Leo Smith Creative Orchestra, Budding of a Rose (side A)

Leo Smith's stark creative vision has remained impressively consistent and focused since his piece "The Bell" appeared on Anthony Braxton's 1968 debut.  1979's Budding of a Rose exploits a huge and impressive group to implement it in a fairly extreme form.  While there are three pieces on the album, the musical vocabulary remains narrow.  The two primary syntactical tools in Smith's arsenal here are short lines played by a single instrument, and large ensemble swells.  These two ideas generally alternate.  Different instruments play these short lines, which rarely draw attention to themselves.  While the ensemble includes marquee players like Roscoe Mitchell, Anthony Braxton, George Lewis, and Marilyn Crispell, their creative personalities are not given room to shine.  The large group swells feel much more the focus of attention, as they vary in arrangement and tonality.  Two big and noticeable swells appear at the beginning of each album side, and they're the two most noticeable times that Smith calls for the listener's attention.  The pieces more often proceed without distinguished movement from their continuing flow.  When Pheeroan AkLaff's drums come in, they employ a degree of swing that references jazz, but they're relatively subtle in the mix, and the drums never anchor the rest of the group.  The frequency balance exaggerates the highs of the cymbals and lows of the kick drum when AkLaff comes in, which is odd as he's not a center of attention.  The simple and factual front cover employs recognizably 70s fonts and colors.