Ravi Coltrane - Mad 6

[Nate Dorward]

Hm, trying to sort out my feelings on this one. It was originally released on Eighty Eights & has since been picked up by Columbia. The track-listings suggest a fairly conventional repertory date--a handful of originals, a couple tunes from his Pop's Atlantic period, two Monk tunes, "Gingerbread Boy", Mingus's "Self-Portrait in 3 Colors". But despite the standard material it's mostly in a Steve Coleman mode, most of the tunes set to egghead off-kilter dancefloor rhythms. (The only exceptions are "Ask Me Now" & "Self-Portrait", done as straightforward ballads. & nice ones too.) The piano duties are split between George Colligan & Andy Milne. Ravi Coltrane's playing is a lot better than I've heard before, & yet I don't really like the musical context all that much--for instance, the loud, virtually unrecognizable "Round Midnight" is pretty disconcerting, & I kinda wonder what the point of that drastic reworking is. -- Anyway, basically it's a good disc in a mode of contemporary jazz I'm not sure I enjoy all that much. Others may think differently, though, so would be curious to hear some other takes on the disc.

[relyles]

I purchased the Japanese Eighty-Eights release. I listened to it once and was a bit disappointed. Compared to his RCA recordings it sounded like a step backward. Decent enough playing, but the edge and feeling of adventure was missing. From the Eighty-Eights releases that I have heard thus far I think their focus is on more a less straight ahead. That is not a complaint, but for Ravi Coltrane who seemed to be searching for something else in his previous releases, I expected a little more.

[mke]

Haven't heard the album, but comparing your two posts: is the "Steve Coleman mode" considered straight-ahead now?

[Nate Dorward]

Well, I imagine the difference in perspective comes from the fact that I haven't heard Ravi Coltrane's previous releases under his own name, as relyles has; for all I know they may well be comparatively more adventurous than Mad 6.

I'm not sure I'd call Mad 6 "straightahead" but would certainly agree it's not breaking any new ground (not that I'm asking R.C. to do that necessarily). It's OK, even admirably accomplished, but I can't say I found it strongly appealing.

[relyles]

Originally posted by mke
Haven't heard the album, but comparing your two posts: is the "Steve Coleman mode" considered straight-ahead now?

Fair question. The short answer to your question is no. My initial comments were based on hearing the disc once. In hindsight my use of the term "straight-ahead" may have been misplaced. What is probably more accurate to say is that the Eighty-Eights releases I have heard thus far have tended to be relatively conservative. With that said, I did not detect a strong Steve Coleman influence in my first audition of Mad 6 . That is not to say that it does not exist. Instead, if anything I think the Coleman influence is more evident in the two RCA releases, at least one of which was also produced by Steve Coleman. I don't think Coltrane pushes the edge as much as he did on his previous releases. Nonetheless this thread has motivated me to give the disc at least one more listen in the very near future. If closer listening reveals anything new or different to me, I will let you know.

[Bill Beran]

Relyles: If you bought the eighty-eights you must have gotten the SACD. Can you comment about the sonics of the Ravi Coltrane and any others you have heard? I recently got a SACD player but the amount of SACD product out there is so small it hardly seems worth the trouble. Only SACD I have is Kind of Blue, but I'm not really hearing any huge improvement in sound.

[relyles]

I gave this another listen over the weekend while taking a nice relaxing drive from CT to NYC. Solid enough playing, but still nothing that wows me. As for the Steve Coleman influence, I would say it is minimal. True, many of the selections have arrangements with different rhythms. But with Coleman's music, rhythm often seems to be at the core of what he is trying to do. On the other hand, on the Coltrane disc the use of different rhythms is added on to otherwise conventional playing without adding anything of substance.

Bill Beran, I do have the Japanese release, but it is not a SACD.

[mke]

The first time I heard R. Coltrane was on stage a few months ago, alongside Mark Turner. Both were relatively soft-spoken, but whereas Turner was quite adventurous and interesting, Coltrane I found rather bland. Last month I listened to "Moving Pictures" and also found it pretty boring. I've now checked out some of "Mad 6" and find it much more to my taste: more upbeat and energetic. Ravi shows that he can blow.

I kind of understand where the Steve Coleman comments come from (e.g. the drumming on "26-2," the rhythmic superpositions on "Avignon"), but it's still quite different, maybe contemporary mainstream with a dollop of Coleman's sensibility.

As for the controversial "Round Midnight," I found it okay. Listening to Miles's Olympia version kind of blew it apart for me. You could argue that it's kind of tossed off, but I think that Coltrane works the melody into his solo in some nice ways here and there.

[Jimmy J]

I've seen Ravi live a few times and been really impressed, but nothing he's recorded as a leader or a sideman has captured what I heard live. The best gig I caught was one with Andy Milne on keys, I don't know if this band (I think Andy was the leader) has recorded a live set but if so, I reckon that would capture what I think best defines Ravi.

Plus, he has the pressure of not obviously copping dad's licks...