COMPOSERS: Weber
LABELS: ECM
WORKS: jazz
PERFORMER: Eberhard Weber (b)
CATALOGUE NO: ECM 519 707-2
So dedicated to expanding the tonal and textural range of the bass that he had his own five-string version specially designed, Eberhard Weber, with the aid of various electronic devices, has now come close to achieving his goal: ‘the bass as orchestra’. Unlike Orchestra – Weber’s previous foray into solo recording – Pendulum utilises pre-recording techniques not available to him in live performance.
The result is a series of pieces ranging from his trademark plaintive melodies set against conventional bass figures, through Eastern-influenced improvisations over a drone accompaniment, to abstract tone-poems drawing on an astonishing range of bowed, plucked or long-sustained sounds. By turns languorous, plangent and impressionistic, but always affecting and virtuosic, Pendulum is the most intriguing bass excursion since Peter Ind’s excellent Jazz Bass Baroque. Chris Parker