Machine Mass, Inti, Tony Bianco, Michel Delville, Featuring Dave Liebman

Music does not stand still. It cannot. Especially today, with the world as our basic unit for musical creativity and what is being done on planet earth generally known and freely inspiring others to respond in their own ways, and on and on. Just in the last few days we have covered Chinese, Indian, English, American, and Russian musicians, and now here on this page a coming together of heavies from America and Belgium. That's the way things go now. If the old "silk route" managed to encourage the mixing and melding of musical cultures centuries ago, the everything-everywhere road makes that creative interpenetration that much more vast and intense, rapid and encompassing.

So we have Machine Mass, here an excellent combination of sax master Dave Liebman with the vibrant guitar stylist Michel Delville and the complete drummer Tony Bianco. The album that comes out of such a fertile meeting is Inti (MoonJune 060).

This is avant jazz-rock without a stitch of cliche. That it is as fresh and vital in its own way as some of the old hoary classics has to do with the high creativity of all three artists and the zeitgeist that springs spontaneously and yet deliberately from the Pandora's Box that is unleashed in the process.

This is music that is both outside and firmly and hipply grooved. It rocks out as it goes out. It never stops. It is a series of very effective vehicles written by all three members, separately and together, depending, plus the old Zawinul Miles classic "In A Silent Way" done with a new angle to it.

Delville shows himself even deeper than we may have once supposed, with hidden compartments of hip music insight that are pulled open here to add to the totality. Lieb sounds as essential as ever and if you don't know what that means just put this on. Tony Bianco plays the right balance between grooving and inciting.

Well now I think I should stop because the hearing of this one will give you all the rest.

Don't miss this. Exceptional!

The Wrong Object, After the Exhibition

The Wrong Object is Europe & Belgium's prize jazz-rock outfit these days. You can hear it on their last release After the Exhibition (MoonJune 055). It's a sextet of guitar, keys, two wind/sax players, electric bass and drums. Everybody is good, especially Michel Delville on guitar, who writes much of the material here.

The compositions and arrangements set them apart--much like the Soft Machine and Zappa (in a progressive jazz-rock mode) before them. The band is tight and filled with adventure, the charts are hip and the couple of vocals fit right in with it all.

I could listen to Michel Delville's playing all day. He's that good and into his own thing to boot. But the whole package rings true and gives you a most fascinating listen.

Absolutely recommended!

Machine Mass Trio, "As Real As Thinking," with Guitarist Michel Delville

Belgian guitarist Michel Delville got together with fellow DouBt member drummer Tony Bianco to work on an offshoot project. They eventually brought in Belgian tenor man Jordi Grognard to form the Machine Mass Trio. As Real as Thinking (MoonJune 041) is the initial result, and it is a highly charged small-group rock-fuse opus that crackles with electricity. Delville, who also wields his jazz-rock pyrotechnics with The Wrong Object, stands out on this set with a brash metallic outward thrust much of the time. Jordi plays some expanded tenor in a sort of post-Leibman mode and gets some nicely spacey sounds on flute and snaky bass clarinet as well. Drummer Tony Bianco rocks with fusionoid virtuosity and takes an out-free path when needed.

There are torrid advanced out-rockers, some droning psychedelics, riff-based funkers with long floating melodies that owe something to Soft Machine and Weather Report, and some off-in-space segments where they take it out.

All-in-all it's another good spin on the genre of electric jazz-rock as evolved out of classic Soft Machine, Mothers and other innovators of the initial flowering of the music. It is first and foremost a group sound and a conceptual-compositional vehicle situation. Though compositions work to establish the mood of each number, yet it is what's put on top of it that often holds the most interest. Individual solos are there as needed and both Delville and Grognard come through singly as warranted, but it can be a matter of a three-way collective improvisation as well. A high point is Delville's long, planet-spanning guitar solo on "Falling Up."

It is a nicely turned set. It's a nicely wrought contribution to the music.