Jazz: The wounded beast chills out

CD Review: JAN GARBAREK `RITES' ECM

FOLLOWING THE incredible crossover success of Officium from 1994, the collaboration with the Hilliard Ensemble that sold 850,000 copies worldwide, Norwegian saxophonist Garbarek became - rather astonishingly for such an apparently recessive and ascetic figure - the most popular jazz artist in the world.

At first glance, the two CDs and 100-minutes playing-time of his new album suggest that it might be a bit bloated, in the same way that prog- rock groups of the Seventies used to follow a big success with a gatefold- sleeved triple-album as a matter of course.

Happily, looks are deceiving and Rites is Garbarek's best solo project for years. The disconcertingly bombastic, rock-based modes of some of his recent albums are largely absent. In their place is a much more sympathetic trance- and dance-fusion where the contributions of his regular band members - Eberhard Weber, Rainer Brunginhaus and Marilyn Mazur - are held in check; shimmering at the edges of the sound and leaving the inimitable keening, wounded-mammal wail of Garbarek's soprano and tenor saxophones to lead from the front.

For four of the 16 tracks, Garbarek is accompanied only by the ambient synth washes and electronic effects of one Bugge Wesseltoft. These are among the most successful parts of the album and refreshingly bang-up to date in their appropriations from the chill-out room of contemporary pop culture. And face it, who could be chillier than Garbarek?

There's also a gently rocking Sami folk-tune; a beautiful piece sung by a Norwegian boys' choir; an affecting version of a Don Cherry number; and, most extraordinarily, a wonderfully eccentric ballad written, sung and conducted by Jansug Kakhidze with the Tbilisi Symphony Orchestra. Garbarek has nothing to do with this last piece at all, but when he was played it by Manfred Eicher, the head of ECM, he liked it so much that he wanted to include it on the album. In short, there's something here to suit almost everyone, including fans of Officium.

Phil Johnson