JOHN ABERCROMBIE — Gateway (with Dave Holland & Jack DeJohnette) (review)

JOHN ABERCROMBIE — Gateway (with Dave Holland & Jack DeJohnette) album cover Album · 1975 · Fusion Buy this album from MMA partners
2.5/5 ·
Sean Trane
First of a classic duo of albums, the first to reunite Holland and Dejohnette under the Abercrombie flag, Gateway is probably just as important an album as Timeless was, but in some ways it also more standard jazz as well. The album came out with the three names on the same level in a black sleeve with a naïve drawing of a heavy rain falling on a lake.

Surprisingly the album features only one Abercrombie song, most of the album being penned by Dave Holland and to a lesser extent Dejohnette. And indeed the opening Back-woods Song is based on Holland’s unstoppable bass riff, and he drives the tune of he sees it d fit, the other two just hanging on until he let’s them catch up. The much shorter c Waiting is also much less enthralling, bordering on a cool jazz double bass improvisation (no Aber and little DeJohn) and little interest. The 11-mins monster called May Dance starts out a bit the same as, but here the roles are more equal, and Aber pulls a solo that sometimes border the dissonant, but Holland again pulls a huge solo just after it.

The flipside starts on Dejohnette’s drums, soon joined by Aber’s cool electric jazz guitar, Unshielded Desire continuing without Holland’s warm bass, and this sounds soooo cold that even Jack & john’s virtuoso playing are a bit frozen, even though this is the highest energy on the album and on most of Aber’s early discography. Here Aber sounds even a bit like Larry Coryell. Holland’s Jamala is doing a bit the same thing as Waiting on the A-side, and certainly not more successfully either.. Closing the album is DeJohnette’s 11-mins Sorcery trrack that takes a bit too much its time picking up momentum; then when it does, Aber runs away with the track, before the energy must be rebuilt, this time through Holland’s bass, while Aber does again a credible Coryelll, equalling McLaughlin as well.



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