Audiopile Review: On December 20 of 2028, legendary double bassist Barre Phillips died at the age of 90. This was a monumental loss for fans of avant jazz, generally, and the ECM Records stable, specifically. Phillips was something like the conscience of a whole scene. His recently reissued 1969 debut ‘Journal Violone’ (aka ‘Basse Barre’ aka ‘Unaccompanied Barre’) is rumoured to be the first ever album of solo double bass. And his 1976 group blowout masterwork ‘Mountainscapes’ is (correctly) considered by many to be the best record ECM ever released. Throughout his long career, Phillips steered an unerringly radical course. While many of his peers were settling into lucrative careers of watercolour melodicism, he was making duo albums with Derek Bailey and Keiji Haino. And yet he retained an incredible knack for conjuring up simple, open-hearted beauty. In 2018, ECM released ‘End to End’, which Phillips declared would be his last ever solo bass album. Improvising around a couple of basic themes with ECM head honcho Manfred Eicher on his usual production duties, Phillips played some of the most beautiful and emotive music of his long career. Honestly, this seems like an impossible achievement for a solo bass album, but Barre Phillips was a master and ‘End to End’ is a masterwork, just as ‘Mountainscapes’ was before it. Great to see ECM getting this back in print with the usual audiophile-friendly attention to detail. A fitting tribute to one of the realest players to grace the game with their presence.

Barre Phillips was the first musician to record an album of solo double bass, back in 1968, and he has always been an absolute master of the solo idiom. In March 2017, Barre recorded what he says will be his last solo album, the final chapter of his “Journal Violone”: it is a beautiful and moving musical statement. All the qualities we associate with Barre’s playing are here in abundance – questing adventurousness, melodic invention, textural richness, developmental logic, and deep soulfulness. End to End was recorded at Studios-La-Buissonne in the south of France, and produced by Manfred Eicher