Delay

Originally released on Dance of the penguins (1995)

Also on Dance of the Penguins and What a Romance, though it goes back even further than that, to my very first sextet.

The idea came from Miles Davis. In the eighties he’d sometimes play synthesizer too, and with that famously disinterested look of his, he’d occasionally hit a key and just leave it down, far too long, even straight through someone else’s solo. He was the boss, after all, who was going to stop him.

After writing the theme, trombone carrying the lead, with the other horns filling in the remaining chord tones above it, I borrowed that same idea. The tune opens with a long F, electric guitar, run through some effects pedals, I’d guess, held the way Miles used to hold his. A guitar solo follows the theme, and at the end of it the horns come back in with, unsurprisingly, that same long F, spread out across different octaves. Then it’s back to the theme once more, this time without the delay.