Extensions introduced a new Dave Holland quartet, in which an electric guitar takes the place of the trumpet and trombone of his 1980s quintet. Recorded in New York in 1989 and released in 1990, it pairs the bassist with alto saxophonist Steve Coleman, guitarist Kevin Eubanks and drummer Marvin "Smitty" Smith. The six long pieces move from tight, funky grooves to slower, more spacious pieces, with all four players in constant dialogue. It was voted Album of the Year by DownBeat, as Holland's own biography records.
Coleman and Smith came from Holland's quintet, which had last recorded The Razor's Edge in 1987 with Kenny Wheeler and Robin Eubanks. The quartet recorded Extensions digitally in September 1989 at the Power Station in New York, with James Farber as engineer and Manfred Eicher producing. The writing is shared out evenly: two pieces each by Holland, Coleman and Eubanks, with the guitarist's tunes opening and closing the programme.
Eubanks's Nemesis grows from barely plucked fragments into a driving groove, with Coleman's alto flowing over Holland and Smith and the guitar answering in tight, energetic bursts. Holland's The Oracle is the longest track, at almost fifteen minutes. It begins with a delicate bass line that recalls a classical guitar, then widens into patient exchanges between guitar and drums and an unhurried bass solo. Coleman contributes the funky Black Hole and the slow, smoky 101° Fahrenheit (Slow Meltdown), and Eubanks's Color of Mind closes on one of Holland's most memorable bass lines.
The partnerships continued beyond the record: a year later, in the same week, Holland recorded World Trio with Eubanks on acoustic guitar and Phase Space, a duo album with Coleman. Reviewing a later ECM retrospective in PopMatters in 2004, Robert R. Calder heard in Nemesis "a joyous uplift which is never far away in Holland's music". Tyran Grillo, on the blog Between Sound and Space, called The Oracle the highlight of the album and the whole record "a coming of age in an age of becoming".
This is the CD edition of ECM 1410, first released in 1990. It was reissued in September 2008 in the first batch of Touchstones, forty ECM albums returned to print in card sleeves with their original artwork.
