Back in Time

Odyssey the Band

Entertainment Weekly

Electric guitarist James ''Blood'' Ulmer, a veteran of Ornette Coleman's landmark fusion outfit Prime Time, is one of jazz's great progressives. Recent releases have foregrounded his gruff singing rather than his guitar journeys. Back in Time revives his powerhouse guitar/violin/drums trio from 1983's Odyssey for some barbed, lyrical, mostly instrumental blues-funk jams that get far-out, but never lose the groove.

– Will Hermes

Village Voice

Remember harmolodics? You do if you were paying attention in the early '80s. Arcane as a theory, as a style it was sublime. Ornette Coleman's playful alternative to fusion took free jazz and funk as its starting points rather than modal and progressive rock and treated dissonance and rhythm as if they were the same thing. Though harmolodics has never gone away, it's never really taken hold, either. How could it, with Coleman playing hide-and-seek and acolyte James "Blood" Ulmer letting record producers reshape him into a sludgy blues mumbler, Jimi Hendrix with a middle-age spread? But things are looking up—reuniting him with violinist Charles Burnham and drummer Warren Benbow, Back in Time (whose title invites being read either way) is the new year's first A plus, Ulmer's friskiest since the 1983 Columbia LP from which the trio derives its name. Swimming in reverb, "Happy Time" is simultaneously a hoedown and a raga, full of dark mewlings but light on its feet. The folkloric element is strong and so are the echoes of early rock and r&b—on "Water Tree," shave-and-a-haircut meets turkey-in-the-straw—and as a bonus, Ulmer sings very little. No one has ever anticipated his guitar jabs and feints better than the straitlaced Burnham. As for Benbow— well, Ornette once said that jazz works best when it sounds like the drummer is playing with everybody else, and rock works best when it sounds like everybody else is following the drummer. Harmolodics splits the difference, he said—and hearing Benbow levitate while holding down the bottom, I think I finally get it.

– Francis Davis

One Final Note

Back in Time could almost be considered a comeback, if not for the fact that these three never went away; they just hadn’t gotten back together to play as a trio, until now. Their self-titled studio debut for Columbia, recorded in 1983, covered similar ground, but without the free ranging improvisational acumen that can be found here. Not only are these three older and wiser, they are more accomplished improvisers with the chops to back it up. With a limited discography stretched out over two decades, this all-star trio finally has a definitive album available.

Consisting of legendary Harmolodic guitarist James “Blood” Ulmer, violinist Charles Burnham, and drummer Warren Benbow, Odyssey was, and still is, a unique ensemble. Bass-less, with roots in the blues, free jazz, funk, and even a Middle Eastern modal fixation, these three have honed their interplay to an inventive level far greater than previously documented.

Ulmer has been making a name for himself as a post-modern bluesman, with a trio of excellent recent recordings on the Hyena label, but here he leaves the blues at home, for the most part. More experimental and adventurous than any of his recent efforts, Back in Time allows ample room to explore genres beyond the blues. But do not mistake this for an Ulmer solo session, this is a band effort in execution and intent.

The trio’s collective approach eradicates traditional concepts of individual solos. Rather, Benbow acts as the rhythmic pivot that Ulmer and Burnham orbit around, weaving their serpentine lines in tandem. Burnham and Ulmer are engaged in a constant game of cat and mouse, reversing roles as the mood suits. There are moments when Burnham’s electrified, wah-wah enhanced violin is virtually inseparable from Ulmer’s twisted shards and clipped guitar fragments. Burnham’s searing, lyrical long tones sing out primal cries, while Ulmer’s fractured chords still sound stunningly distinctive after almost three decades. Benbow relies far less on a nuanced jazz sensibility than a rabid desire to pound those skins, veering close to full on rock pummeling at times, driving the strings to heights of ecstasy and abandon.

Although the blues are a signpost here, it is merely conceptual; other than “Let’s Get Married” there really isn’t a standard blues form to be found. “Water Tree” has a folksy singsong melody featuring some of Burnham’s finest soloing. Direct and straightforward, but full of melancholy tunefulness, it is Burnham that kicks up the rest of the group into a virtual avant-garde hoedown. “Woman Coming” has a similar countrified shuffle, but the majority of the program traffics in a sort of sultry late-night grind. “Channel One” and “Open Doors” both slink along around the midnight hour with Benbow pushing Burnham’s singing violin and Ulmer’s hardscrabble, crunchy guitar ever deeper.

For every late night jam dispensed, another genre rears its head, hydra-like. “Happy Time” adopts the abrupt, angular staccato phrasing and spastic bounce of early Prime Time. “Open Doors”, with its intertwined violin and guitar exhortations driven by an incessant throttling rhythm, is all rock aspiration. Only two fully-fledged vocal cuts adorn the record, “Little Red House” and “Let’s Get Married”, which both evince Ulmer’s wry bluesy commentary. Even classic free jazz makes an appearance on the album closer, “Free for Three”, an open-ended piece that demonstrates the trio’s empathetic knack for maintaining song structure even when none is implied.

With their Columbia debut, Odyssey, and the live Reunion from 1998 on Knit Works both out of print, Back in Time becomes a must-have document of three masters at their finest. Driven relentlessly by Benbow, Burnham and Ulmer have never sounded so good together. Back in Time is as enigmatically futuristic as it is timeless.

– Troy Collins

Dusted Magazine

In a fairly recent radio interview, James Blood Ulmer performed a voice-and-guitar lament for the victims of Hurricane Katrina, telling neither interviewer nor listener what it was going to be. It brought me close to tears, heavily seasoned with anger and deep sorrow. His playing just gets better with each new project, wisdom hanging on every note and chord he moans, his voice growing ever deeper and more resonant. He brings many years of experience to Back in Time, the third Odyssey album and maybe the best one yet.

The new version of “Little Red House” is even more raw and powerful than the 1983 rendition, with Ulmer’s guitar and Charles Burnham’s violin bringing the trio’s unique sound to the fore. Warren Benbow’s playing has even more muscle than before, and Blood’s exuberant shout as the band kicks into one of its trademark time signature alterations has a whole lot a bite. Where the tune used to be a slow funky romp, now it’s as if the Theater of Eternal Music had decided to add Benbow. The overall timbre is thick but sharp, making the track even more invigorating, nasty and downright sensual than before.

These three veterans haven’t lost any of the spark that made their 1983 album so simple and so innovative. Modal structures are continually juxtaposed with just a hint of world music in the form of drones, semi-exotic beats and violin slides courtesy of Burnham’s wah-wah-induced electricity. No bass player is necessary, as somebody, maybe Ulmer, provides deep, foundational tones for every track.

The production itself is very minimal, and in less capable hands could seem flat or colorless, but a deep respect for the trio is evident in what I take to be a simple attempt at capturing their sound without updating it. Despite rhythmic and melodic innovation, an unapologetic simplicity takes root throughout. As good as the disc is though, nothing prepared me for “Free for Three,” which just might be the finest thing this group has ever set to tape. Ulmer shows his “free” jazz chops, and the others, also no strangers to playing out, follow right along in one of the most astonishingly compact explorations of the avant-garde I’ve heard in some time. It shows that the group still has many paths to explore, and that some 25 years after the first album, they are as vibrant and adventurous as ever. Ulmer has made some remarkable music in the past year, and Back in Time continues the trend.

– Marc Medwin

Jazz Times

Every performance by guitarist James "Blood" Ulmer is a trip "back in time." You can hear field hollers in Ulmer's music. You can hear Africa. But you can also hear the shrieks of demons that live out beyond the free-jazz frontier. No one covers more historical and spiritual bandwidth than Ulmer, from raw backwoods blues to high-voltage thrash guitar to harmolodics learned directly from his one-time boss and landlord, Ornette Coleman.

But the title of Ulmer's new album refers to a particular past moment. In 1983 (during a brief three-album tenure with Columbia), Ulmer released a trio recording called Odyssey, with violinist Charles Burnham and drummer Warren Benbow. It has been out of print for years--and it may be Ulmer's best record.

These three players had not been in a studio together for 22 years. They reunite for Back in Time and take up where they left off. Their group sonic signature still freezes you right in your chair. Burnham's violin is often smeared through a wah-wah pedal, and Ulmer's guitar is all whining sustains and shuddering double-stops. At the bottom, drummer Benbow kicks pure, relentless, unapologetic funk.

But any written description of Odyssey the Band is no longer valid by the time the ink dries. This group redefines itself every few moments. The opener, "Last One," starts as the meanest of grooves, but two minutes later Ulmer's snaking, jangling insinuations have detached themselves from Benbow's beat, and so have Burnham's moans and sighs. The next piece, "Open Doors," proves that Ulmer could have gotten rich in rock 'n' roll. No one, not even Ulmer's exact contemporary, Jimi Hendrix, has ever played filthier, nastier guitar. But Ulmer's creative process is more than brute force and distortion. He goes right to the edge of the atonal abyss, where very few rock guitarists have ever dared venture.

If Back in Time contained more tracks like "Open Doors," it would be a monster. But "Love Nest" and "Channel One" are subdued, textural pieces that are content to revel in the evocative sonorities of that otherworldly guitar/violin blend. The two vocals, "Little Red House" and "Let's Get Married," sound like they come from a different session, restricting Ulmer's vast instrumental abstract expressionism to a single verbal storyline. But even when he sings, Ulmer always disrupts expectation, blowing up whole verses with harmolodic riffs. And if Benbow's gutbucket shuffles sometimes become reductive, like self-conscious simplifications, he is also capable of sliding off the beat and making you search for it. His solo on "Woman Coming" is perfect--deadpan yet erotic. Odyssey the Band is, after all, a collective. What makes it an ideal showcase for Ulmer's art is the transcendent hook-up with Burnham, whose reemergence on this album is the latest compelling example of the violin renaissance now occurring in jazz. (Think Billy Bang, Jenny Scheinman, Mark Feldman, Mat Maneri, et al.) Within the bare-bones trio format, Ulmer's unison tuning enables his instrument to fill in, at least by implication, the missing bass parts. Burnham's violin twists around Ulmer's guitar to make a single, seething treble voice. It is an ensemble sound like no other, and engineer Bob Musso adequately captures its sting.

Ulmer explains the project thus: "I haven't heard anybody playing that shit yet--that's why I got to go back and play with Odyssey!"

– Thomas Conrad