The Singles Collection is not a compilation. Despite the title, it is a new studio album of ten short, tightly arranged pieces that Terje Rypdal recorded for ECM in 1988. It is the third record by his rock-minded trio with bassist Bjørn Kjellemyr and drummer Audun Kleive, here joined by a keyboard player. The pieces are concise and built like songs, and the Norwegian guitarist plays them closer to rock than to jazz.
Rypdal had been with ECM since the early 1970s. With Kjellemyr and Kleive, the band known as The Chasers, he had already made Chaser (1985) and Blue (1987). For this session the trio became a quartet with Allan Dangerfield on keyboards and Synclavier synthesizer, who also wrote three of the pieces. The music was recorded digitally in August 1988 at Rainbow Studio in Oslo, engineered by Jan Erik Kongshaug and produced by Manfred Eicher. Steve Lake wrote the liner notes.
Most tracks run between two and a half and five and a half minutes, and they lean on riffs, grooves and hooks rather than long improvised arcs. The opener, provocatively titled There Is a Hot Lady in My Bedroom and I Need a Drink, sets the tone with rippling keyboards, melodic bass leads and heavy guitar. Kjellemyr's spiralling bass lines drive Sprøtt (Norwegian for "crazy") over a Hammond-like organ sound and a firm backbeat. Mystery Man slows to a noir ballad, and the closing Crooner Song lets Rypdal's sustained, singing tone carry a plain melody.
At the time of release the record was heard as a challenge to jazz orthodoxy, from a guitarist who had long crossed freely between jazz, rock and composed music. In Jazz Journal (July 1989) Michael Tucker wrote that "this iconoclastic Norwegian mounts a further assault on the shrine of jazz purism". He described the opener as "an intoxicating blend of rippling keyboards, Metheny-like lead bass figures and heavy duty guitar trucking". He also praised the tight arrangements and the variety of tone colour across the record.
This is the cassette edition of ECM 1383, first released in 1989, with the same ten tracks as the LP and CD.
