Interesting thread that caught my eye. I don't follow Jazz but I do appreciate a lot of it.

https://rateyourmusic.com/genre/ECM+Style+Jazz/

I listened to a bit of Ralph Towner and Gary Peacock, and while appreciating their music ability and the recording quality, find it too random and disjointed for me. I found a section I liked, but then each time it suddenly went of on a tangent with weird flutters or almost radome chords, and for me, lacking in structure - which I guess is the point, but it doesn't work for me. I do know that I couldn't play it - the impression is they start together, end together and what happens in between is total disinterest in each other. My old trick of playing a wrong note and not muting and correcting, but keeping it going to make a musical statement that I really meant it, is taken to extreme - dissonance seems important. So, clever, accomplished, polished, but still a mess - to me.

paulears, post: 437025, member: 47782 wrote: find it too random and disjointed for me. I found a section I liked, but then each time it suddenly went of on a tangent with weird flutters or almost radome chords, and for me, lacking in structure - which I guess is the point, but it doesn't work for me.

I've never been into that "disjointed" style of jazz, either... while I certainly can respect the talent, it's too unstructured for me, and it always sounds as if it's too "random", at least to my ears, anyway - which, to be fair, were tuned on rock and pop, so that might explain my lack of understanding of this style - to me, it almost sounds like they are just hitting random notes and chords.

While I DO like fusion - Return To Forever, Weather Report, Dixie Dreggs, etc., I find this "free form" style to be too dissonant and atonal for my tastes.