A world of Fusion when right has its very own reason for existence that is as orchestral as Classic Classical yet as immediate and blistering as the most transcendent Rock and Jazz. Today I happily report in with such an album, with results decidedly more immediate than blistering yet none the less effective for it.
It is arranged, orchestrated and produced by touch guitarist and composer Markus Reuter. The group is Mata Atlantica, the title Retiro E Ritmo (7DMedia 7D2206). It is a soaring, all-inclusive epic work for multiple instrumentalists and vocals, with a pronounced ambient space to it but then nothing of the banal spectrum one might sometimes find in such things, though there is a beautifully expressive tonality to be heard withal.
The beauty of Portuguese and Afro-Samba prevails in spirit throughout, but then the sometimes hovering endlessness of ambient twilight suffuses all and gives it stature and backbone cum feather-in-sky poetic texts and lyrics by Emily Dickinson, Joao Cabral de Melo Neto, Zoey Gley, Mathia Derer, Rudyard Kipling, Joyce Kilmer, Lord Byron, and Claudio Manuel da Casta. There are beautiful vocals by Charlotte Pelgen and many others. Field recording by Christian Wolff and Markus Mauthe enhance our listening imagination and spur us forward while Mastro Reuter's touch guitar, Gary Husband's keyboards and numerous other soloist-instrumentalists give us a greatly varied soundscape via the spontaneous effusions and collective compositions by various elements of the totality, nicely sculpted by Reuter's intelligent and vibrantly musical creative direction.
We get a new take on the sort of paradigmatic bedrock Fusion and Prog mainstays of Miles, Hancock, King Crimson, Corea, and Airto and other Brazilian visionaries. etc.
This one is strongly recommended. Markus Reuter has a key role to play in the music of our times. Get this one and find out part of why that is so.
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