The All Seeing Eye

Though Speak No Evil, the predecessor to 1965's The All Seeing Eye, had moody moments and angular, avant-garde touches, it still maintained a good deal of accessibility. Shorter cut a pair of initially unreleased sessions between the two records, but by the time he got to the latter, he'd abandoned accessibility for full-tilt avant-garde exploration. Possibly spurred on by the presence of his boundary-bashing brother Alan (who wrote and plays flugelhorn on "Mephistopheles") and iconoclastic trombonist Grachan Moncur III, Shorter pushes his music into new territory. Even the themes behind the tunes are heavy, dealing with the big issues of theology ("Genesis," the title track, the aforementioned Alan Shorter tune, etc.). The music matches the concepts in its unrelentingly searching quality. While there are free sections that find tenor man Shorter, alto player James Spaulding, trumpeter Freddie Hubbard, and pianist Herbie Hancock rolling, tumbling, and roaring as the moments demand, the framework of the tunes creates a contemplative, carefully focused intensity.