Bill Plummer And The Cosmic Brotherhood
Bill Plummer & The Cosmic Brotherhood
Bill Plummer and the Cosmic Brotherhood is a self-titled album released in 1968 on the legendary Impulse! Records label, produced by Bob Thiele — the man behind some of John Coltrane's most celebrated recordings. Bill Plummer, a Colorado-born session bassist with an extensive career spanning Miles Davis, Nancy Wilson, and later the Rolling Stones' Exile on Main Street, had immersed himself in classical East Indian music through study under Ravi Shankar and Hari Har Rao at Shankar's Kinara School of Music in Los Angeles. That training is vividly present throughout the album, which fuses jazz, psychedelia, and Indo-raga influences into one of the most distinctively trippy records ever released on Impulse!. The ensemble features an impressive cast drawn from the Los Angeles session world, including Wrecking Crew bassist Carol Kaye, percussionist Milt Holland, saxophonist Tom Scott, and vibraphonist Lynn Blessing.
The album's seven tracks range from the acid-drenched spoken-word opener "Journey to the East" — built on a rock-solid groove, chanting, and walls of sitar — to tightly swinging jazz compositions like "Pars Fortuna" and "Song Plum," to audacious covers that recast familiar pop material through an Indo-psychedelic lens. Burt Bacharach's "The Look of Love" is rendered with sitar drones and a slow, meditative groove, while the Byrds' overlooked gem "Lady Friend" is given an equally transcendent treatment, with Lynn Blessing's vibraphone adding to the otherworldly atmosphere. The ten-minute "Arc 294" is the album's most expansive moment, functioning as a piece of free Indo-jazz improvisation that pushes the furthest into experimental territory. Soul Strut described it as a "groovy far eastern jazz record", and enthusiasts have long considered it one of the finest and most far-out legitimate jazz albums of its era — rare on original pressings and eagerly sought by collectors. A vinyl reissue, mastered and cut by Kevin Gray at Cohearent Audio, was made available through Jackpot Records.
Bill Plummer And The Cosmic Brotherhood
Bill Plummer & The Cosmic Brotherhood
Bill Plummer and the Cosmic Brotherhood is a self-titled album released in 1968 on the legendary Impulse! Records label, produced by Bob Thiele — the man behind some of John Coltrane's most celebrated recordings. Bill Plummer, a Colorado-born session bassist with an extensive career spanning Miles Davis, Nancy Wilson, and later the Rolling Stones' Exile on Main Street, had immersed himself in classical East Indian music through study under Ravi Shankar and Hari Har Rao at Shankar's Kinara School of Music in Los Angeles. That training is vividly present throughout the album, which fuses jazz, psychedelia, and Indo-raga influences into one of the most distinctively trippy records ever released on Impulse!. The ensemble features an impressive cast drawn from the Los Angeles session world, including Wrecking Crew bassist Carol Kaye, percussionist Milt Holland, saxophonist Tom Scott, and vibraphonist Lynn Blessing.
The album's seven tracks range from the acid-drenched spoken-word opener "Journey to the East" — built on a rock-solid groove, chanting, and walls of sitar — to tightly swinging jazz compositions like "Pars Fortuna" and "Song Plum," to audacious covers that recast familiar pop material through an Indo-psychedelic lens. Burt Bacharach's "The Look of Love" is rendered with sitar drones and a slow, meditative groove, while the Byrds' overlooked gem "Lady Friend" is given an equally transcendent treatment, with Lynn Blessing's vibraphone adding to the otherworldly atmosphere. The ten-minute "Arc 294" is the album's most expansive moment, functioning as a piece of free Indo-jazz improvisation that pushes the furthest into experimental territory. Soul Strut described it as a "groovy far eastern jazz record", and enthusiasts have long considered it one of the finest and most far-out legitimate jazz albums of its era — rare on original pressings and eagerly sought by collectors. A vinyl reissue, mastered and cut by Kevin Gray at Cohearent Audio, was made available through Jackpot Records.