#1768 Charles Mingus - Tijuana Moods

3 shorts, 3 longs, alternating.

The shorts are more traditional jazz fare: horns doing their synchronized runs along the main theme, dipping into solo sections, then returning to the main theme (Flamingo's more of a wander).

The longs are the highlights, clocking in at 10+ minutes each, they're getting into arty territory, with wily instrumentation, narrative arks, slithery progression. A Colloquial Dream closes things out on the artiest of the arty, some drawling beat lines drawn on out as the flames die down.

And that brings us to our final highlight, which is that I dig the structure here, the rhythm of the album, as it dips from theme to improvisation and back, to longwinding masterwork and back and forth. Say:

Theme A
Solo Solo Solo
Theme A
Looooooooong strange trip
Theme B
Solo Solo Solo
Theme B
Looooooooong strange trip
Meander around a loose Theme C
Looooooooong even stranger trip

the structure unravelling slowly before your eyes. Pretty cool, man 4/5