The Jazz Project - Album 81: Eberhard Weber - "The Colours Of Chloë"

             To further my understanding of Jazz, I'm listening through Jazzwise Magazine's "The 100 Jazz Albums That Shook The World". Each album is presented with my stream-of-consciousness thoughts for each track, my general thoughts of the album as a whole, and any relevant information I can capture about the album. Also included is my drink of choice while taking the album in. Thank you for joining me on my journey to [partial] Jazz enlightenment.

Album 81
Eberhard Weber - The Colours Of Chloë
Drinking: Rock City Coffee

Photo credit: https://ecmreviews.files.wordpress.com/2010/06/the-colours-of-chloc3ab1.jpg

1. "More Colours": The album opens with these thick, layered sounds made of full, colorful chords. It's sonically rich enough that I can't quite pick out what instruments are playing. The first thing that struck me was how good the chord choices are, which is exceptionally good. Violins start playing a melody at ~1:20, and it feels like Classical, with a Jazz core. Think of it as the gum in the middle of a lollipop. Around 2:15 a fretless... bass? The feeling a little off-kilter but it reeks of raw emotion. The music returns at ~3:10 to fill in space around this very vocal-like bass performance. Piano joins in around 3:30, creating a unique feeling, perhaps even fluid. At times it feels like watching a sunrise, or the tide roll in during the early hours. It doesn't feel like it has a structure in a standard sense, but it does feel like a very complete idea. This sonic picture doesn't feel like it's missing anything. 
   
   
2. "The Colours Of Cloë": Before the music started, I wondered what lush landscape awaited me, and when I pressed play, I wasn't disappointed. A synthesizer burbles in the background with a long gong over which strings play. It feels warm and welcoming. It creates these feelings of joy, love, and personality. The bass at 1:39 is almost sitar-like in this brief but magical moment. Ocarinas start playing over some excellent cymbal work. It feels very cinematic to me, especially when the bass solo starts at 2:47. Around 3:40 the music enters this moment that feels oddly urban. It fits the landscape, but it was a strange turn. It's like easy-listening contemporary Jazz (at least for the time). It segues into some chords that could be described as sinister, but it doesn't feel that way in this context. The melody choices are nontraditional based on my own experience with Jazz but fully grip my attention. At around 6:50 we return to the beginning moments of this piece, and it feels like I've returned home after an odd by very satisfying journey. The fade-out was a great choice. 
   
   
3. "An Evening With Vincent Van Ritz": This starts with a much darker tone compared to the previous tracks. The music keeps climbing and climbing. It almost creates anxiety in me. Haunting voices sing in the background of this song creating a feeling of eternalness, of floating in a dark cloud, unsure of where you're going. I found it very difficult to put my feelings into words. At around 2:05 there is a dramatic shift from the ethereal moments to a classic jazz feeling. A trumpet solos over some fat hand-plucked bass. It's a weird turn but a welcomed one. The bass playing is maniacal and incredible. Even with the change in feeling, of sound, this song eludes me as far as how to describe what I'm feeling beyond saying that it's really good stuff and I love listening to it. We return to the ethereal, dark sounds of the beginning around 5:05 and we ride that out to the end. 
   
   
4. "No Motion Picture": This is by far the longest song on this album at roughly 19 and a half minutes. It begins with sounds of what can only be described as water drops which are immediately followed by a stupid good bass riff. This is also immediately followed by some excellent repeating synth lines. the layers keep coming and stacking up until it's this wall of sound. There's a quick jab of some orchestra like strings at ~1:05. One measure later we're back into the wall of sound moment. I feel like this is what I'd be hearing if I was tripping and free-floating through space near the speed of light. There's a huge texture change near 2:20. It's slow, with a slow funk to it. Eerie ocarina plays over the chords, and I'm feeling excited yet a tad perplexed about where I'm about to go over the next 16 minutes. There's a bass solo at 3:44, and it's so good. The bass has such a unique voice to it. At around 5:20 it returns to that fat bass solo from the beginning, and all I can think of is that Weber could write some wicked metal licks. With all these changes it's hard to discern my feelings or thoughts about this piece. It feels very "buy ticket, take ride". The music is very captivating though and feels like a long sonic painting or mural. So much so that I wonder if Weber experiences synesthesia. A new moment arrives near 7:20, with a stuttery piano solo. It's a beautiful piece, and I could live in this moment for a long time. the piano is fluid, serene, and fragile. It's so easy to let this portion of the piece just wash over you for hours. still, there are over 10 minutes of this piece, which feels quite overwhelming. The music slowly transfers from the fragile serenity to a loud, joyful feeling. The piano player is really hammering those keys. I need to look this piano player up as I love his sound. At 12:10 we return to the intro with the water droplet sounds and that fat bass-line, except instead of synths layering over the repeating melody it's now a piano. In a way, it's almost scarier this way? The overtones created by the layers of piano add even more to the atmosphere created by this section. The moments between 12:30 and 12:37 feels very much like "Piano Phase" by Steve Reich. Soon synths begin to enter and it feels cacophonous. At 13:10 drops us into this choral moment. It feels like that sound you hear when all the segments of a large wind-chime have been hit and the notes are just reverberating together in this moment. The drums start soloing under it and slowly the choral music fades out. A marimba starts playing around 14:27. It's hard to describe the moment beyond the phrase child-like wonder. The fat bass returns at 15:17, and it returns with synths which makes that moment around 12:10 even more perplexing. Again we segue to that orchestra/ocarina moment. The music feels like it's rising and falling at the same time, and it's eerie, but not in a scary way? This segues back into that choral moment from before. The fat bass moment returns, but again with an organic piano, which further confuses me. Brass joins in for the last few moments. I don't quite know what I spent 19 minutes hearing, all I know is that I loved it. 

Overall Thoughts: This album was intimate, cinematic, revealing, creative, and shockingly hard to describe. It's a beautiful piece though, and I will be searching for it on vinyl for my collection. The artwork doesn't speak to me, but there are so many layers here that you can listen to it several times and pick new things out. That bass playing, it's so good. Needless to say, I loved it. Plus, there was a fluegelhorn, and fluegelhorns are cool. 

Info: This album was released in 1974 through the ECM label. It was produced by Manfred Eicher and recorded at Tonstudio Bauer which is located in Ludwigsburg, Germany. It features Eberhard Weber on bass, cello, ocarina, and voice, Rainer Brüninghaus on piano and synthesizer, Peter Giger on drums, Ralf Hübner on drums (track 2), Ack van Rooyen on fluegelhorn, Gisella Schäuble on voice, and the Stuttgart Radio Symphony Orchestra. 

If you liked this album, you can pick it up here!