Jazz album for today. 1/7/2024

Today is exception from my normal single song recommendation. I will be diving into an amazing album, bursting with emotion and incredible innovation. A criminally underrated album, by an amazing artist.

Todays album is "Silver Cycles" 

The song I have chosen from this album to play in the background of my page is "Coltrane's view".

"Silver Cycles" is an album by American jazz saxophonist Eddie Harris recorded in 1968 and released on the Atlantic label. The album features heavy Latin jazz and postbop themes, accompanied by electronic processing.

The Allmusic review states "The music is by turns swinging, touching, feverish, detached, nightmarish, and peaceful, bursting with the new ideas generated from Harris' plunge into electronics. This album has been unjustly overlooked, probably because Harris was selling a lot of records and getting airplay at the time (a cardinal sin for purists), or perhaps for its free, anything-goes '60s spirit".

Studio album by Eddie Harris (1969)

The late Chicago saxophonist can make a credible claim to being one of the great bridges between the mainstream and avant-garde. The highly danceable. groove-based soul jazz strain of his work, epitomized by "Listen Here" from his album "The Electrifying Eddie Harris", was often offset by daring forays into atonality and explorations of 'pure sound', especially from the late 1960s onwards, and the remarkable album is a great example of the duality.

The album is constantly shifting between highly melodic, irresistibly catchy themes that have deep soulfulness of Sax heroes such as Booker T. Jones and Otis Redding, and abstract, outward bound arrangements that owe an equal debt to Eric Dolphy and John Coltrane. 

Silver Cycles album I own :)

Harris was among the first saxophonists to experiment with electrified horns and 'echoplex' devices and the deployment of this kit on the title track in particular takes him into the "seductively spooky shadowlands" of proto-dub, in which the gurgling reverb of his reed and Monk Montgomery's bass guitar became positively 'Black Ark' in nature. 

Even for diehard EH fans well acquainted with his voluminous discography this is an all too overlooked gem deserving of greater recognition.

YouTube link to todays album: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=OLAK5uy_lIn5D0ZJneUoj-lVGlzdB1sHY5e9A7MA4

YouTube link to todays song: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vYigivKQ5RM