[Review] Gary Burton: The Time Machine (1966)

Burton multitracks vibes, marimba and piano on his most ambitious recording to date.

Kronomyth 5.0: The mouse that roared.

If you felt Gary Burton was playing with an extra pair of hands on his previous albums, you ain’t heard nothing yet. On The Time Machine, Burton multitracks vibes, marimba and piano for an unforgettable trois de force. At first, this music left me disoriented; listening to The Sunset Bell and Six-Nix, Quick, Fi, I wondered if the engineers hadn’t accidentally recorded over old tracks, since it felt like two songs playing at the same time. The other Burton originals, Interim I and Interim II, are short avant-garde pieces that could be considered poems of sound, complete with bongo-like accompaniment. While The Time Machine is his most “difficult” album to date, it also features two of his prettiest tracks: Antônio Carlos Jobim’s Chega de Saudade and a Steve Swallow original, Falling Grace. Michael Gibbs is tapped again for two songs, the brief Childhood (another kind of interim) and the appropriately titled Deluge, which includes a double-tracked bass solo from Swallow (touchée). The remaining two covers might rightly be considered originals, so radical is their reworking. A deconstruction of The Beatles’ recent masterpiece, Norwegian Wood, is one of the most inventive Beatles covers you’ll ever hear. On the closing My Funny Valentine, Burton makes you hear the melody with new ears, creating an echo chamber of vibes that blossoms with new possibilities. It’s tempting to view this album as Burton’s retaliation for having to record The Groovy Sound of Music, and maybe it was. As for Swallow and Larry Bunker, they provide solid accompaniment (naturally) but are plainly outnumbered on The Time Machine. This is Burton’s Peter Sellers performance, playing with himself in the absence of equals to the audience’s delight. Oddly, time seems to have forgotten this album, but it’s ripe for rediscovery.

Original elpee version

A1. The Sunset Bell (Gary Burton) (5:04)
A2. Six-Nix, Quix, Flix (Gary Burton) (6:08)
A3. Interim I (Gary Burton) (1:36)
A4. Chega de Saudade (No More Blues) (Antonio Carlos Jobim/Vinicius de Moraes) (4:43)
A5. Childhood (Michael Gibbs) (1:02)
B1. Deluge (Michael Gibbs) (4:47)
B2. Norwegian Wood (John Lennon/Paul McCartney) (3:26)
B3. Interim II (Gary Burton) (0:54)
B4. Falling Grace (Steve Swallow) (4:00)
B5. My Funny Valentine (Richard Rodgers/Lorenz Hart) (5:33)

The Players

Gary Burton (vibes, piano, marimbas), Larry Bunker (percussion), Steve Swallow (bass). Produced by Brad McCuen; engineered by Ray Hall, second engineer: Bert Ball.

The Pictures

Cover and liner photos by Tom Zimmerman.

The Plastic

Released on mono and stereo elpee in 1966 in the US (RCA, LPM/LSP-3642).

1. Re-packaged on 2CD with Something’s Coming and The Groovy Sound of Music on remastered 2CD in 2016 (Beat Goes On).