The Sea Ensemble "Memoirs of a Dream" [3LP]
あらゆる方に超激推ししたい激ヤバのスピリチュアル/フリージャズ3LP!!ジャケットデザインも最高!!1970年代初めに民族音楽学者のZusaan Kali Fasteauと、ジョン・コルトレーンやアーチー・シェップ、ローランド・カークのサイドマンを務めたマルチイストゥルメンタリストDonald Rafael Garrettにより結成された夫婦デュオThe Sea Ensemble。夫であるDonald Garrettが他界した1989年より11年後の2000年に2CDフォーマットで発表された、超傑作アーカイブ[Memoirs Of A Dream]が22年越しで初のヴァイナル化!!収録されているのは1975年5月にオランダで録音されたスタジオテイクと1977年トルコでのライブパフォーマンスで、全編に渡り互いの親密さが顕著に出た超濃密な実験的名演。ジャケットのデザインも素晴らしく、独立したマーブル仕様のインナースリーヴが付属します。
3 LP archival edition, plated at RTI, heavy weight black vinyl housed in marbled inner sleeves and slipcase.
Nomadic spiritual jazz duo The Sea Ensemble embodied the ethos of their era and art to a uniquely poetic degree. Founded in the early 1970’s by ethnomusicologist Zusaan Kali Fasteau and versatile instrumentalist Donald Rafael Garrett (sideman to John Coltrane, Archie Shepp, and Roland Kirk, among others), the couple’s lifestyle mirrored their music: restless, questing, collaborative, and improvised. Their itinerant journeying spanned Senegal, Congo, Morocco, Haiti, France, Holland, Turkey, Italy, Greece, Switzerland, Germany, Belgium and Yugoslavia, bonding with likeminded visionaries and bohemians everywhere they went – including sharing the stage with Sun Ra’s Arkestra for the canonical Concert For The Comet Kohoutek.
Memoirs of a Dream remains perhaps the group’s defining archival document. Originally self-released by Fasteau’s Flying Note imprint as a double CD in 2000 – 11 years after Garrett’s passing – the collection includes a pair of adventurous longform studio creations recorded in Leiden, Holland in May of 1975 as well as a vividly intimate and experimental live performance from Ankara, Turkey two years later. The breadth of textures and instruments on display reflects the duo’s expansive travels: piano, harp, balafon, conch, kaval, ney, cello, sheng, sanza, clarinet, contrabass, shakuhachi, percussion, tanbur. Theirs is a muse both monastic and ecstatic, fueled equally by hermetic chemistries and cosmic wanderings.
Fasteau’s death in 2020, during the assembly of this reissue, lends the proceedings a deeper air of gravity and fragility. The Sea Ensemble congealed in a fleeting subcultural moment, twin souls seeking something elusive and transcendent in sound and daily life. They prioritized connectivity over career, forever changing, learning, and refining. Their legacy of global inclusivity and “comprovisational” methods echoes that of other jazz guiding lights, from Don Cherry to Alice Coltrane. Memoirs Of A Dream rings through time as a dizzying gift, rich with wisdom and weirdness sifted from decades on the seeker’s path: “Welcome to a feast of sound and movement…. eat heartily and chew your food.”
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