Don Ellis Octet - Pieces Of Eight. Live At UCLA (1967)

Artist: Don Ellis Octet
Title Of Album: Pieces Of Eight. Live At UCLA
Year: 1967
Label: Wounded Bird Records
Style: Jazz / Post Bop / Progressive Jazz / Fusion / Trumpet
Format: FLAC(tracks +.cue, log + Full Artwork )
Bitrate: Lossless
Total Size: 410 MB (+ 3% rec.)

Recorded live at UCLA in 1967, this archival release is seeing the light of day repackaged and remastered nearly four decades after its initial performance. Pieces of Eight was assembled only once for these recordings, with Don Ellis offering up a two-disc set of frenzied but enjoyable performances. The highlights are no doubt Ellis' fascination with difficult rhythmic combinations and manic fluctuations of odd time signatures and his band, surprisingly, performs most of the material with great fluidity. There's also a surprising amount of microtonality from the players as well. Fans of Ellis' work will no doubt revel in these compositions and what is essentially a "new" recording from a truly groundbreaking composer.”

“This album is newest release of Don Ellis to date. Originally recorded in 1967 during their live show in UCLA, this recording was never released in whole. Around half of it was released as cassette and was only sold during Don Ellis concerts. Now there is a full material with quite good sound quality.

This octet was assembled only once specially for this recording, so in some sense this CD set contains unique materials.

The music from the first look is a bit modernised big band sound, what isn't true. First of all, only a small combo is playing there, just trying to imitate big band's sound. But most important, there are many elements which doing this music much more complex and experimental from regular big band sound. And for sure main difference is rhythms - unusual, very mixed. They gave to all sound a bit strange, "world" atmosphere.

For me this album sounds as proto jazz fusion, still with strong be-bop and big band roots, but with many of small elements showing that the new jazz era is coming. To be honest I am not sure that this album can attract prog rock fans, but it could be interesting for jazz lovers and jazz fusion researchers.

Tracklist:
CD1
01. Slippin' 'N' Slidin'
02. Sadness Shouldn't Go so Deep
03. Bali Dancer
04. With Respect to Coltrane
05. Pete's 7
06. Let's Go to Sleep
07. Blues for Hari

CD2
01. Milestones
02. It's a Snap
03. I Love Us
04. The Squeeze
05. Lush Life
06. Turk's Works