Dance With Death - Andrew Hill (1968)
Admittedly, I’ve featured a lot of jazz here lately. When this one came up as a random selection, though, I figured it was different enough that you’d forgive me.
I don’t know enough music theory to give you a good idea of what different harmonic approaches in jazz are made of. My dummy-who-listens-to-a-lot-of-jazz explanation:
Different styles and eras of jazz have different ways of thinking about what sorts of melody belong on top of a particular chord progression. Bop, which was dominant for a long time, expected the band to keep up with the soloist on key changes and swerves so that it always sounded pretty consonant. Modal jazz emerged with solos that were internally consistent but didn’t always fit perfectly over what the band was playing. What got called avante garde jazz in the 60s saw the soloist occasionally just wandering off the farm entirely and finding his way back to what the band was doing.
(this record isn’t free jazz, but I’d say the concept behind free jazz was that the soloist would wander off and then try to come back, except that each member of the band was also out on walkabout in the meantime)
Anyway, I do love to talk and think about things instead of listening. Hope you enjoy this, though. It’s a pretty fantastic record.
Sadly, Black Sabbath is an original Hill composition and not what would have been an amazing cover.
