Charles Lloyd's 1966 release, "The Flowering," was one of the few jazz albums to find itself regularly tucked into living-room album stacks among the likes of Hendrix, Santana and the Dead. But, when the music industry shifted in the '70s to constricted market niches and less artist control, Lloyd tuned in and dropped out. He recorded a few sporadic, unremarkable sessions through the '70s and '80s, and taught transcendental meditation. Then, in the mid-'90s, he was offered a chance to record again, this time for the ECM label, and he took it. The result has been a series of calm, meditative jazz recordings produced with ECM's impeccable standards, stellar support and, most importantly, Lloyd's own vision intact. The most recent in this series, "Hyperion With Higgins," is perhaps the best.
Charles Lloyd and Billy HigginsHiggins is Billy Higgins, a "first-call" session drummer extraordinaire, who played on countless recordings over a long career stretching from the '50s right up to his death shortly after this album with Lloyd. Hyperion, of course, was one of the Greek Titans, and is the name of the most irregularly rotating body in the solar system, a moon of Saturn. While you couldn't call the tunes here irregular, they do have a quirky, serene quality to them.
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