MIKE OSBORNE — Marcel's Muse (review)

MIKE OSBORNE — Marcel's Muse album cover Album · 1977 · Avant-Garde Jazz Buy this album from MMA partners
3/5 ·
Sean Trane
Some kind of logic continuation of Osborne’s 70’s group, even though drummer Moholo (RIP I think) was not there to fill the stool (held by Peter Nykyroj), but bassist Miller is still in the fold. Along for the adventure are ex-Tippet cohort Mark Charig (on trumpet, rather than flugelhorn) and guitarist Jeff Green, but this doesn’t mean that the quintet is out for a quiet Sunday stroll. I won’t bother explaining the album’s title, even if there is no title track or evidently–linked names relating to the concept.

As you can probably guess, from first notes of the opening 9-mins Molten Lead will not be an easy digestion and the unease culminates with the closing dissonant fast riff. Of more interest in the 10-mins Sea Mist, which opens calmly on bowed bass (Miller is so excellent an archer), but things go dissonant fairly quickly, mostly under Osborne’s direction, but Charig takes over in the same fashion, then Miller, etc… On the flipside, things are much more melodic with the fast post-bop of Where’s Freddy, with both winds blowing from the twin-turbo engine, firing from all cylinders, even though this hardly a walk through a quiet forest, with Charig’s trumpet storming through the woods, backed by Green’s Djangoloid guitar and then Nykyroj emptying his drum bullets on whatever life hadn’t fled yet, but the last 90 seconds are the best moment of the album, with plenty of drama. The closing Wish I Knew is a Billy Smith cover, which might sound a little lame next to the two tracks on the A-side, because it’s rather a standard melodic ballad, although Charig’s slightly Spanish trumpet ads some rather welcome romantics.

Still a bit surprisingly, like much of its catalogue, the Ogun label reissued this album as a CD, coupled with 74’s Border Crossing as a 2on1 mini-Lp format, and the package is well worth investigated (and invested in) by all fans of the Swinging London-jazz scene. A bit of a schizophrenic release with diametrically opposed sides, where the free-experimental adventures on the opening side contrasting heavily with the gentler more melodic flipside. Your call, but the 2on1 sounds like a must-investigate further.

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