(Jazz) Richard Beirach - Elm (ECM) - 1979, FLAC (image+.cue), lossless

In the '70s, pianist Richard Beirach pioneered a distinctive type of ethereal jazz, characterized by lush, polytonal harmonies and frequent outbursts of angular, high-velocity lines that broke up the austere moods of his compositions. This beautiful trio outing with bassist George Mraz and drummer Jack DeJohnette is classic Beirach, and as apt an example of the "ECM sound" as one will find. The piano reverberates in concert hall fashion, even as the bass and drums interact with a looseness, and often an explosiveness, that is anything but cold and removed. There are only five tracks on Elm, but because each presents a different aspect of Beirach's music, the album is satisfying and quite whole. The opener, "Sea Priestess," presents deceptively simple harmonies over a lilting even-eighth groove. About halfway through its 12 or so minutes, the music fades to a barely audible whisper, gradually returning to its original intensity. "Pendulum," a rather ingenious descending melody that creates its own kind of modal progression, finds the trio burning at a medium swing tempo. The tune rings out like a sort of modal anthem, a quality that the Dave Liebman Quintet would put to good use on its 1979 live album Pendulum. "Ki" ebbs and flows with rubato swells of harmony, while the epic "Snow Leopard" boils over with a fast swing feel, interrupted by a pregnant moment of silence before Mraz's bass solo. Finally, "Elm" proceeds with the melodic shape and rhythmic evenness of a classical etude (Brad Mehldau would write similar music some 20 years later), but the syncopated unison figure that occurs in the 15th bar of the form reminds listeners that they are squarely in modern jazz territory. The tune's reharmonized coda is a masterful touch on Beirach's part. At the time of its release, Elm represented an emerging new standard for modern piano trio music, and it remains every bit as valid and vital.

Exact Audio Copy V0.99 prebeta 4 from 23. January 2008
EAC extraction logfile from 23. August 2008, 13:39
Richard Beirach / Elm
Used drive : MATSHITADVD-RAM UJ-875S Adapter: 1 ID: 0
Read mode : Secure
Utilize accurate stream : Yes
Defeat audio cache : Yes
Make use of C2 pointers : No
Read offset correction : 102
Overread into Lead-In and Lead-Out : No
Fill up missing offset samples with silence : Yes
Delete leading and trailing silent blocks : No
Null samples used in CRC calculations : Yes
Used interface : Installed external ASPI interface
Used output format : User Defined Encoder
Selected bitrate : 320 kBit/s
Quality : High
Add ID3 tag : Yes
Command line compressor : C:\Program Files\Exact Audio Copy\Flac\flac.exe
Additional command line options : --best -V -T "date=%y" -T "genre=%m" %s
TOC of the extracted CD
Track | Start | Length | Start sector | End sector
---------------------------------------------------------
1 | 0:00.00 | 11:34.22 | 0 | 52071
2 | 11:34.22 | 6:40.28 | 52072 | 82099
3 | 18:14.50 | 5:14.27 | 82100 | 105676
4 | 23:29.02 | 12:30.28 | 105677 | 161954
5 | 35:59.30 | 6:06.00 | 161955 | 189404
Range status and errors
Selected range
Filename D:\MY MUSIC\Richard Beirach - Elm.wav
Peak level 87.9 %
Range quality 100.0 %
Copy CRC B9A689F2
Copy OK
No errors occurred
AccurateRip summary
Track 1 not present in database
Track 2 not present in database
Track 3 not present in database
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Track 5 not present in database
None of the tracks are present in the AccurateRip database
End of status report