Marilyn Crispell / Eddie Prévost - Band on the Wall (1994)


Marilyn Crispell / Eddie Prévost - Band on the Wall

This is a summit meeting of two great improvisers, American pianist Marilyn Crispell and British drummer Eddie Prévost, that is surprisingly user friendly. I know Prévost mostly from his reputation with AMM but he sounds here like Shelly Manne gone berserk, ripping off a forest of muffled accents and bristling snare shots played with sturdy control and melodic sense. He certainly isn't Gerry Hemingway, one of Crispell's most frequent drum partners, and that changes her style a bit. You'd still never mistake her for Red Garland in a blindfold test but she plays more inside than usual. Her normal earth-rattling chords give way to fragmented bits of melody resulting in chopped up slivers of bebop and blues on 'Slow Chaser', a prand romantic feel on 'Apart' and a new ability to bring out the nobility and beauty in a melody on Denny Zeitlin's 'Quiet Now'. 'Night Moves' proves she hasn't gone soft though. It begins on an optimistic romantic phrase then slowly worries and builds into a sonic hurricane, Prévost the pattering rain to Crispell's Olympian thunder. Her long, maddened solos Marilyn Crispell on this piece are as good as I've ever heard her play. Altogether this is a playful and relaxed set with more than a hint of the cocky, tongue in cheek side of European improvising but still full of the spiritual intensity of the American brand, a noisy but lovely disc.

Jerome Wilson
Cadence Magazine July 1995

Track List
1. Opening Time
2. Slow Chaser
3. Fragments
4. Dogbolter
5. Apart, Pt. 1
6. As our Tongues Lap up the Burning Air
7. Old Thumper
8. Night Moves
9. Bishop's Finger
10. Irons
11. Quiet Now
12. Spitfire
13. Last Orders