''Long Sound'' is an album by the American band
the Coctails. It was released in 1993, one of the many notable albums to come out of Chicago that year.
Production
The band moved away from its earlier lounge sound by inviting reedman
Ken Vandermark
Ken Vandermark (born September 22, 1964) is an American composer, saxophonist, and clarinetist.
A fixture on the Chicago-area music scene since the 1990s, Vandermark has earned wide critical praise for his playing and his multilayered composit ...
and saxophonist
Hal Russell to help bring out more jazz elements.
Dave Crawford, of
Poi Dog Pondering, contributed on trumpet and flugelhorn.
[ Many of the more guitar-centered tracks recorded during the sessions ended up on the band's next album, ''Peel''.
]
Critical reception
''Trouser Press
''Trouser Press'' was a rock and roll magazine started in New York in 1974 as a mimeographed fanzine by editor/publisher Ira Robbins, fellow fan of the Who, Dave Schulps, and Karen Rose under the name "Trans-Oceanic Trouser Press" (a reference ...
'' wrote: "While hardly virtuosos, the Coctails play with low-key humor and create a series of soundscapes—by turns muted and buoyant, lush and fractured—that evoke heroes from Billy Strayhorn to Sun Ra."Chicago Tribune
The ''Chicago Tribune'' is an American daily newspaper based in Chicago, Illinois, United States. Founded in 1847, it was formerly self-styled as the "World's Greatest Newspaper", a slogan from which its once integrated WGN (AM), WGN radio and ...
'' called the album "a beautifully programmed series of jazzy soundscapes, with ringers like Ken Vandermark, Dave Crawford and Hal Russell—in the last recorded performance before his death—adding their distinctive voices."
The ''Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
The ''Pittsburgh Post-Gazette'', also known simply as the PG, is the largest newspaper serving Greater Pittsburgh, metropolitan Pittsburgh in the U.S. state of Pennsylvania. Descended from the ''Pittsburgh Gazette'', established in 1786 as the fi ...
'' praised the "brooding, melancholic, jazzy feel," writing that the band "proved they were more than Blue Note wannabes by constructing a record any jazz aficionado would cite as a Top 10 pick." ''The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
''The Atlanta Journal-Constitution'' (''AJC'') is an American daily newspaper based in metropolitan area of Atlanta, Georgia. It is the flagship publication of Cox Enterprises. The ''Atlanta Journal-Constitution'' is the result of the merger ...
'' concluded: "Snaky and hypnotic, the tunes amble like a laid-back flip side to Eric Dolphy's classic, ''Out to Lunch''." The ''Wisconsin State Journal
The ''Wisconsin State Journal'' is a daily newspaper published in Madison, Wisconsin by Lee Enterprises. The newspaper, the second largest in Wisconsin, is primarily distributed in a 19 county region in south-central Wisconsin. As of Septembe ...
'' noted that "the band made what it felt was a necessary foray into free-form jazz noodling, with longer songs and mixed results."
AllMusic
AllMusic (previously known as All-Music Guide and AMG) is an American online database, online music database. It catalogs more than three million album entries and 30 million tracks, as well as information on Musical artist, musicians and Mus ...
wrote that "the quartet's sound moved more to jazz and away from the band's poppier efforts on albums like ''Early Hi-Ball Years''."Pitchfork
A pitchfork or hay fork is an agricultural tool used to pitch loose material, such as hay, straw, manure, or leaves. It has a long handle and usually two to five thin tines designed to efficiently move such materials.
The term is also applie ...
'' deemed it "a superb album of alternately weird and elegiac jazz."
Track listing
References
{{reflist
The Coctails albums
1993 albums