Dyer on ECM

Geoff Dyer, author of THE ONGOING MOMENT, in the current Threepenny Review on the ECM label:
…Recent ECM releases are of a very high standard, but in many ways Khmer (the follow-up, Solid Ether, kept dissolving into a clatter of drum’n’bass) is a high point in the ECM project precisely because it seems so conspicuously at odds–sampling! remixes!–with the ethos of the company. (Having the courage of one’s convictions is, as Nietzsche pointed out, a pretty modest virtue; “having the courage for an attack on one’s convictions” is another matter altogether.) The ECM sound is as recognizable as Blue Note’s from the 1960s. It’s a style of music as much as a label; unlike Blue Note, it has never become a reductive or formulaic one. Which is why, of course, we are still listening to the old records (a CD of Arbour Zena is winging its way to me in the post; what will that be like, twenty-five years after first hearing it?) and listening out for what’s coming next (a new double live CD of Jarrett playing solo piano is due out in a couple of months; what will that be like?)…