A real curiosity, this. Mack Avenue’s first fruit of releases from their rights to the Strata-East catalogue includes the above-named 1974 New York studio date by the estimable Monk sideman-saxophonist Charlie Rouse (note he’s called Charles here). He’s playing with sextet and septet variations on guitar-heavy funk-fusion featuring a young Stanley Clarke on bass and Airto Moreira on percussion for three of the five tracks, plus one Calo Scott on electric cello.
It’s a weird blend. The nearest equivalent I can think of is Sonny Rollins ‘Nucleus’ album from 1975, but ‘Two Is One’ (the title refers to one of Monk’s gnomic aphorisms) is more experimental than that description makes it appear, although the great Side A opener, ‘Bitchin’, written by guitarist George Davis, is funky enough for a club either back then or now, with thick George Benson-esque guitar lines weaving in and out of the leader’s rather undemonstrative tenor sax.
Elsewhere, especially on the two long tracks that make up Side B, the time-signatures can be as switchback-sounding as an English prog-rock outfit from the same period. On the opening title track, we are told that the bass is in 9/8, the drums 6/8 and the cello and sax in 3/4. And that’s just the first section, before it all changes again. The musicians, including both Clarke and Moreira, somehow make it work, with a furious stop-start flow that can recall both Ornette Coleman’s Primetime and the later proggy examples of Steve Coleman. Warning: fellow bassists may well go open-mouthed in amazement at Clarke’s unerring time and technique.
On the track that follows and which closes the album, ‘In His Presence Searching’, written by drummer David Lee, Stanley Clarke’s electric bass once again propels things along at a furious pace. Rouse plays bass clarinet as well as tenor, but – perhaps in common with his performance on the album more generally – doesn’t really imprint his personality, whatever that may be in this context, on the tune.
Intriguingly, the number has a second, much slower section which corresponds thematically to what we would now call Spiritual Jazz, with an eastern-sounding mode featuring harpsichord or celeste sounds, perhaps generated by the composer David Lee’s guitar as no keyboards are credited on any of the album tracks. A further, succeeding movement sees Rouse really make the tune his own with his most emphatic solo yet before he returns on bass clarinet after solos by Scott and Lee and before Clarke and Moreira and a closing coda by the group. What a strange brew!
Crate-diggers should note the album’s terrific second track, ‘Hopscotch’, written by Joe Chambers, was evidently sampled by the Beastie Boys on ‘Check Your Head’. In common with the other new Strata-East reissues by Mack Avenue, ‘Two Is One’ looks and sounds absolutely superb, with a thick cardboard sleeve encasing a 180g platter whose sound was remastered by Kevin Gray at Cohearent Audio.
