RARE Hugh Hopper Tunity Box 1977 U.K. Orig Soft Machine Elton Dean Free Jazz LP

$

40

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  RARE Hugh Hopper Tunity Box 1977 U.K. Orig Soft Machine Elton Dean Free Jazz

Hugh Hopper - Hopper Tunity Box

1977 U.K. Original on Compendium Records

Vinyl - Near Mint

Cover - Excellent  

Album & Band Info

That Hugh Hopper succeeded in recording and impregnating his 2nd solo album with such a realistic albeit pseudo-live feel, starting the old-fashioned way by laying a bass part to a metronome click-track, is testament to the bassist’s ease while working in such an unnatural manner, to his above average composer skills and a lesson for adepts of cut-copy-paste techniques, which although accessible at the simple click of a button are no guarantee to obtain coherent dynamic flows. Drummer Mike Travis came in afterwards and his exceptional work (he’s featured on all but one of the tracks that include drums) plays a fundamental role in the intense musicianship displayed on tracks such as the Funky and gripping “Crumble”, a piece with an Hancock’s Headhunters vibe, hold together by Richard Bruntonchunky guitar rhythms and groovy Rhodes riffs by Frank Roberts whose solo work is also outstanding, as Gary Windo multitracked sax acts as an energizing horn section. 

Elsewhere it is the guests’ professionalism that enables them to deal with the splits in the groove in ways that do not harm the coherence of their solo excursions as happens with Elton Dean’s saxello solo on “The Lonely Sea and the Sky” when he aims for the sky before Mark Charig’s cornet depicts the loneliness; initially dominated by Hopper’s guitar simulating double speeded bass and enriched by some of his backwards tape magic tricks, it’s a beautiful floating piece colored by Fender Rhodes showers and which unfolds through climaxes of intensity made possible by the way Travis follows the script with a visionary spontaneity; Dean is usually magical whenever featured and on the frenzied Iberian tinged “Spanish Knee” after a brisk cornet/sax theme he carries the piece up into stratosphere going wild, wicked and scorching atop a real feast of convoluted, convulsive, imaginative, thick and propulsive bass lines. 

There’s also extensive use of loops, sound effects and tape speed modifications and Hopper deserves a genius epithet for the way he builds “Mobile Mobile” up from a floating bass and slack half-speed drums (a one-off appearance byNigel Morris) into a climaxing theme graced by an inspired speeded fuzz bass solo, a fractured but enticing groove that counts with Dave Stewart kaleidoscopic keyboards; the other trio  played track (minus Morris plus Travis) is the infectious up tempo groove driven “Gnat Prong” -the album’s longest track- constructed around a recurring tortuous theme that separates the diverse states of mind of Stewart’s fuzzed organ until a loose bass and organ ending takes it into a spiritual sci-fi meditation. 

The only non-Hopper piece is the drumless  rendition of Ornette Coleman’s “Lonely Woman”, jointly painted by the lamenting, distressful horns of Dean, Charig and Windo before they freely find their own solitary routes atop Hopper economic bubbling and droning bass layers; other highlights are the title track with its Renaissance tainted multitracked descant recorders theme (a seldom heard Hopper ability) which unfolds creepily with sax help intertwined with a threatening bass and fuzzed organ unison before morphing into the Soft Machine aural ethos of “Miniluv” , where a multitracked menacing bass riff builds a dense web Windo’s sax desperately tries to escape from… 

Both introspective and hopeful the closing “Oyster Perpetual” is the only solo piece; naturally, it’s another multitracked puzzle, exhibiting once more the broad range of sounds Hopper elicits from his basses, just in case something had previously eluded the listener :-)

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