Soundscape.

ECM Records: "The most beautiful sound next to silence" ...

While the form and constancy of notated music have also found their way into improvisation, inspired interpretations of existing compositions convey a tangible sense of risk, spontaneity and improvisatory freedom. The British music critic and writer Paul Griffiths aptly pinpointed the unique status of ECM, describing it as "almost a musical genre in its own right – a genre with blurred boundaries but a definite centre, in some place where music is prized wherever it comes from, some time when nothing has yet quite happened finally, when even a recording – seemingly the end of the process – can show its value in opening a question, or more than one."

 

From early on the model of a literary publishing house was an inspiration for the label. Many of the musicians who recorded their debut albums with ECM in their mid-twenties have kept faith with the label ever since. As Manfred Eicher once said in an interview, "Our work is based on the notion of permanence." In addition Eicher feels that "it is important that relationships also develop between the company’s artists; that’s good for their creative work". As a record producer, he is a partner in the artistic process, involved in everything from the choice of recording venue to the musical shaping of the album to the cover design for the finished product. And on the subject of cover designs: ECM record sleeves, much admired and much imitated, have made design history, and the Swiss publisher Lars Müller Verlag has devoted two books to ECM’s cover art. 

 

ECM recordings are often described as having a transparent sound that is rich in overtones. But there is no one-size-fits-all "ECM sound". Each recording is attuned to the sound of the players and singers, not vice versa. "Of course we take every possible care with the technology", as Manfred Eicher has said, "But the deciding factor is always the music and the aesthetic ideas that go with it. That is what gives the sound its characteristics. The vessel is always shaped to fit its contents."

CONNECT 

The Bach catalog alone provides ten excellent albums (clangers excluded) that will provide the soundscape of room 131 this fall, providing carriage well into The Oyster Months ...