Sir Duke

Being a cautious fan of Zappa's One Size Fits All - cautious partly because my favourite song on the album, the gorgeous 'Inca Roads', features lyrics regarding ugly groupies (not keen) as well as sci-fi creation theories (very keen) - I've been exploring the work of keyboard maestro George Duke, specifically the 1974 trio of albums over which the analogue synthesizer became more and more the dominant instrument, Faces In Reflection, Feel and The Aura Will Prevail.

Much of this stuff, especially Feel, is every bit the equal of Herbie Hancock's work around the same time such as Thrust, perhaps even Headhunters (an album I've always found a little flat and boring after the excitement of the Mwandishi trilogy) and is notable for some completely off-the-hook synth playing. Duke's often neglected as an electric jazz pioneer, and while his later work did slip into the same disco pit as Hancock, these three albums are worth investigating for anyone who loves fusion, prog... or the squelchy splendour of analogue synthesizers.

Here's 'Old Slippers' from Feel, which features not only some vintage wobble from Duke but also a badass guitar solo from Frank Zappa:

A nice wee nod...

...from Simon Reynolds regarding my take on Neil Ardley's Harmony Of The Spheres here. Ardley's album is every bit as fantastic as Simon suggests, although I would add that it reminds me an awful lot of the immediate post-Gabriel era of Genesis circa 1976-1980, the period that even Genesis apologists seem to find problematic, mainly due to Phil Collins's repositioning as lead vocalist. But the increasing prominence of Collins (plus ex-WR drummer Chester Thompson's recruitment as live sticksman) also means that there's plenty of pseudo-fusion taking place on these albums, which often results in a 'British Weather Report' vibe comparable to that of Spheres. I'm thinking of tracks like 'Dance On A Volcano' and 'Los Endos' from A Trick Of The Tail, 'Wot Gorilla?' and 'Unquiet Slumbers For The Sleepers' from Wind And Wuthering, 'Burning Rope' from ...And Then There Were Three and 'Duke's Travels'/'Dukes End' from Duke. These are much more convincing examples of a very British take on fusion - combined with a solid pop sensibility that the US musicians obviously lacked - than Collins's more strictly jazzwise explorations on the horribly dated early albums by Brand X.