Immeasurable texture, like fingering embroidery, a dimensional knit of hair, a braid of small actions. Feel it and your body relaxes to the point where you accept a yawn and it signifies no future. Bill Evans is stopping time, or is mythologizing it, making it deliberate. Time as perceived in a lowering crystal of memory. When viewed from a distance a tapestry blends purely into the intended image. Elaborations are lost, drift modestly away. This is Evans’ first record with bassist Chuck Israels. He replaces Scott LaFaro, who died in a car crash and whose membranous fluttering is just newly absent, a sudden, uncanny space in Evans’ music. Israels settles, anchors, keeps the whole affair from evaporating thoughtlessly.
