NORMA WINSTONE — Edge of Time (review)

NORMA WINSTONE — Edge of Time album cover Album · 1972 · Vocal Jazz Buy this album from MMA partners
3.5/5 ·
Sean Trane
Although receiving a piano musical formation, Londoner Norma Winstone was already a professional vocalist in her teens singing jazz standards, but by the mid-60’s, she’d moved to a more experimental and abstract (read wordless) vocal styles with a variety of names like Westbrook and Garrick, and won a best-vocalist award. By the early 70’s, she started recording under her own name, and the present Edge Of Time is her first try, but around the same time, she participated to Nucleus’ concept album Labyrinth about the Minotaur. Sooo not surprisingly, you’ll find many musician of the Collier and Carr generation on this album (Gary Boyle, Wheeler, Lowther, Themen, Skidmore and Rutherford, for ex.) and it might explain the concept psychedelic artwork on it.

The opening title track gives you a pretty good idea of what you’ll find on Edge Of Time, a slow moody modern jazz, often bordering on the dissonant side, butstill relatively accessible for the inquisitive listeners. Norma’s high perched voice and senseless lyrics can be repulsive at first, but if the music behind is your type, then she’ll quickly charm your ears. Perkins Landing might be a little tougher, because she turns to almost wordless vocals for lengths, but the more standardy 10-mins+ Enjoy This Day sees her reaching extremes, almost sneering her vocals

The flipside opens on the gigantic Erebus, which bears well its subtitle Son Of Chaos, where Norma’s backing band engage in a wild and infernal jazz-rock that should definitely challenge your sanity, Winstone driving in a few nails in the coffin. The short standardy Songs For A Child that ensues makes a stark contrast with it, though. The almost 8-mins Shadows also bear its name well, reaching for the sombre parts of your reason to mingle with your sanity. Again the contrast between a challenging piece such as Shadows and the closing almost-lullaby of Song of Love is unsettling.

Norma would then (later 70’s) join the Azimuth project with her husband John Taylor and trumpetist Kenny Wheeler, recording a few albums on ECM in the 80’s. As for edge Of Time, it is a mixed bag of styles, despite having its own sound and identity, but I’d have preferred a different running order of the tracks, because the roller-coaster ride from one extreme to another is a little rocky: I‘d have much preferred a more dual/schizophrenic affair on either side of the vinyl. If you’re not a symph weenie or a swing pansy, this might just be right up your alley, but it will require some adventurous mindframe to explore the album’s dark reaches.
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