In Line

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For his first recording under his own name, Bill Frisell, then ECM Records house guitarist, presented nine of his compositions in the most personal way, going it alone on four pieces with just overdubs of his guitars and playing the other five in duet with bassist Arild Andersen. The 1982 recording is a remarkable debut, filled with such light and calm that its originality might go overlooked. Frisell was already defining an original style in the mix of acoustic and electronic elements, simplifying melodic materials while bending pitch toward another dimension. There are new relationships between time and technology, too, with time slowing down, multiplying, and building up in layers. Frisell uses chorus and delay to expand his musical universe, shaping the envelope of his guitar sound to suggest backward movement and heighten the impression of malleable time and space. "The Beach" approaches a kind of absolute stillness with layers of continuous organlike sound from the guitar, a soundscape broken only by the birdlike cries of Andersen's high-pitched bowed bass. "In Line," a more animated piece, gradually displaces a repeating Oriental pattern with swirls of folklike chords. The loose unison theme of "Three," almost bop in a world of funhouse mirrors, triggers particularly good dialogue between Frisell and Andersen, who's an ideal accompanist in his appearances here, providing secure, empathic support. --Stuart Broomer

In Line,Bill Frisell,Ecm Records,Avant-Garde,Jazz,Modern Creative,Pop,Post-Bop

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