My memory is pretty shot half the time. But there are some things I cannot and do not forget. The Internet helps with the rest. And a certain sound makes the vestiges vivid.
Just. Because. And that prompt comes here from the same group – Hart with Ethan Iverson, Ben Street and Mark Turner on a different label playing, the one that did it, stoking the dying brain cells – ‘Showdown.’ Ahead of release a version of John Coltrane’s ‘Giant Steps’ is also available.
“Multidirectional” is a Rashied Ali term – it’s to do with the late period Trane drummer’s concept of free-jazz drumming. Listening to both Just and now this live album I really want to read Billy Hart’s Oceans of Time: The Musical Autobiography of Billy Hart when he talks about Rashied which is also new. Hart is 85 next month and this beautiful album is released to coincide with all those birthday candles. A wonderful companion listen to Just this was recorded live at Smoke in New York during a residency in late-2023. Highly thoughtful there’s a smouldering intensity and weight to each and every track. Above all I believe in every note. So it’s the sort of album that insists on a desire to run away with the circus, join an enlightened cult and above all relearn everything you ever knew as a listener and begin again from scratch and absorb over time Hart’s point of view again and again.
