Release : Oliver Lake Trio - Zaki
Artist : Oliver Lake Trio
Album : Zaki
Genre : Jazz
Source : CDDA
Label : HAT HUT Records
URL :
Date : 00-00-2007
Encoder : LAME 3.97 / -V2 --vbr-new
Quality : 195kbps 44100 kHz Joint Stereo
Tracks : 5
Time : 56:32 min
Size : 79.00 MB
1 Zaki 24:55
2 Clicker 10:21
3 Shine 14:16
4 5-1 5:28
5 Zaki 1:32
Zaki was recorded live at Jazz Festival Willisau in 1979. Although saxophonist
Oliver Lake had been a member of soon-to-be festival favorites, the World
Saxophone Quartet since 1977, he was still little known outside the U.S. and
Willisau was one of his first important European gigs. In 1979 he performed
there with WSQ and with his trio.
Both performances made Europe sit up and listen. Lake's trio with guitarist
Michael Gregory Jackson and drummer Pheeroan akLaff had been working together
since 1975 and by 1979 their astringent, rhythmically emphatic musicùa blend of
tightly arranged themes and freewheeling collective improvisationùwas cooking.
The album starts with the fiercely uncompromising, free-meter title track, a
headcharge for most of its 24 minutes, but which morphs into spacier territory,
over a metronomic drum pattern, during its final section. At times Lake, in the
left speaker, and Jackson, in the right, follow seemingly divergent paths, and
then, without any apparent cue, lock together in passages of remarkable rhythmic
and harmonic unity. All three musicians are each on mic pretty much throughout
the track, as they are on the shorter ôClickerö and ô5/1.ö The 15 minute
ôShine,ö by contrast, features extended guitar and drum solos with Lake mostly
out.
Lake is at the top of his game throughout, but the less well documented Jackson
is every bit as interesting. Soon after this concert he quit jazz to pursue a
more rock-oriented direction, as a singer and guitarist, which was marred by a
succession of unhappy label relationships and which failed to take off. He began
playing with Lake again only in 2004.