Product information :  Gateway

Recorded at Tonstudio Bauer, Ludwigsburg, Germany in March 1975.

On GATEWAY, their first recording together, this trio of innovators did more than just cement the image of a group sound that would endure some twenty years hence. In the first days of Manfred Eicher's label, they helped define some of the parameters of what would become one of ECM's signature guitar sounds.

On "May Dance," a simple modal theme soon gives way to expressive, telepathic free improvisations, as DeJohnette's crystalline cymbal textures shade in and around the beat--playing in and out of time; meanwhile, Holland's muscular lines anticipate and support each complex rhythmic variation. Abercrombie extends on their tumultuous dialogue with a canny array of textures, harmonic contrasts and polytonal melodic lines. On "Unshielded Desire" the drummer engages Abercrombie in a furious dialogue, while on DeJohnette's "Sorcery 1" the trio moves from roiling waves of sound to a fat, rocking vamp worthy of Jimi Hendrix's Experience.