Night reunites guitarist John Abercrombie with keyboardist Jan Hammer and drummer Jack DeJohnette, the trio heard on his 1975 ECM album Timeless, and adds Michael Brecker on tenor saxophone. Recorded in New York in April 1984, it is a quartet without a bassist, with Hammer's keyboards filling the low end. The music leans on riffs and grooves, and Brecker's tenor solos give several pieces their climax.
The session took place at Power Station in New York, ten years after the trio had recorded Timeless in the same city. Manfred Eicher produced, Jan Erik Kongshaug engineered, and the album was mixed at Rainbow Studio in Oslo. All the compositions are by Abercrombie except the opener, Ethereggae, written by Hammer. Brecker is brought in for extra emphasis at strategic moments, and Dieter Rehm designed the cover around his own photographs.
Like its cover, the album is something of a collage, moving between funk, half-lit ballads and hard-swinging jams. Ethereggae, which ECM calls an "esoteric half-time shuffle", sets the tone over a loping rhythm, with Hammer's billowing keyboards leaving Brecker plenty of room to stretch out. Believe You Me is the plainest piece compositionally, yet it carries Brecker's most uninhibited solo. The closing Four On One is the hottest of the set and gives DeJohnette his own moment in front of the band.
The Penguin Guide to Jazz described the album as "surprisingly funky", and the description holds for much of the record. On ECM Reviews, Tyran Grillo wrote that Abercrombie "jumps here into the urban deep end with smoky club atmospheres and tight jams". He welcomed the reunion with Hammer, whose keyboards give the production its evocative sweep. He considered the album something of a blip in the guitarist's catalogue, though far from a minor one, and singled out Kongshaug's recorded sound as what really distinguishes it. Brecker had already recorded for the label on Pat Metheny's 80/81 and Kenny Wheeler's Double, Double You.
This CD is the 2019 reissue in ECM's Touchstones series, which brings key albums from the catalogue back into print. Night was first released in 1984 as ECM 1272.
