Terje Rypdal - Odyssey (1975)

Dan: 

In Miami, I often tuned my FM radio to the University of Miami jazz programs. One day, the deejay played "Better Off Without You" from Terje Rypdal's Odyssey album, thus introducing me to the Norwegian guitarist. I'm not sure when or where I picked up the 2-LP set of Odyssey, but it could not have been long after I heard the one cut on the radio.

Rypdal's guitar should be music to the ears of prog lovers. He began as a prog rocker but moved into the jazz genre while retaining many prog tendencies (e.g., long form compositions, emphasis on guitar), but excluding vocals for the most part (e.g., Inger Lise Rypdal adds wordless vocals to After the Rain (1976).

But this was neither jazz-infused rock nor rock-infused jazz. It was something new, unique to both rock and jazz. With his long sustained and pleasantly distorted chords, he could create a wall of sound against which bassists supplied swelling bottom and drummers provided accents. Drummers were mostly freed from the need to play conventional rhythms because most of Rypdal's music floats, soundscapes suspended in time and space. 

As a double LP, Odyssey serves as the perfect showcase for the guitarist. His trio is augmented by organ and trombone. Tracks range in length from the opening "Darkness Falls" at 3:27 to the closer "Rolling Stone" at 23:54. Half of the album's eight tracks are over 10 minutes long. Engineer Jan Erik Kongshaug and Producer Manfred Eicher, who jointly created the "ECM sound," are responsible for converting the guitarist's imagination into a fully realized sonic journey. 

I've collected about a dozen of Rypdal's ECM albums. See my review of one of the best at MORE FAVORITES: Reflections on Jazz in the 1980s: Search results for rypdal (jazzinthe80s.blogspot.com). Odyssey is the choice for our blog because it marks my discovery of one of my favorite artists. For me, Terje Rypdal is the perfect example of the fusion between jazz and progressive rock. 

Steve:

I don't recall when or where I first heard Terje Rypdal, but I'm certain it was from Dan's collection. At the time, I was accustomed to hearing jazz around the house, and I didn't really have the sophistication to distinguish one jazz artist from another (I still don't, arguably). Terje Rypdal, along with other artists on the ECM label, were the first such artists to stand out. Rypdal, as an electric guitarist sounding not too far off from David Gilmour and Steve Hackett in my mind, won me over with his sound alone, especially at the time when I was first getting serious about progressive rock.

After Rypdal's Works compilation CD on ECM (a series afforded to many other ECM artists), Odyssey is definitely the first complete album by Rypdal I fully digested. I copied Dan's LP onto a C90 cassette and brought it with me to college, where it made an impression on my friend Rob, who was finding inspiration in Rypdal's guitar stylings. In one of our inspired jam sessions in the college band room (Rob, being a music major, had a key to the music building for after-hours use), we recorded a version of Rypdal's "Ambiguity" (from the Chaser album) with him on guitar and me on drums. Sadly, that recording is lost. But Odyssey was the catalyst behind all that free-wailing, modal atmospheric stuff for us. For many years to follow, we would continue to record together as The Blue Sign Factory, and the Rypdal aesthetic is one of the few common threads across our many recordings. 

Below is a link to a video I have watched many times, of Rypdal and his band performing for a TV broadcast around the time of Odyssey. It captures the magic of his band better than my words can.