Alan Silva

Featuring: Dave Burrell, Karl Berger

condition (record/cover): EX- (occasional minimal surface noise) / EX- (minimal wear)

Picture labels.

The bassist who described Sunny Murray as the first drummer to play the theory of relativity had his own equally uncompromising ideas. Alan Silva treated the double bass as an orchestral instrument, bowing it into registers where it stopped sounding like a bass at all, and Skillfullness is one of the purest statements of that approach on record. Long, slow, largely arco, with the ensemble hovering rather than moving and no rhythmic anchor anywhere. Silva went on to Paris, to the Celestrial Communication Orchestra and to decades of large-ensemble work, but the ESP record is where the sound arrives fully formed.

ESP-Disk' pressing. Austere, demanding, and a cornerstone of the label's late period.