David Murray Teams Up with Questlove (and analog tape)

The jazz master saxophonist stretches out with new improv-mates

David Murray was the tenor saxophonist of the 1980s and ‘90s, first as junior member of the World Saxophone Quartet, among the most innovative jazz groups of the era, then as leader of a dozen different ensembles of varying size, from duets to big band and everything in between, playing a range of music (much of it self-composed) from frenzied avant-garde to swooning ballads, his solos sweeping arpeggios in pleasingly jarring intervals laced with Sapphiric blue notes, one passage recalling Albert Ayler’s wails, the next Ben Webster’s sultry vibrato, at all times tapping into the rhythms of the planet.

 At his peak, Murray was releasing an album a month, mainly on the Italian label Black Saint or the Japanese label DIW, which, for a while, had US distribution deals with Polygram and Columbia, respectively. (Those were the days!) In the mid-to-late ‘90s, Murray also played every Monday night at the Knitting Factory in downtown Manhattan, usually with his big band, which featured nearly every star in the prog-jazz firmament.

 Then, around the turn of the century, he disappeared—moved to France, got married, took up with the Guadaloupean Gwo-ka masters, returned to the States for occasional gigs with younger players and a refurbished WSQ, but the visits were rare. (In the decade between 2010 and 2020, he recorded four albums—the same number that he used to put out routinely every few months.) Then, a few years ago, he moved back to New York, formed a solid new quartet, booked gigs at outposts like the Village Vanguard. He is now 69. (He was 24 when he first attracted notice.) And yet he still has that sound—the fiery rhythms when he wants them, the smoky soulful tone when it wants that too.

Murray has two albums now out. The one I’ll focus on here, Plumb, is a four-LP set with the drummer Questlove and the keyboardist Ray Angry, recorded and mixed on analog tape by a peculiar New York label called J.M.I. The label puts out nothing but all-analog jazz albums, often in strangely small sessions. I first heard of the label when I came across a solo David Murray album, Sun/Moon, mastered on two LPs in 45rpm. There is also a James Carter solo baritone sax album, Un.

Plumb covers the Murray waterfront, plus some: uptempo improv (all but two 15 tracks are improvs), Coltrane-ish sheets of sound, backbeat-driven R&B, stirring balladry. It’s like listening to Murray traverse his entire repertoire, backed by a highly skilled electro-soul band. (It reminds me a bit of Shakill’s II, a stunning 1994 Murray album with the great pianist Don Pullen pulling a rare stint on a Hammond B-3.)

 There’s a great album in here, but its extraction would require an editor, someone like Teo Macero, who molded some of Miles Davis’ rambling sessions of the late 1960s and ‘70s into albums like Bitches Brew, A Tribute to Jack Johnson, On the Corner, and In a Silent Way. (Many years later, Columbia or Mosaic released the complete uncut sessions on multi-disc sets, which were interesting to plow through once, at most.) Plumb, even in its raw shape, is more coherent than those raw Miles tapes. Still, some of its tracks go on for too long, some (especially those with vast acres of Angry’s ambient noodling) could be cut way down to size if not excised altogether. As is, Plumb is a very good album; it lets Murray stretch out with a freedom that he hasn’t been allowed in many sessions lately, or actually ever. But paying $140 for four albums’ worth of this—2-1/4 hours of music—might be a bit much for the non-aficionado (though, given the vinyl market’s robust health these days, maybe not—go ahead, give it a shot).

The sound is spectacular. Engineer James Yost laid it all down at Reservoir Studios in New York through a Studer A800 MK III Master Recorded on 2” ATR Magnetics Master tape. (It was later mixed to a Studer A80 on ATR ½” tape). The three musicians all played in the the same room—no isolation booths, no headphones—all into vintage microphones. Neumann U67s, in cardioid, handled Questlove’s drum kit, with an AKG C24 overhead. Murray’s sax was picked up by a U49 (a U67 when he switched to bass clarinet). Anger’s keyboards were recorded with direct input, with a little bit from an Ampex amp (though mainly so the other musicians could hear them).

All the instruments are vivid, dynamic, spread out. They’re in the room. It’s a jaw dropper. I’ve heard a few new albums recorded on analog tape (Jerome Sabbagh’s Heart and Vintage are others), and they have a transparency, an effortless airiness that you just don’t hear on albums sourced from ProTools. Digital is much better now than it was a decade ago, but it’s a shame that analog recording has dwindled to a nearly lost art—especially now that vinyl mastering and plating have made such advances. It is expensive. Plumb required 20 reels of tape, at $380 per reel. And it’s an awkward medium, especially for improvised music. Yost told me that, on a few occasions, the tape ran out mid-improv. “I guess that’s the end of the track,” he’d have to announce.

 This is special. The whole label is worth checking out.

 Murray has another new album out, Francesca, with his regular quartet, on his regular label, Intakt. Musically, it’s a terrific album, another pastiche of ballads, blues, and a little bit of frenzy, though economized, like most studio albums, for 7- to 11-minute tracks. His quartet, which I’ve seen live at the Vanguard, approaches the high standards of his earlier groups, especially his pianist Marta Sanchez, whose sextet album as a leader, SAAM (Spanish American Art Museum) was a highlight of 2022. But the sound is so-so. Everything is well balanced, but the horn is two-dimensional, the piano hooded, and the drums rustled like paper and cardboard (probably due to the phase distortion that comes with over-miking). It’s still worth repeated listen, but the engineers could do a lot better. Maybe in advance of his next album, Murray will tell them to check out Plumb.