Hypercolor, with Eyal Maoz

A rather incredible drum sequence kicks off the new fusion album, the inaugural album by the trio Hypercolor (self-titled) (Tzadik 4007) and we are off to the races, so to speak. This is a very well-balanced, daring threesome of Eyal Maoz on electric guitar, James Ilgenfritz on electric bass and Lukas Ligeti on drums. I've covered Eyal and his guitar innovations here before (type name in search box above). Hypercolor is a group that balances the Eyal way of playing with a group orientation and a compositional fluidity.

Eyal uses vibrato, variable attack and an individual sense of sound to get his very characteristic style, which you can hear to great advantage on this trio outing. The music has an avant surf element, psychedelic largess, and a driving hard rock temperament to carve a group sound.

Ligeti is a drummer who has far more than a backbeat orientation here. There are lots of interesting things he does throughout. Ilgenfritz holds down the center and keeps things rock solid while doing worthy things as well.

There are free avant touches in here--it isn't all rhythmically straightforward, but also tumblingly free. And Maoz can take it out at times and does. There is also a touch of semitic tonality reflecting Israeli roots.

But all that may be true of a number of fusion outfits playing today. What sets Hypercolor apart is real originality. Eyal is fast becoming one of my favorite fusion guitarists because he refuses to stay with the given. He is one of a kind and Hypercolor is that, too.

Have I said enough to pique your interest? This is an excellent outing!

H3, Heinz-Hirshfield-Holtzman

The unexpected, when you are not quite sure what you are getting, is a nice treat when it all turns out well. I felt that way as I got into the album H3 (Composers Concordance COMCON 0012). It's a prog-fuse-electric avant outing by Roland Heinz (electric and acoustic guitar), Adam Holzman (keys, synth) and Jeff Hirshfield (drums). Heinz put together five compositions for the album; another four are collective improvisations by the three.

All of it is a kind of "thinking man's fusion" in that what is played can be driving but it also is quite well-thought out. Heinz is a guitarist that has something to say, the chops to say it with, and his own approach to line weaving.

Holzman and Hirshfield have good places to go on this set as well, and they go there. Both are excellent partners for Heinz in their far-from-cliche ideas and executions.

It's a very rewarding set!

Barry Romberg's Random Access, Crab People

Drummer-Composer-Bandleader Barry Romberg has scored big with his Random Access band on the 2-CD set Crab People (Romhog 123). This is his twelfth release and, though I wasn't counting, this one corks it!!

The band includes Ben Monder and Geoff Young on very electric guitars, and some very hip players in general going after a post-Milesian-fusion-rock that is very advanced-funky and harmonic-line advanced as well.

Kelly Jefferson and Kirk McDonald play soprano-tenor and tenor, respectively and they sound good. Trumpet, two contrabasses, electric bass, percussion and keys round things out and it all hangs together exceptionally well.

About half the album puts together spontaneous compositional junkets, the other half addresses written motifs and their jammed, highly sound-colored realizations.

It's music that is out and grooves too. Really grooves when it gets into the mode. This is one hell of an electric band in a very adventuresome mood.

If you like out fusion, this will kill you!

Trey Gunn, Henry Kaiser, Morgan Agren, "Invisible Rays" Scorches and Enflames the Edges of Fused Rock

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...

Marc Ducret: His Guitar, Composition and Distinctive Quintet Interpret Nabokov's "Ada" on the Projected Multi-Volume "Tower"

It would be enough that Marc Ducret is a consistently interesting electric guitarist in the avant fusion zone. His composition-arrangements are also a huge factor in his music. Tower, Volume One (Ayler 118) finds him embarking on an ambitious multi-volume series of works interpreting and reacting to Vladimir Nabokov's post-modern masterpiece novel Ada. Like the labyrinthian multiple realities of that work, Tower in its first installment carves out densely textured, multi-voiced music. All that from a well-chosen quintet of Ducret on guitar, Matthias Mahler, trombone, Peter Bruun, drums, Kasper Tranberg, trumpet, and, instead of bass, the bass saxophone of Fred Gaspard. That latter factor alone (and Mr. Gaspard's zealous attack) contributes much to the unusual ensemble sound.

In essence the quintet sounds like a mini-big-band-orchestra. The parts are voiced to get a largeness and complexity of sound way over and above what you expect to hear in a group of this size.

The parts conjoin with improvisational interactions in ways that are pure Ducret. He is not Frank Zappa. He IS a logical choice for one of the handful of really stimulating jazz-rock-classic innovators following in Zappa's wake.

This is music to startle, music to sink into with absorption (and how else would someone sink in? But never mind that). It's one of Ayler Records' most illustrious releases. Marc Ducret is no "fusion as usual" or "freedom as usual" sort of musician-composer. And the band digs into the material like they wrote it.

An achievement, this is. It is. I certainly look forward to the volumes to come. Marc Ducret is not someone to watch. He is already here! He is someone essential to the avant electricity of the present. Tower, Volume One has all the earmarkings of an album of vital importance to what's happening this year, even this decade. If the volumes that follow are this good. . . well, we will have to wait for them and see.

Wadada Leo Smith's "Heart's Reflections:" Electric Music That Isn't According to Formula

Put Wadada Leo Smith's Organic group's Heart's Reflections (Cuneiform Records Rune 330/331) on and listen. From the beginning you know that this isn't some warmed over fusion from yesterday. Pheeroan Aklaf's bass drum rings out like a barrel. None of the muffled "kick" sound. He plays rock-funk with all the complexity of his swing and freetime playing. Complex, varied, yet pushing the feel ahead. Wadada sounds not like a Miles clone, but like someone who is furthering his own playing after coming out of the experience of playing Miles's electric music (with Yo Miles). There's a large band at play here: two people manipulating electric sounds on the laptop. The distinct one-two punch of Brandon Ross and Michael Gregory on electric guitar, who weave in and out of the music in their own way, as themselves. Then there's the two-bass hit of John Lundberg and Skuli Sverrisson, plus two more electric guitarists, violin. alto and tenor and, oh yes, Angelica Sanchez on keyboards and piano, a great addition because she goes far beyond the funk licks some players would expect to play. Like Jarrett in Miles's "Live-Evil" band, she takes her own playing style and adjusts it to the context. She enriches the music in a very good way by so doing.

This is no rote funk thing. Rhythms are loosely jazzesque, sometimes even free, and the Wadada compositions go way beyond a few ostinatos and running lines.

This is electric music that dares to be art music. It's miles beyond a Miles tribute band. It's a Wadada's music band. Free electric post-funk? That's one label to put on it. The point is that there is an evolved group sound that brings fascination. Wadada has gotten a bead on where to take the music and he is taking it there.

Probably the most important electric band working in the music today and this is one of their very finest (double) albums. You have to check it out!

Travis Reuter Takes Guitar and Ensemble On An Eventful Musical Ride for his "Rotational Templates"

NY-based guitarist Travis Reuter shows us that there is more than one way to take fusion rock into more abstract territory. His Rotational Templates (New Focus 117) unfolds in long composed angular juxtipositions that start with the implications of a rock beat, then break up that beat into forward chopped segments that the rhythm section takes up. Against that are guitar-tenor-Rhodes countermelodies that fracture along the lines of the rhythm, but extend the thickness of the music and the momentum of the beat segments. Or at least that's what I hear. It has a counterpart in the chopped bop that young trumpeter Peter Evans is putting across in such an interesting manner (see my Gapplegate Music Blog for various reviews of his work). Neither is imitating the other. The results are different as is the sound of the band. But there is a kind of convergence (and the M-Base folks have done some chopped funk over the years too, but perhaps with a little more forward thrust).

It's a music with room for some excellently conceived solos. Travis has plenty of facility and a stretched har-melodic sense that he unleashes with drive, energy and a recognizably original sound. Jeremy Viner on tenor and Bobby Avey on electric piano bring in their own restless sorts of melodic modulations. Chris Tordini's bass and Jason Nazary's drums give what goes on its definition through some impressively executed chop kicks, relentless in their consistent push, building a kind of excitement that makes the plain places rough in a sort of over-all fashion.

If that sounds complicated to you, the hearing of the music is not a difficult experience. There is sense to it all. Its consistency is the key that unlocks the complexity, revealing pattern and development within a sort of sameness.

Travis has something very interesting going on with this one. He plays in a kind of personal expanded tonality in ways that are exciting. His band has grabbed onto what he is into and in that way they speak as one.

Wow. If you dig the out electric thing this will hit you right in the breadbasket. It's a winning combination of factors and Travis Reuter is a musical sensibility that bears close watching! www.newfocusrecordings.com has the album for direct purchase, as does CD Baby.

Seabrook Powerplant II Continues Where The First Volume Left Off!

The manic energy of Seabrook Powerplant is not of the ordinary sort. It is supercharged. Whether picking, plucking or bowing his tenor banjo, Brandon Seabrook usually goes for maximum velocity. On the first album the trio with Jared Seabrook on drums and Tom Blancarte on bass emphasized and reinforced the breakneck improvisations of Brandon. Seabrook Powerplant II (Loyal Label LLVL009-LP/LLCD009-CD) brings in more compositional elements and finds the group building lines, textures and speed blocks in more of a three-way collaboration.

They still have exultant moments of power thrash and it still sometimes sounds as if we are Waiting for the Robert E. Lee somewhere in hell, but you will not find anything like it out there, certainly not involving a tenor banjo (though he plays a bit of guitar as well). It's music of the edge. More importantly it is very well done. Anyone with a sense of adventure and an electric ethos should find him or herself responding to this one.

Pitom: Blasphemy and Other Serious Crimes

Pitom does Jewish Rock. Their second for Tzadik, Blasphemy and Other Serious Crimes is all about the Day of Atonement (Yom Kippur). It's somber but blazing--in a kind of Masada-Mahavishnu electric intensity mode. They call it "punkassjewjazz." And that captures some of the essence of what they are doing. There IS a kind of insouciancy to it that you could dub punkish. And in that way they are a bellwether of part of the Tzadik ethos--reverently irreverent.

The band is a tight fury of Yoshie Fruchter on skronky fusionoid electric guitar, Jeremy Brown on violin and viola, an excellent addition for his Semitic and otherwise distinctively folkish tone and the sound of his strings blending with guitar on the two-part melody lines. Then there's Shanir Ezra Blumenkranz on hard-nosed bass, and Kevin Zubek doing an expanded rocking thing on the drums.

What appeals to me in this music is the edgyness combined with the Jewish minor mode, the fusion arrangements and the moments of sheer guitar madness (the good kind). Thanks to John Zorn's example and moral support there has been a significant emergence of avant Jewish rock that is both encouraging and exhilarating. Pitom is at the forefront of that and Blasphemy is a terrific example of why that matters.

Yo Miles Presents Shinjuku: Miles' Electric Legacy Extended and Evolved

Of all the electric Miles Davis tribute outfits, Henry Kaiser and Wadada Leo Smith's Yo Miles went the furthest in taking the innovative (and in some avenues still controversial) style of Miles' principal electric period (1969-1975) and growing it with the implications of how those bands made music.

The recently issued, download-only album Shinjutsu makes for a great example of this. Working around the nucleus of Henry's guitar and Wadada's trumpet, the band builds their own edifice of psychedelic rock-funk and sound color that both remains true to the many aspects of Miles' music as it takes them further along in ways that allow the soloists to bring their own personal takes on the Milesian mode and gives the collective band a chance to create additional colors and group presence.

Four tracks were previously issued on Sky Garden and Up River and there is one weighty unreleased track, "Muhammad Ali (Live)", which is especially notable for the interaction of Wadada Leo Smith and tabla master Zakir Hussein.

Most readers will be aware of the reaction against this music, well organized and consistently put forward by certain famous and infamous individuals. They claimed that the style was illegitimate, against jazz, and ultimately uninfluential. I believe strongly that that is not the case. Shinjuku shows as well as any the lasting legacy, the continued vibrancy, and the open plasticity of Miles' concept. It brought--and continues to bring--the music into the contemporary world we live in. Of course there have been other stylistic trends that have done that and continue to do that as well. In order to benchmark the importance of what Miles accomplished in light of later developments, one cannot look entirely at the acoustic jazz groups that have operated in its wake. For color, for rhythm, for freedom within a set of form parameters, the influence is everywhere you find electric bands working in the long form. And you find it too in acoustic bands looking for a way around head melodies, changes, straight modal, and hard-bop group routinings, as well as in free-playing groups seeking to find additional ways to extend improvisational form.

All in all Shinjuku is a great example of Yo Miles in its evolved stage, an entity unto itself. And at the same time it's an example of what Miles's electric legacy has given us.

Much recommended. Find out more details and download the album at the usual download hot spots: i tunes, Amazon, etc.

Many Arms: Power Trio on Steroids and Ten Pots of Espresso?

Many Arms? And some legs too. Many Arms uses six arms and at least two legs to create a blazing avant scronk super-progressive speed metal (without the exorcist element) that's powerful and intricate. It's the guitar-bass-drums power trio configuration laying down a 43 minute onslaught of thrash and energy avant on their CD Missing Time (Engine 2010).

Many Arms to be more specific is Nick Millevoi on guitars, John Deblase, bass, and Ricardo Lagomasino on drums. They start in a mode that suggests the psychedelic pre-Mahavishnu McLaughlin and take off from there on a series of noteful, synchronized, chromatic rug burns of speed, stop-start routines and bracingly expressive line twisting. It's music that generally gets set to high and stays there much of the time. Something fast, frenetic, expressionist and very electric is what to expect. Unlike some of their more staid and arena-heat-seeking brethren, they often imply a time or even go beyond time and dispense with the regimentation of rock beats, back beats or even machine-gun double bass drum tatoos. Nick's guitar work is chromatically charged metal that opens up to more advanced harmonic-melodic implications of metal chromaticism--and in that way early Rypdal comes to mind as (again) early McLaughlin. The sound is quite raw, overamped and jagged like broken glass. So there is identity there. Bass and drums do a great job working out the edgy routines and in-the-face pies of free energy.

Many Arms may not appeal to those who seek some "easy" music to hear. This isn't. It's exhilarating, outside and unrelentingly uncompromising. It does what it does (or rather THEY do) with confidence and conviction. At least that's what comes across to me. The late Captain Beefheart would have appreciated this, though they enter his particular realm only obliquely.

Gol damn, though, this is some hot shoot. Get it, turn it up, amaze your neighbors, get evicted. All with a smile on your face.