Wayne Shorter – The All Seeing Eye (UHQCD)

“The All Seeing Eye” is an ambitious album for Blue Note. With this album, Shorter wanted to use ‘a broader palette of colors and textures’ and continue his exploration of ‘life, the universe, and God.’ “The All Seeing Eye” is simply brilliant: Shorter is accompanied by Freddie Hubbard on trumpet, Grachan Moncur III on trombone, James Spaulding on alto saxophone, Herbie Hancock on piano, Ron Carter on bass, Joe Chambers on drums, and on one track by Wayne Alan Shorter, the composer’s brother, on flugelhorn. In many ways, “The All Seeing Eye” seems to be the most complete and comprehensive work of Shorter’s career. The performance is outstanding throughout, the music wandering into dark places and corners where you don’t necessarily expect to find jazz (see “Genesis” or the echoes of Miles Davis’ “Sketches Of Spain” in the last piece). It is convincing proof that Shorter deserves the recognition he receives alongside greats such as Coltrane, Blakey, Mingus, and other legends.

As part of the extremely popular “Blue Note 85th Anniversary Reissue Series” Universal Music Japan presents the sonically impressive remastering of this jazz classic by the legendary Kevin Gray, who is also responsible for Blue Note US’s analog reissues such as “Tone Poet” and “Classic Vinyl” – as a limited Japan only UHQCD with OBI stripe. The original recording session for “The All Seeing Eye” took place on October 15, 1965 at Rudy Van Gelder Studio in Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey.

UHQCD stands for Ultimate High Quality Compact Disc and is a joint development of the Japanese CD replication company Memory-Tech and the Audio Quality CD Company from Hong Kong. Unlike conventional CDs, UHQCDs are not pressed from polycarbonate, but cast from a photopolymer and cured with UV light. Another layer of high-purity polycarbonate is applied to the softer photopolymer for scratch protection. The combination results in significantly reduced reflection of laser light inside the CD and an unmatched precise edge transition between pits and lands of the CD. UHQCDs are 100% compatible with standard CD players. Musically, the result is a sound image strongly reminiscent of analog master tapes.

While Universal Music Japan’s first UHQCD series relied on the DSD data of previous SHM-SACD releases, with increasing popularity, albums that had not previously been released as SHM-SACD are now appearing. Typically, the Universal Archive master tapes are re-converted to DSD for this purpose. UHQCDs are ideal for music lovers who want to get as close as possible to the sound of the recording, but do not own an SACD player.

Lista pieselor

UHQCD

1. The All Seeing Eye

2. Genesis

3. Chaos

4. Face Of The Deep

5. Mephistopheles