Pat Metheny Group - Travels 2 LP - REPOST - 1983 (24/96 Vinyl Rip)

The Pat Metheny Group is a jazz group founded in 1977. The core members of the group are guitarist and bandleader Pat Metheny, composer, keyboardist and pianist Lyle Mays (who was part of the group's inception in 1977), and bassist and producer Steve Rodby (joined in 1980). Other long-standing members include Paul Wertico who was the drummer for 18 years.

The album "Travels" from the Pat Metheny Group won in 1984 the Grammy Award for bestJazz Fusion Performance. I repost this album because several people have asked for it… I have not faded anything on this live album, because working with cues has no secrets for me anymore. With special thanks to Imageburn (for the16 Bit); with DVD2oneV2 (for the 24 Bit files) a cue file is not required..
Enjoy this warm and analog sounding atmospheric album with highlights of this fantastic band! Note: Tracks walk-over in each other; so gapless burning is essential to seamless play the whole album.




Review:

I became aware of Pat Metheny from the TV screening of Joni Mitchell - Shadows and Light, during which this young guy went into a guitar solo whose tone and phrasing were like nothing heard before on Earth. I had always responded to music visually and did not yet know that this condition was called synaesthesia, and to this day feel sorry for those who cannot share this experience. With Pat's solo it was like someone was painting the whole sky with a huge brush of liquid silver, accompanied by a feeling of utter tenderness and compassion. (No drugs, honest)

Soon after, a friend of mine tracked down this album, Travels, and my first hearing was of the majestic opening track, Are you Going With Me? surging from his open attic window, across the rooftops of Leeds Bedsit land (he'd probably have got an ASBO now), and immediately knew who it was without having to be told, just from the pictures going off in my head. Are you Going with Me?, features a guitar sound, again unlike anything heard before. Like Whale song from Saturn. It was actually a midi guitar hooked up to a synth, but it was the first time I'd heard a midi guitar used to make real music and not just as a gimmick. Even twenty years later, whenever I drive west, into a sunset, this is what goes on the car player.

The next song, The Trees, The Sky is just that. Swooping over endless mountains and valleys of trees, and err…, sky. There is a country bluegrass element here, but amalgamated with jazz of the utmost sophistication, a combination not quite like anything heard before.

After that we get what for me is the best of the best - Goodbye. This track is compositionally the most sophisticated on the album. I would defy anyone with a bit of musical nous (even quite a bit actually) to figure out how the chords are moving in this piece. It is all over the place, and yet with nothing harsh in it at all, just infinite kindness. This is a backing for a guitar solo that just climbs and climbs until you've nowhere else to go but out of the top of your own head. Then you are bought back down to Earth as gently as a feather.

The next two songs, Phase Dance and Straight on Red, are very lively, upbeat songs that feature the stereo phasing that was another Metheny signature guitar sound. They also feature great solos from Lyle Mays, my favourite pianist of the modern jazz age, and Pat's writing partner, whose spirit and musical values are so uncannily close to his own.

Disc 1 ends with the lovely Farmer's Trust. Another one with a touch of bluegrass but with a feeling of a six in the morning walk through a misty farmscape, with the land just waking up around you.

The second disc has more fine songs, with gorgeous solos from both Pat and Lyle throughout, but the standout for me is the twenty minute-ish re-visioning of their amazing title piece from the earlier As Falls Wichita, So Falls Wichita Falls album. Whereas the album version was a subtly ethereal ambient affair, for the live performance it was turned into the sonic equivalent of going over Niagara Falls in a barrel. The piece again abounds with sounds the like of which had not been heard before. Polynesian bell tones, strange melting glissandos, phased shimmerings and walls of sparkles. It's an absolute conceptual masterpiece that shows up the tedious experiments of the Stockhausens and Cages for the vacuous nonsense they are. Disc 2 ends with the beautiful and tender San Lorenzo, which includes what is arguably the best of Lyle's piano solos on the whole set.

There is nothing of anger or harshness in these pieces. No teenage angst or existential maunderings. As such, they won't have mass appeal in our age of unrest. However, there is excitement, there is an exhilaration and joy, and there is kindness and compassion. These songs provide a soundtrack for the lives of those who know that the world is truly beautiful, despite its darkness, and for whom each day is a blessing. As such, that makes this music with a truly spiritual dimension.

John Ferngrove - review from Amazon.co.uk


Track Listing:

01 Are You Going with Me?
02 The Fields, the Sky
03 Goodbye
04 Phase Dance
05 Straight on Red
06 Farmer's Trust
07 Extradition
08 Going Ahead-As Falls Wichita, So Falls Wichita Falls
09 Travels
10 Song for Bilbao
11 San Lorenzo