Tuesday 20 May 2008

Ornette Coleman - Body Meta

Harmolodic/Verve 531 916-2. 1978

Harmolodics eh? From WikiPedia:

[ Coleman defines harmolodics as: "the use of the physical and the mental of one's own logic made into an expression of sound to bring about the musical sensation of unison executed by a single person or with a group." Applied to the particulars of music, this means that "harmony, melody, speed, rhythm, time and phrases all have equal position in the results that come from the placing and spacing of ideas."

Harmolodics seeks to free musical compositions from any tonal center, allowing harmonic progression independent of traditional European notions of tension and release. Harmolodics may loosely be defined as an expression of music in which harmony, movement of sound and melody all share the same value. The general effect is that music achieves an immediately open expression, without being constrained by tonal limitations, rhythmic pre-determination, or harmonic rules. ]

In other words, this is just a right old racket, with everyone playing whatever the hell they want. Shite.

I like a lot of Ornette Coleman stuff, but that was the most unpleasant 40 minutes I can remember in recent weeks.

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