Pullen and Moye in Conversation, Ten Minutes at a Time
Pullen unleashes the earthy, raging power he absorbed from Mingus, displaying compositional memory for details that unfold across each piece.
Famoudou Don Moye is the reason this album breathes the way it does. Recorded in 1978, Milano Strut pairs Don Pullen's piano with Moye's percussion in a series of extended pieces, each around ten minutes, where neither player rushes and both seem to be listening harder than they're playing. Moye doesn't keep time in any conventional sense — he's more like a weather system, creating texture and air around Pullen's ideas rather than driving them forward. That restraint is what makes the album work. Pullen had come through the Charles Mingus workshop, where he learned to play with real force and density, and he carries that here: his touch is heavy, his chords arrive like statements. But Moye gives him room. The pianist can sprawl, can build in odd shapes, can let a motif sit and breathe without the pressure of a walking bass or strict tempo.
What comes through in AllMusic reviewer Eugene Chadbourne's assessment is exactly this balance — Pullen displaying the raging power and the compositional detail simultaneously, each track unfolding its own logic. The album isn't a showcase; it's a negotiation between two players who trust each other enough to say less, not more. By this point in Pullen's career, after years in other people's bands, he was beginning to find his own voice, and recordings like this one show him thinking through problems in real time, with a collaborator who understands that space and silence are as important as the notes themselves.
Who's playing
Don Pullenpiano
Famoudou Don Moyepercussion
