Album title: The End of an Ear
Artiste: Robert Wyatt
Genre: Free Jazz
Year: 1970
Label: CBS
Producer: Robert Wyatt
Chronological position: Debut solo album
Notes: Robert Wyatt was a founder member of Soft Machine, one of the lynchpins of the Canterbury Scene in progressive rock during the sixties and seventies
Album chart position: n/a
Singles: None
Lineup: Robert Wyatt- Drums, Piano, Organ, keyboards, harmonica
Neville Whitehead- Bass
Mark Charig- Cornet
Elton Dean- Alto Saxophone, Saxello
Mark Ellidge - Piano
Cyrille Ayers - Assorted Percussion
David Sinclair- Organ
Well thank you indeed Plainview for recommending not only a free jazz artist, but an album of totally instrumental music. This will be fun. I wasn't totally blown away by the two Soft Machine albums I reviewed in the History of Prog journal, so I can't say I'm particularly looking forward to this, but let's just get it done.
Review begins
Opens just as I feared, more like a tune-up than any real music, with Wyatt doing some
vocalise singing of some sort, sounds like a swarm of bees being chased by a ghost playing bongos. Sigh. There's a piano in there too, but it fades out to leave us with experimental sounds and some vocal histrionics. Man I hate this, and it's only the first track. Apparently it's called “Las Vegas tango part one”, though what it has to do with either is anyone's guess. “To mark everywhere” has at least more of what I would call structure to it, with a pounding drum and wailing sax, and now there's some sort of weird shimmery thing going on, like a UFO landing, with increasingly insistent percussion and then whistling brings in “To Saintly Bridget”, which has something of a rhythm to it at least. Oh, and there's more squealy sax, just to annoy me further.
It kind of transitions directly into the next track, with a fast running bass and wibbly sax. I really don't care any more. This is boring the hell out of me. It will be a long slog, that's for sure. And now a nine-minute track of what seems to me to be more or less the same disjointed melody, mostly carried on percussion and sax. Yawn. Some bassy piano joining in now, but I'm basically just enduring it and waiting (praying) for it to end. I bet Frownland loves this stuff. Not for me. Not by a long way. Oh my god, sounds like this might actually be a recognisable tune! “To Caravan and brother Jim” does have its mad, free jazz moments but I can follow the melody, most of which is driven by piano and organ. This is the first track I haven't hated: will it be the only one? Yep, it seems like we're back to the sound of a kazoo stuck up someone's arse. Sigh. Robotic sounds which I guess were innovative for the time, but just bore me.
The next one is short, a nice piece of piano music which doesn't set my teeth on edge, though he can't leave it alone and starts messing with the melody, ruining it for me. Still, it's better than a whole lot of this album has been. The final track is a whopping eleven minutes long, but at least it is the last one. In fairness, it's a little more settled than some of the earlier tracks, but it's still something of a struggle to get through it. Discordant melodies, dissonance, whistling and seemingly off-tune tones, none of this does anything for me but make me wish this was over. And now it is.
Track Listing and Ratings
1. Las Vegas Tango, part 1 (repeat)
2. To Mark everywhere
3. To Saintly Bridgid
4. To Oz Alien Daevid and Gilly
5. To Nick everyone
6. To Caravan and brother Jim
7. To the old world (Thank you for the use of your body, goodbye)
8. To Carla, Masha and Caroline (For making everything beautifuller)
9. Las Vegas Tango part 1
Afterword: Look, there was nobody expecting me to like this, was there? Once those two words popped up I was sunk. I don't like much jazz, and the little I can stomach does not include the word “free”, so while I try to keep an open mind whenever reviewing, I wasn't gambling on there being much here for me. And there wasn't. Which is not to say this is a bad album, or that Wyatt doesn't have talent, because obviously neither would be true. To those who can appreciate and enjoy this kind of thing, I'm sure it's amazing, transcendent and a lot of other praiseworthy adjectives. But to me, with my limited capacity to enjoy melody that is not pleasing to my ears, it is none of those things and I did not enjoy it. Apart from a track here or there.
Rating: 