Aaron Lebos, Reality

Aaron Lebos comes out of the new fusion explosion with both a guitar style and instrumental writing not unoriginal. That is the case with the album I was sent recently, called Reality (self-released). It's Aaron with a quartet that includes Eric England on electric bass, Jim Gasior on keys, and Rodolfo Zuniga on drums. Jim proves an able second soloist and the band has a good rhythmic feel throughout.

Aaron's guitar-centered compositions and tasteful solo style carry the day in the end. There is the slightest hint of an Alan Holdsworth sort of feeling in his playing but really not all the much, just in the way he sustains notes sometimes and the bends he sometimes gets on a note. Aaron comes through very much as his own player ultimately.

It's a bracingly fine set of numbers here. And you have to dig the bold hipness of the guitar electricity. Yeah!

Guitarist Chris Taylor Makes Some Great Sounds on Nocturnal

Guitarist Chris Taylor is one of those guys you want to cheer on. After 30 years of gigging around, he comes up with a debut album that is a corker. Nocturnal (Abstract Logic 029) doesn't come out of outer space. He's listened to and absorbed some of the things that have been going on, like Weather Report, Allan Holdsworth and Pat Metheny, but he's come up with something very much his. There's a cosmic psychedelic element, a world-music element, and there is what is best termed a CHRIS TAYLOR element, something you aren't expecting that he brings into the mix to give it another direction than the one you assumed was where the music was going.

His playing is electric, sculpted in ways that are his own, and very musical. The same goes for his compositions and arrangements. It's a kind of fusion, yes. It's a new kind of fusion, without the hackneyed riffs, diarrhetorically noteful cliches and other devices we hear people use and reuse until there is little life left in them.

It's an ensemble music with guitar in almost a concerto-like position--though there's also some great tenor-soprano soloing as well. The rhythm section is ON it, whether funking-rocking with taste or swinging hard. And Chris plays like a mother when he gets cranking.

This is primo new jazz-rock. It is a very impressive first album for anybody. Coming after 30 years of dues-paying Chris Taylor must be feeling some satisfaction. He should be. Dig this one and you will not regret it, I suspect.

Guitarist Frank Butrey's Hard Driving "Malicious Delicious"

As I've said before, one nice thing about doing these blogs is that you get sent things that come out of left field, things you would never have known about otherwise. Philadelphia-based guitarist Frank Butrey's Malicious Delicious (Lust for Toys 01979 FRK) is that sort of surprise for me.

This is a scorching set of mostly electric, hard fused rock. He's playing with some crack cats and he is playing some very aggressively hip fusion. Nothing polite. He has chops but he's using them to express, not impress.

There is the kind of joy of playing going on that you found more in the early fuzed music sets than you are apt to find today--I mean the glad-to-be-here energy of early McLaughlin, Rypdal, Tony William's Lifetime, Santana in the astral zone, those early "this is new and we're psyched to do it" days.

The pieces have varying compositional feels. What's invariable is the quality of the guitar playing.

You dig guitarists cranking fuzed heat and cosmic cool, you should definitely NOT miss this one.

Bruce Arnold's "Heavy Mental" Guitar

We've been looking at a couple of albums by guitarist Bruce Arnold in the last several weeks. Here now is a third, Heavy Mental (Muse Eek 156).

It's a flat-out dash, a cranked guitar, fused power trio outing with a distant cousinship to Allan Holdsworth and Terje Rypdal's forays into this territory, and it's a good go of it to boot.

Bruce is joined by Andy Galore, bass, and Kirk Driscoll, drums for the thrust of fused rock with the sophisticated harmonies and melodic invention of jazz. The bass-drum team are right where they need to be, but it's pretty much Mr. Arnold's guitar that makes it all elevate to those extra level notches above just good. Bruce has shown us he can be accomplished in avant-avant and also avant-mainstream playing. Now he shows equal comfort with and facility in the more electric zone.

The first thing you notice on listening is Bruce's beautiful tone. It is highly electric but rich and velvety, almost silken, charged with sustain, made three-dimensional via resort to finger vibrato at certain points in the melody curve. His chording and note-conjuring are ahead of the pack and well executed, with chops to spare. Mention should also be made of Galore's solid bass ensemble work and his effective solo spots. Mr. Driscoll has a busy driving style that does not rest content with the backbeat stance; he's all over the place and rightfully so.

Bruce does the compositions here and they stay in a good place, without recourse to fusion cliche whatsoever.

It's a terrific outing that will please those who like the drive of rock with intelligent playing and arranging. Mr. Arnold should find plenty of eager converts to his brand of axe wielding with this disk. Give it a good listen and you could well be one of them!

Robert Branch and His Fusion Pyrotechnics

I'll be the first to admit that Fusion can have its excesses and banalities. There are formulas to fall back upon, instrumental idols to imitate and so forth. In that it is prey to the perils of just about any music that strives for some form of popularity, which includes most of the music being made today.

So when new faces come on the scene, many times they exist as the influenced, rather than a potential influence or at least an original of some sort.

Robert Branch is a new guitarist to me. His CD Courage to Be (self released, no release number) puts him firmly in the instrumental fusion camp. Minneapolis serves as his home base.

Beyond those basics there is the music. Sometimes his sound has a definite Allan Holdsworth violin-like singing to it; sometimes his originals reference Pat Metheny, and no doubt there are other influences. The point is what he does with all of it and the first answer is that he seems to be carving out a rock-based style that could be traveling toward a more original stance.

He has some of the machine-gun fire technique that many players in this realm have developed. What's interesting to me is what phrases he plays. He goes with rock licks and builds outward from them. How much outward he will build the future will reveal. For now this is a very accomplished, sophisticated effort that has plenty to like about it.

Keep going Robert Branch. We'll be listening (if the creek doesn't rise in the meantime!)