Andrew Hill
's
Dance of Death
, recorded in 1968 with a stellar band, was not issued until 1980. In the late 1960s,
Blue Note
was no longer the most adventurous of
jazz
labels. While certain titles managed to scrape through --
Eddie Gale's Ghetto Music
did but only because
Francis Wollf
personally financed it -- many didn't. The label was firmly in the
soul-jazz
groove by then, and
Hill
's music, always on the edge, was deemed too outside for the label's roster. Musically, this is
at his most visionary. From hard- and
post bop
frames come
modal
and tonal inquiries of staggering complexity. Accompanied by trumpeter
Charles Tolliver
, saxophonist
Joe Farrell
, drummer
Billy Higgins
and bassist
Victor Sproles
,
engages, seemingly, all of his muses at once. Check out the sinister
blues
that is
"Fish 'N' Rice"
with its loping Eastern-tinged
and loping horn lines around
's knotty fills in the head and choruses. In
"Partitions"
the steaming head is so rigorously tangled it's only the counterpoint of
's piano that makes an exit possible, with
deep blues
underpinnings and strident swinging
soul
. The title cut dances Afro-Cuban in the head, but
's piano is in a minor
groove, with
Higgins
playing a textural, syncopated four-four as
Sproles
' punches on the two and four as the solos begin winding through the modes, bringing back the
on tags.
is a phenomenal record, one that wears its adventure and authority well. ~ Thom Jurek