John Carter

restocked, Mindblowing reissue!! "The impact of Carter's music stems from his ability to straddle freely the old and the new - combining a genuine melodic/rhythmic impulse with explorations of a more purely rhythmic/harmonic nature. His tone on his instruments, especially the clarinet, is round and wooden like a song, yet there's a certain revelry in sound - textural and timbral - for its own sake. He likes to work with contrast, moving in and out of tempo, altering the flow through dynamic shifting, and working - often very quickly, spilling sound into space - across a span of registers, from extreme top to bottom of his instruments. His clarinet solo piece, "Angles," is truly remarkable in these respects, setting I believe some new standard of excellence for the instrument and bringing it, perhaps for the first time, entirely into contemporary expression. His one soprano saxophone excursion, "Amin" (in trio format) suggests the full extent of his stylistic originality. He plays the horn with an exuberant self-confidence rarely heard on that instrument since John Coltrane played it, yet his lines/sounds flow - "pour out" would be better - completely differently. Especially noteworthy is the way he uses held sounds of varying lengths, at times combined with unusual alterations of timbre, and placed at unlikely "time points," as a means of rhythmic propulsion. Stanley Carter offers some sensitive, cello-like bass accompaniment throughout, and he occasionally steps forward to engage in a head-to-head counterpoint of line with his father. Bill Jeffrey's drums are bright, crisp, and tasteful, surrounding Carter with sound. And the single vocal track with Melba Joyce is satisfying enough (if a bit less substantial than the rest of the music), her work bringing to mind something of the work of Sheila Jordan. This is John Carter's finest recorded work, establishing him once and for all as an artist of major stature and importance." - Henry Kuntz