Pat Metheny (POLYDOR MI-4141)

After going through the 10-volume Trio Records ECM Special series, we continue our journey through ECM rarities with another Japan exclusive, a DJ-use-only sampler from 1983. Released in anticipation of a series of Pat Metheny Group concerts held from October 3rd to 10th in Tokyo, Osaka, Shizuoka, and Niigata, it sketches a private map of expectation in melodies already searching for the venues that would receive them. The compilation begins, appropriately, with “Farmer’s Trust” from Travels, whose lyrical introduction opens in the nocturnal hush of bass and piano before brushed drums give the scene a tender pulse. Nana Vasconcelos’s percussion drifts through the edges with uncanny tact, allowing the music to inhabit both soil and apparition. The result is a threshold, not an overture, a place where realism learns to levitate without abandoning the ground. “Are You Going with Me?” is the first of three tracks drawn from Offramp, each functioning as a pillar in the sequence, though…