Gil Evans And His Orchestra - There Comes A Time Mp3

Fifteen years or so after the arrangements for Miles Davis and his own Out of the Cool album, Gil Evans' music shows continuities but also marked differences with his earlier work. The differences: with the electric bass, the electric guitars and synthesisers, Evans has been electrocuted: electric noise permeates this album; secondly, in the albums with Davis, Evans' music always seemed arranged, completely and utterly arranged, there was one one sensibility controlling the orchestra and the music could almost be considered as a series of duets between Evans and Miles Davis - now the control has been loosened, Evans has become more of a leader, a director, rather than the arranger controlling every note: it feels as though the charts have been put away: the result is a sense of roughness, at times almost of chaos, much of the music being a thick, untidy, messy noise. The couple of shorter tracks seem little more than ideas for future projects (although Anita's Dance in almost three minutes long - Louis Armstrong or Charlie Parker could use the same time to record a piece of music that revolutionised the form); then there are three middle sized tracks: Evans's arrangement of Jimmy Hendrix's Little Wing (on a review of Hendrix I pondered how good a singer he was, compared to Hannibal Peterson's vocals here he was superb), Jelly Roll Morton's King Porter Stomp (interesting to compare this with Evans's late 1950s recording of this tune: but this version suffers through Dave Sanborn's slightly frantic alto playing, which doesn't compare well with Cannonball Adderley's playing on the earlier recording) and, best of all, Hannibal Peterson's Children of the Fire. But it is the two long tracks - There Comes a Time and The Meaning of the Blues - that this album is at its best. One of the advantages of the CD reissue is that there is a fuller version of The Meaning of the Blues (while I can't help thinking that the 16 minute There Comes a Time could have done with some pruning, the simple and constant bass line becoming very tedious after a while). These two tracks (and the long bonus track on the CD: So Long) remind me of Miles Davis's music around the Big Fun time: they are big, impressive, but seem to float along, lacking any great sense of purpose: it's like walking across a broad plain where the views are impressive but you are not sure if there is anything up ahead. The two tenor players, Billy Harper and George Adams, are the most impressive musicians; but guitarist Ryo Kawasaki is perhaps the most representative, his playing has at times an earthy, grimy, primordial feel, but at other times it just seems a muddy muddle that confuses the sound into a brown mud pie.