1977 · Album
La Sorcellerie A Travers Les Ages / Gravenstein
Recorded 1977 · Spotlite
Four Voices in Ritual Motion
Humair and his crew conjure something genuinely unsettling—jazz that feels like it's unfolding in a séance.
This session brought together four strong personalities in a confined space: Phil Woods on alto, Eddy Louiss on organ, Jean-Luc Ponty on violin, and Daniel Humair driving the whole thing from the drums. The lineup itself was uncommon enough to suggest risk. Woods was a bebop-steeped player; Louiss came from soul-jazz and groove; Ponty was a classically trained violinist increasingly drawn to fusion. Humair had to find the through-line, and what emerged was something genuinely weird—not weird for weird's sake, but genuinely unsettling in a way that jazz rarely attempts.
The title signals the intention: sorcery across the ages, witchcraft, ritual. These tracks don't settle into groove the way an organ trio normally would. Instead, they circle. Louiss's organ sounds almost like it's generating drones from underneath, Ponty's violin cuts across the top with a plaintive, almost folk-like quality, and Woods plays with a restraint that feels deliberate—he's not showing off. Humair's drumming is precise but restless, pushing and pulling at the tempo, never letting the music find solid ground. It's occult jazz, if that phrase means anything: atmospheric, a little forbidding, architecturally sound but emotionally distant.
This is a sideline record, not a major statement, and it's only for listeners who want to hear what happens when you put gifted players in an unusual configuration and let them sit with discomfort. It doesn't resolve into the kind of warmth or swing that makes jazz accessible. But if you value strangeness and craft over immediate pleasure, it rewards attention.
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