Offramp

After the fantabulous secret gem of AS FALLS WICHITA SO FALLS WICHITA FALLS captured the imaginations of space cadet boomers who huddled in cults seeking new rosetta stones, Pat Metheny, Lyle Mays and Nana Vasconcelos, recruited drummer Dan Gottlieb from earlier Metheny projects and bassist Steve Rodby, and dubbed themselves the Pat Metheny Group. Only a few months, two seasons, after the release of WICHITA, PMG released the new gemstone of jazz: OFFRAMP, a veritable freak of musical nature. Continuing to court the folk and jazz mutation full of floating airy dreams, and marrying it to post-Bop cross currents of other Metheny recordings, OFFRAMP becomes a fusion jazz project like no other. It is abstract and cerebral and sometimes even edgy (title track).This is where Pat picks up that guitar synthesizer and carves a path that will lead to his epic Secret Story in '92 and The Road To You in '93, both of which, in my opinion, are the PMG's most extraordinary adventures in "world" jazz new age. It is this instrumentation which influences the sounds of Lee Ritenour and even Joni Mitchell in the later decades, a vibration that eagerly pulls you in and envelopes you. While WICHITA and some earlier recordings married Pat to a folky interpretation of jazz, this new guitar technology gave him the free range to explore new and future considerations. OFFRAMP is a milestone, a key point in Metheny music and one of the best and most innovative jazz albums in the industry. Are You Going With Me? is considered one of Pat's most iconic songs and duly receives much jazz radio airplay, so if you are familiar with that but not the rest, be advised that there are no two moods on this masterpiece which alike, all (as with most Metheny works) will carry you off to different universes and multiverses. For instance, the opener Barcarole immediately herald's that this album is different in texture and sound with synthetic guitar and Brazilian splashes from Nana Vasconcelos, while Au Lait does a small hat tip to Herbie Hancock's Watermelon Man and playfully emulates the sounds of a frothing bistro, and The Bat II closes the album with a second helping of an unusual soundscape Pat began two albums ago ("80/81") with Michael Brecker and Jack DeJohnette, here DeJohnette's flutterings are replaced with synthetic batwing undulations. The beauty of PMG and Metheny/Mays albums is that they somehow always find a way to be "different" from each other and yet still capture a "sound" which is always decidedly identifiable as Metheny/Mays. This is another Masterpiece from the same year they issued their first Masterpiece, a banner year for Pat and Lyle as their creative juices overflowed onto the canvas.Try to purchase a German made ECM label release of this album (CD or vinyl), you will find it sonically perfect, engineered and mastered with absolute precision with zero audible imperfections and absolutely no trace of tape hiss or clicks. My original 1981 vinyl LP was also perfectly engineered and mastered and sleeved in antistatic professional protection in the day (ECM GmbH, a German company, was and is a standard bearer for perfectionist audio).If you love this music and it is your first Metheny album, I strongly urge you to get AS FALLS WICHITA SO FALLS WICHITA FALLS and SECRET STORY as your follow up purchases. From there, the wind will blow you in any correct direction.

Au lait is very soothing loved it

リアルタイムで聴かなかったことを後悔するシリーズ。当時確かエフエム雑誌の特選だった。