The New Quartet

 The latest in ECM’s Luminessence series of vinyl repressings, The New Quartet was Gary Burton’s second album for the label and as the title alludes featured a different quartet to the one he made his name with in the late sixties. Burton released his first LP in 1961 and has played with a who’s who of great names in jazz including Keith Jarrett, Pat Metheny, Herbie Hancock and Stan Getz, he made a number of duet albums with Chick Corea and developed the four mallet technique that has come to define the best vibraphonists in the business.

Burton formed his first quartet in 1967 with Larry Coryell, Roy Haynes and Steve Swallow. The New Quartet features the less famous names of Michael ‘Mick’ Goodrick on guitar, Abraham Laboriel on bass and Harry Blazer on drums. Mick Goodrick later played with Pat Metheny, and session musician Abraham Laboriel has contributed to over 4,000 albums. Given the way he plays on The New Quartet, it’s surprise that he’s not better known.

The album opener is also its high point, ‘Open Your Eyes, You Can Fly’ is a Chick Corea composition for piano that this Quartet turn into a storming blast of an anthem. Burton was a pioneer of jazz rock fusion in his earlier quartet and that’s the general style of this album and very much the mode on the first track with all four musicians playing with and around one another with a speed and dexterity that is reinforced by the bright melodic sound of the vibes. The sound is more jazz than rock for this reason but it’s not by any means challenging, there’s just plenty going on, the underlying beat may not be in 4/4 but it’s very easy to enjoy the rhythmic patterns that are created by what is a highly percussive ensemble. 

Keith Jarrett’s ‘Coral’ is the second well-chosen tune and brings the tempo down so that the band sound mellower and there’s some space for intimacy in their playing. Here the guitar gets a break and sounds lovely doing so. In fact the whole piece is pretty lovely and provides a good contrast with the first of two pieces written by British pianist Gordon Beck. ‘Tying Up Loose Ends’ is the best of them and in this band’s hands it is reminiscent of King Crimson right up until the moment that vibes join the fray at which point melody takes centre stage. Although centre stage is not perhaps the best description as Burton’s work gets little more attention than anyone else’s in the mix save for the bright tonality of his instrument.

As with all ECM releases the New Quartet was produced by ECM founder Manfred Eicher, apparently Burton had met him a couple of years later and was impressed by how well he worked with musicians, when he had the choice between sticking with Atlantic or signing to ECM he took the latter route. The sound on this pressing is excellent, full of energy and life but also really well separated and defined. It’s easy to hear exactly what each musician is doing and how they are interacting with one another. I tried the digital stream on Qobuz but that sounds thin and flat by comparison with none of the depth or body that a decent record player extracts from the vinyl.

Side two opens with a piece by another Burton favourite Carla Bley, ‘Olhos de Gato’ is a downtempo beauty that features a classy guitar break and has rather more space than other numbers, this allows Goodrick and Burton to play a duet over relatively subdued backing that reflects the charm of the composition to a T. Gordon Beck’s ‘Mallet Man’ allows Laboriel to really stretch out and showcase his fluid style before guitar and vibes come together in unison. The album ends with two Mike Gibbs pieces the last of which, Nonsequence’, is almost full tilt boogie. There’s so much precisely honed energy on this romp that you pretty well have to get up and leap around, or is that just me? ECM have done a great job with this pressing not least by bringing it into the limelight after so long, highly recommended even if you think you don’t like vibes.

Back to Music