CD of the Week – Andrew Hill’s “Time Lines”

Needing to shake up my iPod and the collection of cd’s in my car over the weekend, I grabbed Andrew Hill’s 2006 release “Time Lines” off the shelf.  I’ve listened to it about seven times since Friday.  Whoa.  This might be my favorite jazz recording of the last ten years, right up there with “Braggtown” by Branford Marsalis.  Hill’s recording has Jazz Loft friend Charles Tolliver on trumpet, Greg Tardy on various reeds, and a wonderful rhythm section of Eric McPherson on drums and John Hebert on bass.  Evidently this band had played together frequently before this album was recorded.  You can hear the familiarity and trust and confidence the players have in each other and in Hill’s compositions.  The band achieves an edgy, mezmerizing poetry of sounds and rhythms.   The title tune has a Monk-like repetitive quality bringing playfulness and obsession into just the right balance.

-Sam Stephenson