Search - Sunny Murray With Sabir Mateen :: We Are Not at the Opera

Oh Yeah

John C. Graham | toronto, ontario Canada | 11/15/2005

(5 out of 5 stars)

"
Phenomenal recording.....a superb outing for both these guys, a truly marvellous set of music.



It starts slowly and quietly with brushes and flute, moves through more intense moments with Sabir Mateen on saxophones, and there are short solo passages that provide calming interludes. The drummer is in control and is constantly creating a percussive soundscape that is rhythmically whole, dense, and challenging. It sounds like a living, breathing, entity...expanding, contracting, always moving. Only Sunny Murray can do this. Sabir Mateen obviously knows how to play with such a master. He plays lightly over top with his flute and digs in to play through with his saxophones. Everything he plays has a spiritual feel to it. He is completely in control and absorbed in his playing. He too, is a master of his craft and is equally responsible for the excellence of this music.



I've played this disc many times and always enjoy it enormously. It's delicate in some respects and shows that two master musicians of the avant garde school can play as softly and as gently as they choose while never betraying their roots. It's a disc I've cherished for a while now.



"

Monastic Freedom

Pharoah S. Wail | Inner Space | 10/20/2007

(4 out of 5 stars)

"Recorded in concert on 6/27/98, I bought this around my birthday earlier this year with Brothers Together. That 1 clicked for me right away but I was slower to come around to this one. It was because Hamid Drake and Sunny are so different, and I was completely in Hamid mode/mood at that time.



This one is a grower and rewards repeated listenings. It's nighttime music. Turn off the lights, sit in the dark and let the lush warmth wash over you. For me, this one is about textures and skittering melodies. Sunny's playing here is what took me a while, mainly because it turned out I was so in the mood for Hamid-like power-swinging grooves. It took longer but I love the quiet, textural depth of Sunny's playing here. I don't know if this will scare anyone off or not, and I hope it doesn't, but there's an Eastern quality to his playing here. Some of his brush and cymbal work here would feel at home in a Tibetan monestary, giving a sacred scrape backdrop to the overtone singing of the monks.



This and Palm of Soul, though entirely different sorts of albums, are both real beauties of introspective reflection. Also, though I've never side-by-side A/B/C/Dd for pure recording quality, every time I listen to We Are Not at the Opera it makes me think it's the best, most beautifully recorded album I own by the Eremite label. It's quiter than most... I turn it up to a higher number to get the same volume level of some of the others, but no hiss or anything comes with that. It sounds fantastic... totally rich and full, and with perfect roomy resonance as would be heard were you at this performance. Sabir's tone is beautifully captured here, as is Sunny's touch.



As I get older I keep thinking Interstellar Space should not be considered the be-all and end-all of drum & reed duo albums. At this point in my life, I greatly prefer this album, Dried Rat Dog, Brothers Together and Interstellar Space Revisited (The Music of John Coltrane) (though this one is drum/vibes and electric guitar).









"