RAY RUSSELL — Rites & Rituals (review)

RAY RUSSELL — Rites & Rituals album cover Album · 1971 · Fusion Buy this album from MMA partners
3.5/5 ·
Sean Trane
If Russell was never a conventional man in his solo career, albums like Rites And Rituals can still be accessed by some classic fusion fans, but even it will lose quite a bit along the way. Featuring a few British-jazz stalwarts, like Nick Evans, Harry Beckett or bassist Runswick, Ray Russell certainly decided to challenge once more whatever few followers were still following his musical explorations. Adorned with a stupendous and well-justified artwork, R&R was recorded in the summer 70, but not released until the following year on the Columbia UK label

Opening on the 13-mins+ fiery red-hot fusion of Sarana, R&R gets off to a solid “rock” start, with some incendiary guitar and wild brass answers, the whole thing not being too far from Nucleus, despite a propensity at showing-off a bit, and tends to hesitate between mayhem and total chaos towards it end. The just-as-long title track is even further “out there”, often flirting with total dissonant improvs and despite an almost-normal passage at the 9-mins mark (before Rushton’s drum solo) and an accessible end, this is a tough track to “dig” or “get”. Opening the flipside, some bowed-bass drones warn you that you’re not yet through your cosmic nightmare, the 15-mins Abyss will indeed bring you into the depth of insanity, wondering how to escape from the infernal lave spewing out of your speakers, but you should come out enriched from the experience. The short (well everything relative, with its 5-mins duration) Cradle Hill will climb up another rung on the weirdness scale, but by that time, you should be either used to it, popped the album away or have left the room. Most likely one of the two latter options.

Well, I’d be very careful recommend this relatively excellent fusion quagmire, because only a few of the more adventurous free-jazz-heads or RIO freaks will probably appreciate it to its mind-challenging value. To be honest, I don’t always manage it myself and it’s definitely not the type of album I’d listen to more than once or twice a decade, which means it wouldn’t find a space on my shelves, being well-content that it sits in my library system’s .

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