Joe Zawinul - Zawinul

Joe Zawinul — Zawinul 

180-gram import LP

Remastered using pure analogue components only

Lacquers cut by Kevin Gray at Cohearent Audio from the original tapes

Pressed at Pallas in Germany

"...pick through and pull out Vitous, Zawinul and Shorter and you have the beginnings of Weather Report. ... The music bubbles, gurgles, skips and slides on percussive propulsion traveling mysteriously on electric piano rails familiar to Weather Report fans only here in a more elemental, less fully developed and thus more adventurous and tumultuous hardly silent way. ... Kevin Gray has taken the tapes, still in excellent condition and given them a sharp, transparent and dazzling cut that for anyone familiar with the original will surely be pushed back in his or her seat, in awe and wonder. The superbly quiet Pallas pressing creates the blackest background against which the electric piano and percussive accents cut sharply against the black. Honestly, it's a spectacular sonic landscape like iridescent paint on black velvet." — Music = 10/11; Sound = 10/11 — Michael Fremer, TrackingAngle.com. Read the full review here.

It would not be incorrect to claim that Zawinul was the first Weather Report album with regard to both its concept and sound since all protagonists are already present: Joe Zawinul, Wayne Shorter and Miroslav Vitous. This album confirms that Zawinul was the primary creative generator of Weather Report, the connecting link between the band and Miles Davis's keyboard-laden experiments on In A Silent Way; indeed, the composition in its complex orchestral form as composed by Zawinul is newly arranged on this LP and creates its very own vision of this brilliant work.

The two keyboarders, with the formidable Herbie Hancock alongside Zawinul, constitute the fundament for this poised and exploratory album and embellish their work with the galactic sound effects created by Echoplex and ring modulator. The third founder of Weather Report, Miroslav Vitous, is to be heard on the bass, and the hard bop of the trumpeter Woods Shaw proves that he is an absolute maestro when it comes to jazz rock. Earl Turbinton provides for the Wayne Shorter — like rays of light on the soprano saxophone, which Shorter himself then expresses on "Double Image." This work is the direct connection between Davis's earlier electric recordings and Weather Report and constitutes the basis for almost all subsequent eclectic contemporary jazz projects: Miles Davis's "In A Silent Way," the Weather Report album of the same name and this LP are an inseparable series of recordings, which document the origin of one of the most important and influential music trends of the 20th century.

This Speakers Corner LP was remastered using pure analogue components only, from the master tapes through to the cutting head.

Musicians:
Joe Zawinul, electric piano
Herbie Hancock, electric piano
Wayne Shorter, soprano saxophone
Earl Turbinton, soprano saxophone
Woody Shaw, trumpet
Jimmy Owens, trumpet
Hubert Laws, flute
George Davis, flute
Miroslav Vitous, bass
Walter Booker, bass
Billy Hart, percussion
David Lee, percussion
Joe Chambers, percussion
Jack DeJohnette, melodica, percussion

 

 

Music

Sound

Ratings from Michael Fremer @ trackingangle.com

1. Doctor Honoris Causa

2. In A Silent Way

3. His Last Journey

4. Double Image

5. Arrival In New York

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