Trey Gunn's "Modulator" Breaks Ground in Advanced Electric Music

As was discussed in our interview with Trey Gunn several days ago (see below), Modulator (7d Media 1011) was created in novel circumstances. Marco Minnemann recorded a 50-minute drum solo with his own rhythmic muse guiding him. It's free ranging and very exciting drumming. He challenged multi-instrumentalist, touch guitarist and musical composer-conceptualist Trey Gunn to create a musical work based on the solo, using only Gunn's quite fertile imagination and the flow of drumming from the original track.

Trey responded with some of the most ambitious, interesting and satisfying music I've ever heard in the post-prog mode. Using guitars, touch guitars, bass guitars, keys and samples, he painstakingly built up a piece of orchestral dimensions. The stream of consciousness aspect of the drumming helped lead to a work that traverses an enormous amount of territory: rocking passages, incredibly complex rhythmic-melodic segments of rare beauty and interludes of reflective charm. It's not easily described because it has so much going on musically.

This is the kind of complex yet directly accessible music you could listen to for years and still get more out of each time. Every listen for me hits my ears in a different way than before; I hear more connections and underlying pattern and so enjoy an ever more rewarding listening experience. I would have to say that this one is a masterpiece of sonic sprawl. And there is some incredible guitar work, too. It's just fabulous!

A New One From Carlos Barretto Lokomotiv

The Carlos Barretto Lokomotiv is a modern-day Portuguese equivalent of the old Gateway Trio, meaning that the music is ambient, electric, freely played, with a rock component and plenty of improvising. Their new album Labirintos (Clean Feed 179) showcases their music with recorded brilliance and it engages from beginning to end. The compositional vehicles are solid and interesting, all penned by Mr. Barretto, with the exception of one collective improvisation. They help create the mood and tone of the set, which is forward moving and gutsy or, alternately, more reflective and seeking a sheer sensuality of tone.

Carlos plays a very nimble and tasteful acoustic bass and heads the outfit. He is one that can bow with grace and good tone and his pizzicato solos are right on the money. Mario Delgado plays in a modern sounding electric guitar style, with good use of space and the ability to make musical statements that bear up under continual listening. He can rock or string together a solo of a freer-er sort without recourse to cliches. Drummer Jose Salgueiro swings, rocks and freetimes his way through the set with sophistication as well as push.

Here is yet another example of a very good group on the Portuguese scene. Thanks in great part to Clean Feed, we get a gradually unfolding picture of a musical center, not in any way a backwater, but rather a home for a vital group of improvisers. And Lokomotiv is right up there with the best of them.

Ernie Krivda Group in New York

February 20, 2009—Tenor saxist Ernie Krivda has been on the scene for years. If he has not gotten a huge amount of recognition for his talents, it is not for want of consistent excellence in performance. He can be counted on to come through with energized, full-throated improvisations seemingly whenever the opportunity presents itself. His recent Cadence release Live in New York City (Cadence Jazz 1195) is a case in point. Captured by band guitarist Bob Fraser one January night at Sweet Rhythms in NYC, Krivda and company turn in one of those performances where they do not so much think of the recording in progress and let loose with unselfconscious mainstream jazz with hell-for-leather intensity.

The quintet is primed and the audience urges them forward in a really nice set of originals. Trumpeter Dominick Farinacci and aforementioned guitarist Fraser contribute first-rate solos, and Krivda insistently brings out his exuberant, extroverted note-streaming at its best. He has the hard lyricism of a Coltrane, but his own sound and musical vocabulary. This is a band on one of those nights where it all comes together. You’ll wish you had been there. Check the Cadence site (www.cadencebuilding.com) for more information.

King Crimson Live on a Good Night, 1996

February 19, 2009—King Crimson has been a band that, during its active periods, never stands still. The music is always developing, while the personnel configurations give a particular character to the music at any given time. Fripp seems to find musicians that can contribute solidly and change the sound of the band from lineup to lineup. One of the more impressive configurations was the double trio: Fripp and Belew on guitars, Trey Gunn on touch guitar (see a recent entry on these pages for an interview with Trey and what he is up to now), Tony Levin on bass and stick, and drummer/percussionists Bill Bruford and Pat Mastelotto. That very group is wonderfully represented on a 2-CD reissue of a London concert in 1996, The Collected King Crimson, Volume Three: Live at the Shepherds Bush Empire (DGM). This is no stock run through of greatest hits. There’s an opening soundscape by Fripp, some great drum routines and a cross-spectrum of their repertoire, digging back as far as “21st Century Schizoid Man” through to the Talking Heads-like “Elephant Talk.”

There’s plenty of music and the band is in top form. This wasn’t a group that featured hours of guitar solos. The experimentation tends to be collective and the expansion of their recorded versions takes place in terms of drive and a modification of the arrangements. The set has great sound and reminds us all of what we missed back then if we didn’t go see them.

Bassist John Hebert and his Trio Combine Acoustic and Electric Soundworlds

John Hebert seems to be the double bassist of choice on more and more projects in the modern jazz field lately. His new trio CD Spiritual Lover (Clean Feed) gives you some reasons why as it also shows a strong group conception in the fee-er yet tonally rooted zone. Pianist Benoit Delbecq shares the pre-arranged melodic roles with Hebert and also does some very nice exploratory, loosely horizontal soloing. Listen to him on "Le Reve Eveille," a lovely sort of modern ballad with some beautiful piano and bass improvisations. Benoit adds clavinet and synthesizer to the piano work, sometimes in combination to give the trio a more broadly expansive sound, sometimes to rock out a little in a free way.

Drummer Gerald Cleaver sounds terrific on this one, whether he's adding delicate Asian sounding percussive flourishes, using his brushes sensuously or madly swinging, freely accenting or bursting forward on some of the free-rock numbers. And John Hebert gets a beautiful sound, which is often tied to the ensemble context of the songs in a way that gives the music a fullness and drive that only a master of the art can manage. All in all, though, it is the compositions-concepts that distinguish this one as fully of our time, thoughtful but also forcefully climactic at the right moments.

This is a record that covers a good expanse of stylistic territory yet manages to sound distinctive and cohesive at all points. It combines the acoustic and the electric in a kind of organic unity. Good music is the aim, and that's what you get. I'll bet this band can be exciting to hear live. They are on this CD anyway!

Impressive German Electricity from the Season Standard

February 17, 2009—In my earlier days I came across an idea by I forget who. The tempo of a music, the thought goes, increases parallel to the amount of social upheaval present in the surrounding society. For the world we inhabit there are times of that sort. And today’s CD is packed with music of a rapid density, for the most part. Now I don’t think such an idea can be proven and there may be nothing to it ultimately, but the debut album of the German group The Season Standard (Squeeze Me Ahead of Line [Unsung]) speeds up the passing musical landscape to a captivating, exhilarating blur at times.

We’re talking about a progressive rock quartet: guitar/guitar-keys/bass/drums with vocals. The drummer Simon Beyer is a remarkable anchor and fire branding energizer for the group sound. He plays a very busy, sometimes asymmetrical and always driving brand of funk-rock rhythm that sets up the band’s pieces irresistibly. The music is complex and at the forefront of what can be done with what has been. Think of the funky elements of Yes, Beefheart, Zep and what followed only intensify it in a boiling, bubbling cauldron of notedness, like Mars Volta hooked up to a sophisticated music machine. There’s a lot of music contained in any given minute of this disk and it is nothing throwaway. It’s very good and very interesting. It rarely stops to look around. It’s going somewhere relentlessly, excitingly.

Mathias Jahnig has a good sense of his instrument (guitar) and the others are similarly situated. Mathias’ vocals have kind of a half-speed anchorage in the swirling musical pattern and give the band a second pivoting point (with the drums the first) in this multi-centered music. It’s fascinating. It’s great. I am impressed and want to hear more.

The National: An Album of the Era

The National? I don't know how many albums they have out but their new one, High Violet just slays me. Where to start? The singer, one Berninger, has a baritone voice that has a familiar ring in its tone, Bowie, later Iggy Pop. It's direct and a little laid-back, which contrasts nicely with the lyrics, which are haunted, alienated, lost.

The songs have an alt-indie excellence that doesn't come along very often. It's a dark mood The National are in, and musically the support to the melodies is quite interesting. The songs just pop out at you in the best sort of way.

My wife is a kind of barometer for a kind of "people's" ear. When she notices what I play. even though our space is bombarded hour-after-hour with a constant deluge, I know that there is an appeal there that might be common to any hip listener. The fact that she was out in the yard (OK, I was playing this one loud) and came in and asked, "what is that?"....That says something. This is a completely irresistable record. I wont say it's a classic. It just came out, right? Well it does make me want to hear their other records. That means it tops my ear chart. You think you like? You get.