band is accurate to that. It's thousands and thousands of jazz rock noises, many of which don't add anything to the music which would be just fine, perhaps better, if they were all removed. Every number is interspersed with place-holder number, "Looking Out the Porthole, Pts. 1 through ad nauseum.
You could rip out every one except the first and the record would be the better for it. It is idiotically and pointlessly repetive, much like Hubbard's sci-fi writings. There are fans of him and and his flavor of very windy and grandiose but empty storytelling but I am not one.
Because there's so much flab in the Electrik Band recording the good moments are too far between. For example, if you want to hear Frank Gambale do a hot sweep jazz line or almost rock out, you fall asleep during the periods waiting for it. Live, they would, by default be better.
― George Smith, Thursday, 11 November 2004 21:26 (twenty years ago)