Gary Peacock shares front-cover billing with
Paul Bley on this 1970 session, but drummer
Paul Motian is also present on the first five tracks. (Billy Elgart replaces
Motian on the remaining three.) There's a curiously straight-ahead, tempo-driven feel to this short and sweet disc, quite unlike the free aesthetic that
Bley,
Peacock, and
Motian put forward when they returned to ECM as a trio on 1999's
Not Two, Not One. That's not to say the music is conventional: there are two tunes apiece by
Bley,
Ornette Coleman, and
Annette Peacock and one by
Gary Peacock, in addition to the lone standard,
Jerome Kern's "Long Ago and Far Away." (The finale, "Albert's Love Theme" by
Annette Peacock, stands out as the most abstract of the bunch.) The brittle, lo-fi sound doesn't detract from the album's historical value. ~ David R. Adler