ECM Sampler Series (1978-1982)

A sampler is supposed to be an index with music attached, a practical device for turning curiosity into sales. ECM’s eleven official sampler albums, issued between 1978 and 1982, are stranger objects. They advertise a catalogue, certainly, but they also interpret it. Each sequence makes an argument about what may belong beside what, allowing jazz, chamber music, folk memory, electronics, ritual, and improvisation to recognize one another before the listener has had a chance to constellate their kinship. Heard consecutively, the series refuses the convenient fiction of a single “ECM sound.” What persists is an ethic of space treated as an active participant, ensemble playing as a form of mutual authorship, and studio clarity used to reveal mystery rather than dispel it. The pleasures of these collections therefore lie as much in the joins as in the selections, as well as in the edits and excerpts (relatively unheard of in future official compilations). A bass figure migrates into a…