Ring is a 1974 album by the Gary Burton Quintet for ECM, with the German bassist Eberhard Weber added as a sixth voice. Recorded in July and released that December, it places two guitars and two basses around Burton's vibraphone, so that the band's sound rests on interlocking strings rather than on a keyboard. It is also the record on which a young Pat Metheny first appeared on the label.
Burton plays vibraphone. Mick Goodrick plays guitar and Metheny six- and twelve-string electric guitar, while Steve Swallow on bass guitar and Weber on bass share the low register. Bob Moses is on drums and percussion. The session took place on 23 and 24 July 1974 at Tonstudio Bauer in Ludwigsburg, with Martin Wieland as engineer and Manfred Eicher as producer. The repertoire comes from the band's circle: three pieces by Michael Gibbs, one each by Goodrick, Carla Bley and Weber.
Goodrick's Mevlevia, in 5/4, opens on a current of flanged guitar on which Burton and Weber float. Gibbs's pieces work with irregular metres, the fast Unfinished Sympathy giving Goodrick room for rolling solos and the slow Tunnel of Love letting Burton bend his pitches. On Intrude, which begins with a drum solo, Goodrick and Weber sit out. Bley's ten-minute Silent Spring is the most composed piece of the set. The Colours of Chloë, the title piece of Weber's own ECM debut, closes the record with his bass moving between bow and fingers over a steady groove.
In Jazz Journal in February 1975, the reviewer called it "one of the most impressive and enjoyable of all his albums". He also singled out the guitar solos and the variety of the material. He found Weber's heavily amplified playing full of slides, large and small, and quite individual. Weber later rejoined Burton on Passengers (ECM 1092). Metheny recorded his own first album as leader, Bright Size Life, for ECM in December 1975, with Moses on drums.
This is the CD edition of ECM 1051, first released in December 1974. It holds the six pieces in their original order, about 47 minutes of music in all.
