Listening: Two albums by guitarist Terje Rypdal
A comparison spanning decades of time between albums, finding similarities
Two albums—2020’s Conspiracy, by guitarist Terje Rypdal, and 1979’s Terje Rypdal / Miroslav Vitous / Jack DeJohnette–separated by decades, have close similarities in both the type of music played and in the makeup of the ensemble, the choice of instruments. Rypdal’s guitar style and tone exhibit a continuity, with his Conspiracy sound appearing to be a developed, simplified concentration on key aspects of his style on the earlier album. The bass sounds on both are similar, with the bowed (arco) style of bass playing—and the illusion of an arco bass, created on an electric bass with a rich palette—is nearly the same, with arco being complemented by a pizzicato style. The drumming is similar, with emphasis on snare and cymbals being key to both albums’ percussion styles. And the keyboard background atmosphere is nearly identical on both. I’d like to examine each album, giving each a full-length listen with a real-time write-up, followed by a brief commentary and comparison.
Conspiracy, Terje Rypdal
I started my listening session with Conspiracy. Drummer Pål Thowsen’s rapid stick work on two cymbals, one right and one left, beating out a tapping that rings with promise, presages the magnificent entrance of Terje Rypdal’s heavily overdriven electric guitar. Electronic keyboard, played by Ståle Storløkken, flanks them, and Endre Hareide Hallre’s smooth, swelling and glissando electric bass welcomes the listener into the aurality surrounding them. In the first minute of his playing, Hallre establishes that his bass is rich with potentiality and that he can turn the timbre into just about whatever he chooses to turn it to. Like Rypdal, Hallre uses a volume/expression pedal to create a smooth envelope (when he chooses to) and create the illusion of an arco bass. The keyboards play an important role in setting this album as a contemporary jazz album only recently released. This first track, the mysteriously named “As If the Ghost … Was Me!?” is the most impressive on the album, I think. It also features similar drumming and cymbal work to those of the first track, “Sunrise,” of the 1979 album Rypdal did with bassist Miroslav Vitous and drummer Jack DeJohnette. The interplay of the drums, and especially the melodic interplay of bass and guitar, create the foreground. The keyboards are heard when listened for but are the background that holds up the rest of the group. Without the keyboards, there would be unfortunate holes in the sound.
The drums play only a few notes in the first few minutes of the next track, “What Was I Thinking?” Rypdal and Hallre appear to be improvising against each other. Storløkken’s keyboards peep between the bass and guitar, perhaps trying to find the drummer who is striking a single bell every now and then. Around 3:30, the track swells into a crescendo, with Hallre playing a fast, sixteenth-note pattern that helps Rypdal’s guitar dramatically increase in volume and effect, and when the fast bass notes stop, Rypdal’s guitar, as it were, deflates, and the track gradually peters out as if a rain had passed.
Here, we come to what I must call the mistake on this album. The title track is next, and it is a weak one. The drums play a rock and roll beat, with rock fills, while Rypdal’s guitar shouts without subtlety. With a mysterious beginning couple of tracks, and an album title like “conspiracy,” I had expected much more from the title track. It is tedious, and I don’t want to say anything more about it. Perhaps you will like it and our tastes are different. I am skipping it, having heard it enough times already and given it every chance to catch my interest.
“By His Lonesome” features what sounds like an acoustic bass, soloing with keyboards and sparse drumming to accompany it, and then Rypdal’s guitar comes in, swelling with the volume pedal. The keyboards turn into a church organ, and I realize the illusion of the acoustic bass was just that, illusion, but that the electric bass may be a fretless bass, hence the wonderful glissandi. Rypdal’s playing is sparse. This track gives the bassist, Hallre, a chance to show what he’d like listeners to see. The guitar is heavily laden with effects that allow each of Rypdal’s notes to develop over the five seconds or so that follow the end of the note as played. Guitar and bass have a conversation this way that seems to be on agreeable terms, and the track comes to an end without having built beyond the intensity of a relaxed bass solo. And I have no complaints about that.
“Baby Beautiful” has reminders of previous musical ideas in the first two tracks, and here it is Rypdal who gets a solo that is backed by the rest of the group. Rypdal’s solo, with the guitar making all sorts of noises a guitar might not be expected to be able to make, is more rambunctious than Hallre’s bass solo was, and there is a period where the track gets exciting. Then it turns into another bass solo, with Rypdal stepping aside and Hallre playing a meandering line that seems introspective, as if turning over, after the fact, the statements of Rypdal’s initial guitar fireworks. And the keyboards come in with a solo of their own, a slow, relaxed, calming blend of timbres, with the sound of a string section playing alongside. The electric piano-like tone is brighter and bolder than others I have heard, and it does not sound dated to the early 1970s. It is, it turns out, an organ tone that sounds like an electric piano. The four musicians seem to be sorting out who gets the dominant place, and Rypdal, when he comes in, easily dominates with a loud, roughly overdriven electric guitar tone.
“Dawn” begins with an organ pedal tone akin to that of the Overture to Also Sprach Zarathustra, by Richard Strauss. An ominous, foghorn-like tone sounds low and long, and heavy-sounding bell is rung. Or is it a gong? Yes, a gong, or a few gongs. Then, silence. The album has ended.
Terje Rypdal / Miroslav Vitous / Jack DeJohnette
“Sunrise” features the unmatchable cymbal-and-snare work of a young Jack DeJohnette, still using the traditional grip, before tendinitis forced him to change to a matched grip. Miroslav Vitous’s bowed bass joins and quickly is joined by a copy of itself, in another recording track. And still, DeJohnette’s unstoppable cymbal strikes keep going, and his snare snarls. Rypdal’s guitar comes in as if descending from the sky. He uses both clean and overdriven tones, featuring a copy of his guitar in another recording track. There are keyboards providing ambient color that is needed for the rest of the group to have their strong effect. Vitous’s arco acoustic bass growls in one track and then its pizzicato copy plays a flurry of notes. And still, DeJohnette’s cymbal is going and going! The tension builds with the volume and dissonance of Rypdal’s overdriven electric guitar. It wails like a lost soul in a terrifying forest, in discordant vibrato and pitch-bends. Sounds of keyboard and arco bass evolve and stop, the drums develop a pounding flurry of tom-tom and snare, and the cymbal pattern becomes more complex, and Rypdal and DeJohnette end the track with a whisper of cymbal being the last word. This first track is strongly reminiscent of of 2020’s “As If the Ghost … Was Me!?”
“Den Forste Sne [The First Snow]” begins with keyboards and pizzicato bass. It is hard to disentangle Rypdal’s tricks with the guitar and a keyboard playing with an expression pedal or modulation control. Another bass track takes center stage with arco lines that are soaring and plaintive. This develops into a slow, harmonious and soothing comment on snow (I suppose), with DeJohnette’s drums entering without notice, insinuating themselves in the space left by the rest of the group. Rypdal’s guitar echoes Miroslav’s lugubrious bass soloing. I get the feeling there may have been music written that the group is following. On Conspiracy, I got the impression that there were often chord sketched out but much of the music was improvisation, the bass and guitar playing off each other’s lines. Rypdal’s guitar is not as roughly overdriven on this album, compared to his tone on Conspiracy. There is little hint of rock and roll on this album.
“Will” starts with a haunting keyboard arpeggiation, DeJohnette’s beautiful cymbal work, Vitous’s double-tracked bass, one bass track featuring arco playing, the other pizzicato. Rypdal is judicious in his additions to the mix, fading notes in and out and sounding very much like a violin. DeJohnette accompanies mostly on ride cymbal, hi-hat, and snare. I love this stylistic period in his development and bought a ride cymbal and a snare just to experience what it is to play them, attempting to imitate the drummer. Vitous’s arco bass playing is rougher sounding than Hallre’s electric bass with expression/volume pedal on Conspiracy, bringing out the contrast between acoustic and electric basses. He also plays with fewer glissandi and legato slides than Hallre uses. Rypdal harmonizes, either with himself on another track, or with the keyboard. Throughout these tracks, the keyboard provides an ethereal background, as in a painting there might be a loosely defined, irregular shading as background for a portrait or still life.
“Believer” begins with keyboard arpeggiation, and strong pizzicato bass followed by Rypdal’s guitar coming in and out like a violin, and Miroslav’s bass viol, played arco, answering the guitar line. The keyboard’s electric piano tone is more prominent than the keyboard parts have been so far. The ethereal background continues, still, behind the rest of the performance. I can only guess why this track is called “Believer.” It is much like the others, coming in quietly and, I expect, leaving just as quietly, in a dwindling decrescendo, as the others. Vitous and DeJohnette both have parts that develop into rapid flurries of notes, while the piano, keyboard and Rypdal’s smoothly overdriven guitar keep to their slow, spacious playing. And the track ends.
“Flight” begins with DeJohnette’s aggressive drumming, at first unaccompanied and then joined with a slightly furious trill and then complex pattern, played arco, by Vitous. The keyboard has not come in, and neither has Rypdal. Vitous is scrubbing his notes, as if to clean his bass strings of the previous tracks’ music. His instrument growls, squeals, and shreds fast passages, running up scales. Rypdal comes in with a similar approach, fast, short bursts of notes in an effects-laden tone, adding a fusion aspect to the piece. His playing here reminds me of some of John McLaughlin’s post-Miles Davis work with the Mahavishnu Orchestra (need to hear more of that). DeJohnette gets another unaccompanied part, where he uses all or most of his drum set, keeping time with a rolling low drumming and his characteristic delicate cymbal work. He carries the track to the end, unaccompanied.
“Seasons,” the final track of the album, begins with a guitar run through a harmonizer or not a guitar but a guitar synth, a la much of Pat Metheny’s work. It is, perhaps, double-tracked, and run through a complex effects bank, including some wah-wah pedal use that avoids the classic-rock stereotypical sound of the effect. Instead of the soaring highs, Rypdal dives into lows, exploring the bass-like low end of his range. DeJohnette accompanies. Then Vitous enters, arco, lightly articulating a complex though unassuming path through chord changes that introduce a measure of tension and then a release. Vitous’s pizzicato here most strongly expresses that “rosiny” or “sticky” tone of a double bass that I have commented on before in these writings. There is some of what I’ll call self-assertive posturing by Rypdal, but it is minimal compared to his approach to the title track of Conspiracy. One part of Vitous’s work comes near to playing the exact beginning of Joaquín Rodrigo’s often borrowed 1939 piece, Concierto de Aranjuez, played by Miles Davis on his Sketches of Spain, and which serves as the motif for Chick Corea’s “Spain.” The track ends suddenly and without warning. That is all for the album.
The blurb in the Qobuz hi-res streaming app says DeJohnette’s cymbals were double-miked, one mike being above the cymbal, the other below, “because that’s how the drummer hears it” (I assume this is DeJohnette being quoted). The commentator, one Paul Collins of TiVo, has his own views on the performance, which I will not repeat here. In comparing, briefly, Conspiracy, to the much earlier Terje Rypdal / Miroslav Vitous / Jack DeJohnette, I think, in Conspiracy, Rypdal has gotten far away from the weak-sound clean guitar of his early days, but I am confused at what I think if the show of a lack of taste in his title track on Conspiracy, which sticks out oddly on an otherwise clean and imaginative album. His self-assertive posturing in “Conspiracy” is an embarrassment to him.
Both albums have much in common, including the instrument choices of keyboard, guitar and guitar synth, bass, and drums. It is as if Rypdal felt he needed to recreate (or “reboot”) the earlier album, bringing the style and tone up to date. I think DeJohnette’s drumming and Miroslav’s arco acoustic bass are the stars of the earlier album, while Rypdal’s guitar takes center stage, on Conspiracy. Both albums have a lot of merit, and the earlier one is more ethereal and atmospheric than the later one. The drumming and bass on both are some of the best I have heard—I love Hallre’s deftness on his electric bass. Rypdal’s unique take on what an electric guitar can do is worth hearing if one has not heard it. His choices of tension and release are not what I have typically heard, and as far as jazz goes, there is a much more modern feel than in a hard-bop guitar style. On almost all of Conspiracy, I think Rypdal succeeds in toeing the line between stadium-rock playing and his older style of the earlier album. I only wish I had a better sense of closure of the album, which a less bland title track could have brought into being.