The first 30 or so album by ECM are on various degree very good. In the first years this label was very experimental and open to the best extreme fringe of seventies jazz, both electrification and improv. After there are some good records, but most is pasteurized crap. Also some of this best early ecm records have not yet be reissued. Or have very recently, like the Priester record.
Matt try to find a copy of this:
ecm 1016 Terje Rypdal - same 1971
the one with the norwegian sea on the cover. forget later albums by Rypdal. this one sound like Miles Davis 'Jack Johnson' played by Ash Ra Tempel. One of my favorite album ever. And it rocks.
from the same sessions came this:
ecm 1015 Jan Garbarek Quintet - SART
not as good as the Rypdal lp, but same session same musicians, and best Garbarek album, so not bad at all.
then, in Toop Ocean of Sound territory:
ecm 1005 The Music Improvisation Company
a classic improv record, Baley, Parker, Muir.
then, in Nurse With Wound list classics territory:
1006 Wolfgang Dauner Trio - Output
totally freaked out ring modulator jazz.
the aforementioned Maupin record Jewel in the Lotus is a great companion to the Priester album, same personnel if i remember correctly, still not reissued.
Then actually there are a good number of lp from the "classic" ecmsound that are beautiful, a classic is Mountainscape (also one of the ecm most beautiful cover) by Barre Philips, with John Surman. It's the same trio of '60 Trio (the double white album on Dawn records that is one of thebest free jazz album of all time), but it's no free jazz at all, it is cameristica jazz with lot of European classical avantgarde overtones and an interesting (if dated) use of synthesisers.
ok
then, even if it's really saccharine and commercial, i love The Kolnh Concerts by Jarret.
