Gordon Beck Trio, Gyroscope

There was something very exciting going on in jazz at the end of the 60s. All those transient one-off sessions that resulted in, for John McLaughlin alone, sitting in on Joe Farrell's Song Of The Wind, Wayne Shorter's Super Nova and Moto Grosso Feio and Miroslav Vitous' Infinite Search. These albums all share the same intense exploratory passion, usually a product of the diversity of individual musicians involved. But with Gyroscope along comes the established Gordon Beck Trio making waves in an uncharted territory just north of the augmented C's. What makes it even more surprising is that Gyroscope was recorded in August 1968, less than a year since cutting Experiments With Pops on December 7, 1967, with JM contributing vital rhythm chops and sweet solo statements that he clearly relishs, as he makes the long-awaited step out from the shadow of his unbearable pop sessions into the beautiful light of jazzman. Quite an appropriate bridge really given that the material is pop but the renditions are pure jazz. But here we're without JM which is a shame because it would have been fine. The guitarist's versitility would have suited this session very well indeed.

The title track is up first and it lets you know exactly where these guys are going - everywhere! Darting between bebop and Free Jazz nuclei they redefine the song's boundaries at each turn, circling round a standard walking bassline before spinning off into a Free form eddy. Hey! Ain't that what a gyroscope is anyhow?

Beck's piano playing is somewhere between Walter Bishop, McCoy Tyner and Oscar Peterson. Slick and melodious with a Latin bounce, but he never allows us to relax for too long before a crunch and we're off again, exploring, pushing, making tracks.

It's a wonder how many of these ground breaking sessions remain unrecognised. Movements in music are a mass effect. Even Miles needed to get his inspiration from somewhere outside a phial. Ok, so Ornette Coleman had been playing pretty Free most of the previous decade before Gyroscope was recorded, but perhaps Coleman's greatest statement of the early genre was yet to arrive three years later with Science Friction. Who knows how influential Gyroscope really was? It's easy to think a lot more of Gyroscope which at its worst is simply a versatile album packed with big strong tunes and lots of little surprises, but at its time of release a pretty middle ground trio breaking out and getting wild wouldn't have gone unnoticed. Another treasure brought to us by Art Of Life Records.