Hungarian with a little Cosmic French, Please.

Barely having an hour for lunch, I was able to sneak in some time to be alone at the WIFI counter of a mall, after paying my phone bills.

I had a hungarian sausage sandwich, and as I was settling at the nearest high chair, the sudden feeling of being alone surges. I love this. I am not a mall/ crowd guy, and I always feel a wonderful isolated booth around me as I stroll around common public places flooded with citizens (or make that See-Tayh-Zens, for that Angry Beavers' flair). As folks enjoy watching each other and staring at their lunches, I enjoy watching them stare at each other and their lunches. 
     My headphones (the fifth pair I bought) are comfortably stuck in both ears, and a crowd's applause signals the six minutes of pure cosmic bliss - or alienation. NO STRINGS ATTACHED starts. The frenchman, m'sieur Jean Luc Ponty bows some serious stuff here. The track is from the album Jean Luc Ponty: LIVE, released in 1979. I heard this first in third grade or so, and have always found this short piece beautifully haunting. 

     Ponty used delay effects creatively, and swells, and swirls too.  As the cascade of notes decay into nothingness, one gets the drift behind titles like COSMIC MESSENGER, IMAGINARY VOYAGE, AURORA, and all that cosmic seep factor he's spun about. Technically, it is akin to the effect that Brian May (of Queen) constructs his solos with. Notes layer each other into a canon-like frenzy, which is of course totally different but equally mesmerizing effect to the current gallop-delay hype.
     What sets it apart though are Ponty's choice of notes. The minor (Em) key sets the ambient tone, preceding the drones and filtersweeps used in modern ambient and electronica stuff  by years. The notes are simply from the key - no altered scales, intricate intervals, no frills - but move, they do. He utilizes phrasings from quarter note patterns, long tones, and a triplet pattern played atempo that flutters into space -  just like driving the Enterprise or your X-Wing fighter into hyperspace.
     Ponty's tenure with Zappa obviously formed his approach to songwriting and inkling for jazz-rock, a little bit veering towards the jazz side though. It is not a surprise that fellow alumnus Alan Zavod on keyboard has provided the frenchman with chords, pads and solos to die for. 
     The track rolls eerily and steadily along - a perfect bed for a luxurious time with myself and a perfect antidote that pulverizes whatever poses as muzak on the mall loudspeakers.
     Here is a link of Ponty on a similar solo in the vein of No Strings Attached from the Rite of Strings Live DVD. However, he retitled the same into Eulogy for Oscar Romero.


Rite of Strings Ponty solo



     An hour for eternity and eternity for an hour. Not bad, really.