An avant burn of incandescence envelopes me each time I listen to Invisible Rays (Trey Gunn self release). With the line up here one might just say, "no wonder" and leave it there. But that would be assuming a bit too much and would find most readers a bit adrift, so I continue.
This is a quite fortuitous (or fortune-blessed) meeting of three remarkable musical electricians. Morgan Agren plays the sort of drums that puts him at the top of the heap of fusion trappists. If you've heard his remarkable work with the Matts-Morgan outfit you know what I mean. And he excels here as well. Henry Kaiser should be familiar to most readers, a new avant guitarist's guitarist and a force of nature. Trey Gunn has been a longtime member of King Crimson and, as regular readers of this blog know, a bass-stick-multi-instrumentalist-composer-master of the studio rocketship ever on the go to uncharted planetary configurations.
Invisible Rays not only does not disappoint, it exceeds the limits of where any one of them has been for a three-way edge 'em out that will enthrall if you have ears at all. Not to wax too hyperbolic. That's how it hits me.
It begins with the 21-minute outjam on the title piece and does not let up. Both Gunn and Kaiser get some sounds that I don't think I've ever heard for sheer electric thrust and Agren madly rocks away. It goes on from there with a trio performance of high impact. It's beyond Crimson, beyond Matts-Morgen, beyond Kaiser's ordinary solo work, and it's what Trey Gunn has been progressing toward for some time. Throughout a healthy dose of outjamming makes for brilliant spontaneity.
I hesitate to overhype but this one does strike me as some landmark stuff. Sh*tcan the holiday music and put THIS on! At least for part of your festivities...
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