Top 10 Albums, ECM in the 2010s

ECM Records are known primarily for their deliberate, carefully-manicured, aesthetic jazz (“the most beautiful sound next to silence”), but what I treasure ECM for is that the label has worked harder than anyone to prove that jazz knows no geographical borders, which is why so much jazz writing from mainstream publications—which all inevitably focus on America (if at all)—fell short last decade.

Founded in 1969 in Munich, among ECM’s first-ever albums were from American ex-pats living in Europe, Canadian, German, and Norwegian musicians, and they’ve only expanded their reach in the ensuing fifty-plus years. And of course, they’ve attracted a lot of great talent from America too, giving homes to veterans like Carla Bley and Joe Lovano to test out a new sound late into their careers.

Unfortunately, despite being a world-renown and respected label, there’s a dearth of lists or guides for the label as far as I can tell, while I’ve seen jazz-in-general lists from last decade flat-out ECM out-right. Because ECM releases quite a few albums every year, it makes it that much harder to figure out what’s actually worth listening to as ECM’s jazz tends to love a lot of empty space and delicate tones that slip all too easily into the background. Some albums lean heavy into that aesthetic; some try their hands at fusion and lose the aesthetic; some overstay their welcomes.

Of all the 50-or-so ECM albums I’ve heard from last decade, here are my ten favourites, with no rules except a limit of one per artist and no ECM New Series content, or else András Schiff would win multiple spots.

#10. Paul Bley, Gary Peacock & Paul Motian - When Will the Blues Leave (2019)

When Paul Motian passed away in 2011, it made me realize just how few jazz drummers there was left with their own unique styles. Excellent drummers, mortar and muscle, sure, those will always exist. But none like Motian. You could always tell when Motian was behind a kit: he played drums not as a rhythmic pulse—though he swung and blustered plenty when called upon—but as a textural conversation piece with the other instruments. Bley passed away five years later, making this album practically a posthumous release (and Peacock passed away the year after). So it might be cheating to include here: it’s a belated live set from 1999, following the release of the trio’s Not One, Not Two on ECM. Despite working well together, it’s a shame Paul Bley, Gary Peacock, and Paul Motian didn’t record more together because they would be surely regarded as one of best piano trios on ECM if they did. The title track—a very early Ornette Coleman tune (Bley had worked with Coleman around the time that Coleman wrote it)—was first essayed by the trio in 1963, and it’s better than the version on Paul Bley With Gary Peacock as well as Coleman’s original for the same reasons: faster and more abstract than either. Bley handles the theme, getting it out of the way as soon as he can so that they can get to the solos faster; in general, Peacock’s bass is a hard-hitting rumble, and there are snatches on “When Will the Blues Leave” where it sounds like he’s a cross between Charlie Haden and a rock bassist. That’s immediately followed by a bluesy solo take from Bley of “I Loves You, Porgy” in the style of Keith Jarrett that reminds us that the blues are here to stay.

#9. Food - This is not a miracle (2015)

Food is a duo comprised of Thomas Strønen (drums, percussion, keys, electronics) and Iain Bellamy (saxophone, electronics); their albums on ECM feature assistance from none other than Christian Fennesz, making glitch-drone-jazz that is so unique to ECM it makes you wonder how they landed a record deal with them in the first place. Opposed to a lot of other ECM records out there, I actually wish these songs were longer; they had the right idea on their previous album Mercurial Balm and the live album Quiet Inlet—this album is less jazzy than either, as well as not featuring trumpeter Nils Petter Molvær—but I like these blown soundscapes. Fennesz comes from a drone-ambient background, and no stranger to patience, and yet opener “First Sorrow” feels rushed when they should have let the dehydrated earth guitar chords and blasted bass beats really sink in; the heavily-manipulated organ at the end feels like it doesn’t get the chance to go anywhere. That said, Strønen’s drums throughout feel programmed but are never stiff, nudging these songs forward with feelings of vague optimism. Meanwhile, Bellamy’s saxophone blows clear and hot, piercing through these textures—the minimalist keyboard loop of “Where Dry Desert Ends” and the ocean of drone of “Without the Laws”—with direct melodies. Song titles like “This Is Not a Miracle,” “Sinking Gardens of Babylon,” “Death of Niger,” and “Deceased to Frost” suggest a far darker album than this actually is; there is still sky to behold in this apocalyptic future.

#8 Sokratis Sinopoulos - Eight Winds (2015)

Athens-born Sokratis Sinopoulos makes his bandleader debut here, leading a quartet consisting of Yann Keerim (piano), bassist Dimitris Tsekouras (bass), and Dimitris Emmanuel (drums). Sinopoulos plays the lyra, a bowed string instrument whose timbre makes this quartet configuration unique: it has a striking, practically-vocal quality that makes me think of a Mediterranean-sounding fiddle, and it takes up most of the scenery on this album, with the other musicians mostly offering support for Sinopoulos to do his thing. Prior to the recording, Sinopoulos asked his quartet, “Especially in the solos, if you find yourself playing anything that could be easily described as ‘jazz’ or ‘folk’ or ‘classical’, then try to avoid it.” A tall order—outright impossible on these folk-jazz albums—but I get the sense that Sinopoulos wanted to celebrate his Greek heritage while also avoid audience expectations picking up an ECM album by Greek musicians. (Running just under an hour, the album can be tighter by outright scotching the last three songs, which includes two reprises that ECM was tacking onto albums at the end for no good reason.) Eight Winds has sonic twists and turns, with two outright dance numbers (“Thrace” and “Street Dance”) mixed between the contemplations on nature, and am I wrong to think the street they’re referencing on “Street Dance” must be somewhere in Ireland and not Greece? Meanwhile, “In Circles”’ bassline is the album at its most immediately jazzy, while Emmanuel’s hand percussion takes “Aegean Sea” to a new plane in the second half. It all lends to a far more varied listen than a lot of the other ethnic folk-based ECM jazz albums.

#7. Wolfgang Muthspiel - Rising Grace (2016)

After Austrian classical guitarist Wolfgang Muthspiel worked with rhythm section Larry Grenadier and Brian Blade, both of whom have played with Brad Mehldau, on 2014’s Driftwood, he expands the trio into a quintet for Rising Grace by nabbing Mehldau himself as well as Blue Note player/To Pimp a Butterfly guest Ambrose Akinmusire. I think Akinmusire’s a great trumpeter, but his albums are all buried under the weight of their own importance and embarrassing rap crossovers, while I haven’t liked Mehldau since he stopped covering Radiohead regularly, circa 2005; his albums have grown longer and longer without as many melodic ideas to support them as when he first broke through. Muthspiel taps greatness out of both; it’s because of them that I rank this ahead of, not only Muthspiel’s other records, but the records of ECM’s other guitarists like John Abercrombie and Jakob Bro. The textures both provide on “Intensive Care” make it the best song that breaches 10 minutes on this list, with Akinmusire doing the little flutters that remind me of Miles Davis on “Spanish Key,” while Mehldau’s ascending chords around the 7:20 mark remind of me Popol Vuh’s “Ah!” in reverse: strange and enticing. The title of “Triad Song” lets you know the song’s harmonic ideas outright but Muthspiel’s solo is bottled sunshine being let you in brief flashes. As often the case with this label, it’s a long player at 68 minutes; the last two songs—the shortest ones—feel superfluous after the tribute to Kenny Wheeler that precedes them.

#6. Roscoe Mitchell - Bells for the South Side (2017)

Recorded live to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians which Roscoe Mitchell helped establish, Bells for the South Side is an immense and generous offering: two discs that runs close to 130 minutes. Mitchell uses all that space to test out his different configurations of his four various trios—including drummer Tyshawn Sorey, practically everywhere in the 2010s—before ultimately combining them all on closer “Red Moon in the Sky,” which Mitchell serves up with “Odwalla,” a piece he composed in 1973 for the Art Ensemble of Chicago, which he co-founded, giving this album the feeling of a massive career retrospective. Even knowing that this isn’t Mitchell’s first album on ECM, it’s still crazy to me that it was released on Manfred Eicher’s label, which I associate with global and austere jazz, and not usually music this out there. It does get austere—particularly when William Winant plays all manner of bells and sirens on the title track (which does spin its wheels until trumpeter Hugh Ragin finally arrives)—but for the most part, it’s a free jazz cacophony: cavernous drumming and Jaribu Shahid playing a bass guitar that sounds like a vacuum on “EP 7849” or the build-up to the saxophone arrival on “The Last Chord,” which takes its name seriously, as if it were the last chord these musicians would ever play.

#5. Jack DeJohnette, Ravi Coltrane & Matthew Garrison - In Movement (2016)

Jack DeJohnette needs no introduction as one of the greatest drummers, jazz or otherwise, best known for his work on Miles Davis’ fusion albums and re-vitalizing Sonny Rollins’ late-career albums, among supporting many other legends. As a bandleader, his solo albums leave much to be desired, with way too many displays of his instrumental prowess or lightweight fluff. In Movement is his best album I’ve heard since Album Album three decades ago (also on ECM). Here, he works alongside the sons of John Coltrane and Jimmy Garrison and proves that jazz knows no generational divide. Ravi Coltrane’s career has been dwarfed by his heritage—that’s what happens when you're the child of John and Alice Coltrane, alas—although you’ll definitely have heard his saxophone playing if you’ve heard Flying Lotus’ Cosmogramma; meanwhile, Matthew Garrison doubles up on bass and electronics. Opener “Alabama” should already inform you how ambitious these guys are. Originally written in response to the 16th Street Baptist Church bombing of 1963, where the KKK used explosives to kill 4 girls and injure 22 others, John Coltrane’s original is harrowing and mournful and surely among Coltrane’s best songs. Both Ravi Coltrane and Jack DeJohnette are able to capture the righteousness and sadness of the original because the situation hasn’t changed as much as we’d like. Like 1980’s Special Edition, there’s a few tributes: “Two Jimmys” is for Jimmy Garrison and Jimi Hendrix, while “Rashied” is purely a drum-saxophone exercise in reference to Interstellar Space where John Coltrane played with drummer Rashied Ali, so Garrison sits out. But Garrison is pivotal for the title track, an original composition that’s also the longest one and the best one too, using solemn electric keyboard chords that slowly give way to a synth pulse—!?!—that frames the playing of his bandmates.

#4. Tigran Hamasyan - Luys i Luso (2015)

Born in Armenia, but based in America, pianist Tigran Hamasyan gathered acclaim early on for integrating Armenian folk influences into American jazz (“I suppose it's jazz in the sense that I'm improvising […] But the language I try to use when I'm improvising is not bebop but Armenian folk music,” he said to The Guardian); I’m positive ECM would’ve signed him much sooner if not for his interests in fusion. His ECM debut a decade into his career, Luys i Luso—Light From Light—partners up with Harutyun Topikyan conducting the Yerevan State Chamber Choir, after immersing himself in his native country’s sacred hymns, some of which date all the way back to the fifth century. Released on the centenary of the Armenian genocide, this is a highly introspective music for piano and vocals only, eschewing the pop, rock, and avant-garde experiments that was making him a crossover success. The different vocal techniques—intense syncopation in the climax of “Voghormea Indz Astvats”; tight harmonies-as-rhythm on “Bazum En Qo Gtutyunqd”; the graceful female solo at the end of “Ov Zarmanali (var. 2)”—makes for a far more varied listen than you might expect. Hamasyan himself is on fine form too, performing a short, solo rendition of “Ov Zarmanali (var. 1)” to introduce one of the album’s two epics and also easing you into the pool in general, or his solo that builds to the climax of “Ov Zarmanali (var. 2).” It’s one of ECM’s most unique, most powerful releases—certainly the best and most epic jazz album of 2015—and I eagerly look forward to see if Hamasyan will return to ECM.

#3. Nik Bärtsch’s Ronin - Llyrìa (2010)

With a quintet made up of Sha (saxophone and bass clarinet), Björn Meyer (bass), Andi Pupato (percussion) and Bärtsch’s childhood friend Kaspar Rast (drums), Bärtsch’s Ronin’s approach to jazz is one rooted in minimalism and funk that reminds me most of Can, the German rock band that cross-pollinated (in their case free )jazz with the New York minimalists and funk music. Like the minimalists, small changes in sound are seismic in scope, and Bärtsch is really committed to the bit: no solos, weird for a jazz artist. (Although a solo might have helped “Modul 53”; set to a medium tempo, it doesn’t even pretend to want to get interesting and then the climax is just an ascending scale.) The interplay between Sha (a whirling devish at the 5:40 mark of “Modul 51”) and Bärtsch himself on keys is turned into head-nodding grooves thanks in no small part to the three-man rhythm section here. Alas, percussionist Andi Pupato is missing on 2018’s follow-up Awase, which is why I rank Llyria higher: no song on Awase gets as funky as “Modul 52,” and Pupato helps transition “Modul 51” from its slow start into the next section at the 3:21 mark, like an insect shaking off morning dew with its wings.

#2. Carla Bley, Andy Sheppard, Steve Swallow - Trios (2013)

Though Carla Bley’s piano drum-less trio of Andy Sheppard (sax) and Steve Swallow (bass) have played together for two decades now, they haven’t recorded much together, so her trilogy of albums on ECM rights that wrong. Having entirely self-produced her output thus far, ECM debut Trios marks the first time she’s had input from someone else, in this case, from label-head Manfred Eicher, who helped with the album sequencing. Trios marks another radical departure for Bley, which is that these are not new compositions, but selections across her career, breathing new life into old classics. The trio strips down “Utviklingssang” compared to the version on 1981’s Social Studies—the drums were basically a metronome there anyway, so removing them and letting Swallow keep time makes total sense—letting that haunting melody shine; Swallow, who played on the first recording, gets to introduce that melody this time instead of support it. “Vashkar” is performed by Bley for the first time here, and totally unlike the fusion version by Tony Williams available on 1969’s Emergency!, with Sheppard’s solo incorporating Eastern scales. “The Girl Who Cried Champagne”—a poem in miniature within a song title—keeps the bossa nova feel of the original from 1987’s Sextet despite no percussion, purely on the strength of Bley’s keyboards. “Champagne” has been expanded into a 3-part suite as well as the preceding two songs, demonstrating Bley’s expansive compositional chops that she would explore more on her next two albums on ECM that form a trilogy, which are also her last two studio recordings before she passed away last month.

#1. Vijay Iyer Sextet - Far From Over (2017 | Bandcamp)

Coming from a rich history of avant-garde and modern jazz pianists including Thelonious Monk and Andrew Hill, Vijay Iyer still carved out his own style early on by adopting Indian Carnatic music techniques into his piano playing, and further established himself through a carnivorous pop appetite on his ACT albums (covers of M.I.A., Michael Jackson, to Flying Lotus) and hip-hop collaborations with Mike Ladd. I wrote a guide about him for Bandcamp and interviewed him about some of them; talking to him remains one of my favorite moments of my music writing career. Far From Over is my favourite album he’s ever done. For one thing, it’s a set of ten originals, allowing him to flex his compositional skills; for another thing, he forgoes the trio format which had served him so reliably on Historicity, Accelerando, and Break Stuff, expanding to a sextet. Thus, with Graham Haynes (horns and electronics), Steve Lehman (alto sax) and Mark Shim (tenor sax) joining him on the frontlines, Far From Over gets far more colourful than his other records, which were already colourful to begin with because of Iyer’s breakneck dexterity combined with his ridiculous finger-span that allows him to play chords that other pianists physically cannot. Thus, while “For Amiri Baraka,” an elegiac tribute that sounds like it could have been a Radiohead cover, might have appeared on one of Iyer’s earlier records, you wouldn’t have heard the horns and saxes acting like a big band supporting Iyer during his whirlwind solo on the pulsing-then-surging title track or the off-kilter funk of “Nope,” where Iyer’s keyboard tones are reminiscent of what Chick Corea was doing for Miles Davis during the fusion years.