Jazz Articles about Jim Ryan

Jim Ryan's Forward Energy: The Concept

by Nic Jones
October 17, 2003

For all the energy here the group is as in thrall to its own role models as the latest adherents to Miles Davis's pre-fusion quintet of the mid-to late 1960s. In revisiting what's essentially Albert Ayler's music – wasn't this once known amongst marketing types as “ecstatic jazz" for all of five minutes? – Jim Ryan's Forward Energy brings nothing new to it, and the one-dimensional nature of the music makes for taxing listening.

If this kind of thing is ...