AS FALLS WICHITA, SO FALLS WICHITA FALLS
As Falls Wichita, So Falls Wichita Falls
Ozark
September Fifteenth (dedicated to Bill Evans)
It’s For You
Estupenda Graca
PLAYERS: Lyle Mays (piano, synthesizer, organ, autoharp), Pat Metheny (guitars, bass), Nana Vasconcelos (bermibau, percussion, drums, voice)
RELFECTIONS
LYLE: So, while we knew about the Synclavier in preparing for Wichita, Pat had not yet decided to purchase it, so what we had at the time were various acoustic and electric guitars, the Oberheim and Prophet synths, some autoharps and various efx boxes. I also had a reel-to-reel 4-track tape recorder so we practiced for the recording session by improvising layered pieces, improvising and overdubbing quickly, until we felt we had a good game plan for how to record a complex technical, yet improvised, piece within the limited time we had to record the album. It was very helpful, difficult to do, but ultimately essential I think. Like an NFL team preparing in training camp, we didn't exactly know how the actual games would go down. but we had run the routes, diagrammed the plays and studied the X's and O's. Pat and I were well trained by the time we flew to Oslo to record Wichita. We had practiced recording the whole album many times. We were as prepared as two people could possibly be for a project that would contain so much improvisation and in-the-moment overdubbing. In essence, we saw the modern multi-track recording studio as central to the tech of the day and intended to explore that as intelligently and efficiently as possible.
A WINNING MIX OF ELECTRONIC INNOVATION AND LYRICISM
By Stephen Holden July 5, 1981 (The New York Times)
''As Falls Wichita, So Falls Wichita Falls'', a collaboration between the young jazz guitarist Pat Metheny and the keyboardist and his quartet, Lyle Mays, blends elements of jazz, rock, and turn-of-the-century Impressionism into an evocative quasiclassical music of shimmering translucence. It represents a new direction for two musicians who are best known as jazz-fusion artists. The album takes its name from the 20-minute tone poem that fills up the first side. A sound collage that juxtaposes several layers of keyboard texture and spare guitar against the light, agitated rhythms of the Brazilian percussionist, Nana Vasconcelos, ''Wichita Falls'' is a moodily atmospheric work with the pictorial quality of a sound track. Though no program is given, the score strongly suggests an extraterrestrial visitation with some of the plot elements and mystical overtones of ''Close Encounters of the Third Kind.''
Unlike most combinations of pop music and science fiction, ''Wichita Falls'' has no thundering climaxes or overbearing choirs. The sonic ingredients, which emphasize the sounds of pipes, bells, and organ, are interwoven with a subtlety that one almost never finds in pop music. The piece opens with inarticulate tribal murmurs, ominous rustling sounds and a muted roar. Then, rippling waves of synthesized music with a strong tonal base, slowly build to a cinematic crescendo of sustained bell-like bursts that recall Mike Oldfield's ''Tubular Bells'' and Brian Eno's sprightlier experiments with ''ambient'' music. The piece ends with the echoed voices of children at play juxtaposed against a theme reminiscent of the end of Stravinsky's ''Firebird Suite.''
“it is Lyle Mays, playing piano, synthesizer, organ, and autoharp, who dominates the record”
Although the musical structure of ''Wichita Falls'' is episodic, the piece has an emotional continuity that is anything but fragmentary, and there are enough repeated motifs, such as the use of groups of voices at the beginning and end, to suggest an organizing sensibility. And despite its dissonant elements, the score is unabashedly Romantic in spirit. Rock fans who enjoy the lush ''head music'' of Pink Floyd should also enjoy this more refined psychedelia, while aficionados of new music composers like Philip Glass will appreciate the score's skillful adaptation of the new music's principles of repetition and vocalise.
The album's second side consists of four shorter, stylistically diverse pieces. They include a Latin-flavored round dance (''Ozark''), a pastoral interpretation of ''Amazing Grace,'' complete with animal sounds, and lovely tribute to the late pianist Bill Evans. The elegy to Mr. Evans is a particularly impressive tour de force for Mr. Mays, who reconstructs Mr. Evans's gossamer Romantic style on the acoustic piano against a synthesized orchestral setting worthy of Ravel.
Although Pat Metheny receives first billing on the album, it is Lyle Mays, playing piano, synthesizer, organ, and autoharp, who dominates the record, with Mr. Metheny skillfully developing his ideas on the electric and acoustic guitars and the bass. With the producer Manfred Eicher, the pair have fashioned a winning combination of electronic innovation and neo-Romantic lyricism that could prove very influential.
(Courtesy of NY TIMES)
