The Most Beautiful Sounds Next to Silence

Fish Out of Water was Lloyd's 2nd "comeback", following shortly on the heels of the first one (when Michel Petrucciani coaxed him out of semi-retirement), and kicked off a long string of albums on ECM (at this point, I think there have been around 20 discs).

It's easy to come up with reasons to be enthusiastic about this album. Lloyd plays vigorously and effortlessly, avoiding the out-of-focus weakness that appeared on some of those famous 60s albums. He's joined by the same rhythm section that backed Jan Garbarek on Witchi-Tai-To and Dansere - Bobo Stenson, Palle Daniellson and Jon Christensen. They offer a wonderfully loose backing. The album starts off strongly with the upbeat title track, then veers into exoticism of the best type with "Hagia Sophia" (Lloyd starts out with some breathy alto flute hear, then returns to tenor). "The Dirge" is a Coltraneish minor blues that also appears on the live album Rabo De Nube (under the title "Migration of the Spirit") while "Bharati" is a beautiful quasi-ballad that would get revisited on Hyperion with Higgins (I think this version is better, but both are great).

My only beef, a small one, is that the music tends to blur together at times, particularly toward the end of the album. Nothing wrong with the uptempo "Eyes of Love" and "Mirror" (a beautiful ballad), but they don't add that much to what came before. "Tellaro" is a bonus CD-only track and, while nice, isn't on the level of the original album.

Still, these are all minor complaints. Anybody who likes Lloyd's other ECM albums, and more generally music that lies somewhere in the intersection of post-Coltrane jazz and post-Bill-Evans jazz, should enjoy it.

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