Cosmic Chicken

The period between Jack DeJohnette’s tenure with Miles Davis and his long, fruitful run as a bandleader on ECM might look like an interstitial period in his discography, but his last album on Prestige delivers some remarkable sounds. Cosmic Chicken relies significantly on DeJohnette’s fluidity as a drummer, building complex rhythmic structures that underpin a form of fusion unafraid to venture further out past the constrictions of crossover. This is the kind of album that promises grimy acid funk with its outward appearance, but delivers something more playfully insinuating, an interplay between DeJohnette and bassist Peter Warren that doesn’t so much sustain a groove as it challenges the other players with its shapeshifting insistence. Alex Foster’s heavy-liquid alto sax provides the most upfront outbursts of expression in response; the urgent, note-warping runs on “Shades of the Phantom” and the more contemplative post-bop soloing on “Eiderdown” bolster material that keeps you guessing at how (or whether) the ensemble plans on dekeing your expectations. It’s also a recording from the beginning of guitarist John Abercrombie’s breakout, and freeing himself from the strictures of early-stage jazz-rock to express himself with a more open-ended, freeform style that shares a quick-witted rapport with the other players. (His best bits, like the stretch in “Stratocruiser” where he spars with DeJohnette at full throttle, make a powerful argument for the dynamics of a guitarist and a drummer taking cues from each other during a solo.) And it’s here that it narrows the gap between fusion and free jazz beautifully while acknowledging the traditions both styles upended; the bluesy, time-bending, constantly metamorphizing solo piano DeJohnette plays on “Memories” is every bit the reckoning with the lineage of his art as the audacious “Last Chance Stomp,” which starts as a old-time Dixieland homage (replete with 78RPM fidelity) before it strolls jauntily into a flash-forward time tunnel that pulls it through West Coast cool jazz into a frantic freeform crescendo.