No room, no walls, no rules — spontaneity at its best. They were supposed to record a Brazilian album for B&W Music. They ended up creating something far from what B&W had in mind, and which they themselves could not repeat.
Yes, the gods of jazz — Hiram Bullock, Stanley Clarke, Chick Corea, Mark Egan, Herbie Hancock, Gary Meek, Airto Moreira and Flora Purim — got together in Nov. 1989 to play music. No one asked about how much each was going to make from the collaboration; there were no queries about royalties or even recording rights. Their recording almost did not make it to the record stands. The original tapes were turned down by B&W because they “weren’t Brazilian enough.” But label boss Robert Trunz, upon hearing how good the music was, finally let go of the “Brazilian” hullabaloo, and decided that the world ought to hear and take pleasure in this classic album.
It was inconceivable for these pedigreed musicians to collaborate, but only Airto Moreira could do the trick. He was highly respected by these jazz stars. He had jammed with each of them at one time or another in New York lofts. Airto was actually the one commissioned by B&W to write that “Brazilian” album. He felt that this was a major break for him to revisit his jazz roots and experiment with ideas that he had been nurturing for a long while.
He had little difficulty in ringing up old friends and persuading the gods of jazz to come down to Santa Barbara and play music together. Accustomed to playing written musical parts, the musicians were pleased to find that Airto didn’t have anything planned.
Even before the recording started, Airto, Chick and Mark was scouring some Indian caves and beaches in L.A. Laying some basic tracks down, they recorded everything, even the sound of the waves cascading on the shore. The three were convinced that they documented beautiful nature sound and that the tracks should be dubbed over the music they would later create.
The album “Killer Bees” is the stunning result. Here, the gods of jazz were coaxed to draw from their emotions to recreate unwritten music. Jamming and playing off one another, trying out uncharted sound, yet retaining complete control over symphony and dynamics. With their musical instinct feeding on one another at their highest creative levels, the album made one believe that months of preparations went into making this Carnegie-Hall level of impulsiveness. The truth is they only did most of the tracks in two takes each at most, in one recording day. The secret for their instant bonding was that they had been playing together in different musical gigs for years before any of them basked in the limelight.
The music on the album ranges from the poignant yet enriching Nevermind and Communion — tracks on which Herbie Hancock seems to be spilling his souls — to tracks like Killer Bees and Nasty Moves, which demonstrate that jazz can rival rock music in influence and belligerence.
Befitting a recording of this caliber, B&W distributed a special 180-gm metal-mastered vinyl collectors’ edition. The heavier vinyl format gives extra depth and width to the groves to ensure almost-perfect reproduction. Recording engineer Chris Lewis painstakingly avoided using any limiters or compressors for this special release, making it doubly better than its commercial CD counterpart.
The packaging is equally remarkable. Each box set is shrink-wrapped and holds nine color reproductions of the original album artwork with astoundingly original elucidations of the songs created by Sussex-based designer Gary Edwards, and Airto’s own sleeve notes. No wonder the album “Killer Bees,” which created a buzz among audiophiles when it first hit the stores, has become more rare by the day.
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