214. Sacred System / Chapter One: Book of Entrance (1996)

Dub alert. Book of "En-trance," get it? I got into Laswell after I saw his credit on albums by people like Henry Threadgill, then discovered his towering discography under many pseudonyms. Laswell works in NYC with everybody from Nona Hendryx to John Zorn. I get the impression that if you hung around the Bowery for long enough, and made a habit of staying up way past your bedtime, you'd eventually end up recording with him. 'Chapter One' is the first of four records (I think it's four) under his Sacred System moniker. The music is a unique flavor of ethereal trance-oriented dub. Tracks build from subtle, soulful bass grooves into all-out psychedelic dub glaciers where the keyboards speak in tongues, replete with weird echoes, prepared loops, backwards banshee wails, and self oscillating delays... but chill, really chill. You get the picture. 

If you're not all that into trance or dub, or you get turned off by the genre description, please understand that this is not your garden variety, up-all-night dance soundtrack. Laswell is a master producer and does not employ effects for their novel value, nor does he beat you over the head with them. (He doesn't beat you over the head with his beats, either.) He knows how to build a musical track into an eight-minute experience for the ears and mind; his aural soundscapes are constantly in flux, with new textures coming and going, perking the attention span. It's a process of regeneration -- new chittering spasms of sound are born as others decay, so out with the old and in with the new as the groove rolls onward. The bottom line is that you never know what's lurking around the next sonic corner. 'Book of Entrance' is a fantastic example, not just a clever title.

46. Donald Byrd / Byrd's Word (1955)

It was announced that Mr. Byrd passed away early this month. Before his role in jazz education and outreach, Byrd was a noted session leader and prolific collaborator. Byrd's Word (not to be confused with Charlie Byrd's Byrd's Word! from 1958) is an early disc of his that was recorded for Savoy in 1955 and shows his original, pre-funk style on the open trumpet. When a guy has a good tone, I love to hear him use it. That's the case here, although his licks are understated compared to his pyrotechnics on other people's dates, like Coltrane's exemplary "Lush Life." Chambers plays bass, Basie alum Frank Foster and the versatile Hank Jones do tenor and piano, with Kenny Clarke on drums. Byrd's "Gotcha Goin' n' Comin'" is a bluesy exercise in mood and rhythm that seems to be as much about Clarke and Chambers, as it is about Byrd. There's a lot of space in the middle and it's heavy on the atmosphere. But once it whispers goodbye, the followup is the jolting "Long Green" that sounds straight off one of the Charlie Parker Savoys. Foster is a versatile player who can play bop as well as he can do hard swing or ballads. There's room for everyone, before the album closes with "Star Eyes" and the beautiful "Someone to Watch Over Me." The latter is my favorite cut on the album, but it works only if I listen to the whole album first. It's a fitting closer to the preceding program, featuring a sentimental intro from Byrd, a moving legato chorus from Foster and one from Chambers, then the go-lightly contributions of Jones and all, who carry it out and are careful not to break the magic. Overall it's a very loose hard bop session that's probably easy to forget and may be similar to other groups, but is superbly rendered.