Eponymous Zawinul Merits Your Musical and Sonic Attention
KG cut from tape for Speakers Corner and it's dazzling
The 1971 Weather Report precursor and post Miles In A Silent Way album is a series of musical impressions featuring an all-star cast that includes Herbie Hancock, Woody Shaw, Miroslav Vitous, Joe Chambers, Wayne Shorter, Billy Hart and others. But pick through and pull out Vitous, Zawinul and Shorter and you have the beginnings of Weather Report.
Zawinul delivers a short 4:47 "In A Silent Way" as the chaser to the opener "Doctor Honoris Causa" dedicated to Hancock's receiving an Honorary Doctorate from Grinnell University in Des Moines, Iowa, an almost fifteen minute rhythmic ride for two electric pianos, flute, trumpet, soprano sax, two contrabasses and percussion—the basic ensemble throughout the album.
Miles acknowledges Zawinul's influence in short notes that begin "Zawinul is extending the thoughts that we've both had for years. And probably the thoughts that most so-called now musicians have not yet been able to express".
The music bubbles, gurgles, skips and slides on percussive propulsion traveling mysteriously on electric piano rails familiar to Weather Report fans only here in a more elemental, less fully developed and thus more adventurous and tumultuous hardly silent way.
i've had the Atlantic George Piros mastered original since it was first released and it's always been a solid, but somehow mellifluous and warm listening experience. Kevin Gray has taken the tapes, still in excellent condition and given them a sharp, transparent and dazzling cut that for anyone familiar with the original will surely be pushed back in his or her seat, in awe and wonder.
The superbly quiet Pallas pressing creates the blackest background against which the electric piano and percussive accents cut sharply against the black. Honestly, it's a spectacular sonic landscape like iridescent paint on black velvet—minus the kitsch.The original's warmth sets up a wet blanket that's not particularly useful for this music that her is dramatically set free.
The final track, Zawinul's musical impression of his arrival in New York as a young boy on a ship from France is a New York Harbor tug boat extravaganza that Hahn and Paul's engineering and Gray's cut fully deliver. I would never had said this about the original, but this reissue will be a hifi show stopper next time someone plays it, especially on a big system that can deliver both the bottom end grunt and the dynamic power. Highly recommended for musical and sonic dazzle!
