OLIVER LAKE — NTU: Point from which Creation Begins (review)

OLIVER LAKE — NTU: Point from which Creation Begins album cover Album · 1976 · Avant-Garde Jazz Buy this album from MMA partners
4/5 ·
js
“NTU: Point from which Creation Begins” was Oliver Lake’s first album and found him mining similar territory that a lot of other young new jazz stars were digging at this time. Equal parts; post bop, fusion, free jazz and psychedelic hippie jam, Lake fit right in with a crowd that included Pharoh Sanders, Donald Byrd and Herbie’s Sextet and its many spin off groups as well. The album opens with “Africa”, an excellent psychedelic groove number that will have many thinking classic Pharoh Sanders. The follow up, “Tse Lane”, is a post bop number that suffers from a slightly out of tune acoustic piano and playing that sounds distracted after the focus of the first number. The band doesn’t really come together on this one.

Side two opens with “Electric Freedom Colors”, after a lengthy Chicago style pointillist noise section (Joeseph Bowie, Don Moye and other AACM types have a strong presence here), the band hit’s a slow groove and guitar phenom Richard Martin takes over. Martin uses a non-distorted natural jazz tone sound, but also adds variable reverb depth for a slight psychedelic touch and just rips on some of the most fierce outside lines this side of Sonny Sharrock and Pete Cosey. The following “Eiree” is quiet and abstract, yet tense as the band interjects sounds that point to what’s to come. On the album closer, “Zip”, the band goes for the classic avant-garde jugular with an all-out free blowing session and keeps things interesting by passing around the solos before the whole band joins in for the final onslaught.

Another great album from that classic early 70s era when so many young musicians were taking in everything from Coltrane to Hendrix, and Stockhausen too.
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