Ralph Towner, Eddie Gomez, Jack DeJohnette

Batik puts the guitars of Ralph Towner in a trio with two of the most responsive rhythm players of the period, bassist Eddie Gomez and drummer Jack DeJohnette. Recorded in Oslo in January 1978 and released by ECM that September, it gathers five Towner compositions, one of them a sixteen-minute title piece. Towner's acoustic instruments meet a bass and drums team that listens closely and moves fast, and the trio plays as three equal voices.

By then Towner had been recording for ECM since Trios / Solos in 1972, alongside his work with Oregon, the band he co-founded in 1970. He began as a pianist and studied classical guitar in Vienna, and here he plays twelve-string guitar, classical guitar and piano. Gomez and DeJohnette already knew each other well, having played together in the Bill Evans trio. The album was recorded at Talent Studio with engineer Jan Erik Kongshaug and produced by Manfred Eicher. ECM's own note calls the album a unique production project.

Waterwheel opens with Towner's fingerpicking doubled by an overdubbed twelve-string, Gomez darting through the chiming chords and taking a solo while DeJohnette keeps a light, steady pulse. Shades Of Sutton Hoo is looser and more spacious, built on deep resonances and the shimmer of cymbals. The title track is the centre of the record, a long contrapuntal piece in which the bass follows every turn of the guitar and DeJohnette takes a notable drum solo. The closing Green Room moves to piano, a slow, mournful piece coloured by bass and brushed drums.

Writing for AllMusic, Scott Yanow noted that the music "unfolds slowly but logically" and that Towner's "quiet sound displays a lot of inner heat," advising listeners to hear it closely and loud. Tyran Grillo of ECM Reviews wrote of Waterwheel that its "passage through the sky is marked only by DeJohnette's delicate metronome." He also praised the way the drums magnify the precision of the guitar while the bass keeps everything in motion. He also linked the title track to the territory Towner had explored with his Solstice group.

This CD (ECM 1121) belongs to ECM's Touchstones series, launched in 2008 to bring catalogue albums back in cardboard sleeves; this edition was issued in October 2008. The album was first released in 1978.