Soft Machine, Switzerland 1974, with Allan Holdsworth

The legendary Soft Machine could hardly be said to have gone "soft" by 1973. Quite the contrary. Yet when guitarist Allan Holdsworth joined the band that year it gave the group a big boost and added a decidedly articulate new voice into the mix. They had up until then managed to carve a most distinctive sound by placing keyboard wizard Mike Ratledge into at times the role of the guitar soloist in the band and it worked very well indeed. Yet after seven albums and a great deal of wonderful music, there was a point where someone of the extraordinary caliber of Holdsworth, a one-in-a-million guitarist of genius, would give the band another sound shading and provide some new life. So they were fortunate that Allan was available and set about creating a new repertoire, much of which was included in their eighth album Bundles, another milestone recording for the Softs that was timely and of course well-received.

In the band at the time was Mike Ratledge, the only remaining original member, along with piano-saxman Karl Jenkins, bassist Roy Babbington and the potent John Marshall on drums. In tandem with Holdsworth they had a great deal of depth and versatility. Bundles showed that very much.

Now we have the treat of hearing the band live at Montreux, on the previously unreleased Switzerland 1974 (Cuneiform Rune 395/396) in a combo CD and DVD package.

The sound is pristine, the music complex and energized, and Holdsworth most definitely at his best. What's fascinating is that Allan had very much the fleet facility of his mature days, yet his sound is rather different, not as violin-like as in later years. That gives you another take on what he is playing and no the less interesting for it.

The music has it all and the band by then was in top form.

Of course you should have Bundles if you are a serious student of jazz-rock and fusion. But this live date has the spontaneous looseness and fire you get less of in the studio. The rhythm section kicks it hard, Ratledge and Babbington weave magic, and Allan Holdsworth gives notice to the world that he is a world-class player.

Very much recommended!

Copy this url into your browser to stream a nice excerpt: https://cuneiformrecords.bandcamp.com/album/switzerland-1974

Tim Morse, Faithscience

Tim Morse has something. On his second album Faithscience (Amethyst Edge Productions 42001) you hear it consistenly. It's a set of 11 originals with a prog-fuze through-composed kind of eclectic yet somehow original brilliance. Tim sings, plays keys and guitars, Jerry Jennings plays a nice electric guitar, Gordon Stizzo drums with hardness and sensitivity, Jim Diaz plays bass, Mark Dean appears here and there on drums, bass and guitar, and then there are various guests including some strings and brass now and again.

The arrangements and the songs have a fully composed, tightly drawn-together solidity that you might expect from great prog-fuze but do not always get. Here Morse gives you the full magilla of noteful passage in a sea of lyric expressivity.

This is a prog landmark of sorts. It isn't going to convert prog-haters but it will be manna for prog-lovers.

Tim is a real talent out there.

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!

TriPod

TriPod? Yes. Here we have a trio in the realm of such ensembles as Morphine--sax, bass and drums with vocals. But they don't precisely sound like Morphine. It's a prog-fuse, song-centered hard fullness created by the presence of Clint Bahr on 12-string bass and lead vocals (a twelve-string bass is composed of the standard four strings on an electric bass, plus two-octave strands per regular string...so 4+8=12), Steve Romano on drums and percussion, and Keith Gurland on alto and tenor, clarinet, effects and backing vocals. All this on their self-titled album just out on MoonJune (MJR004).

The music is somewhere in the realm of King Crimson progressivity, in its own special way. There are hard-edged, intricate arrangements, prog song niceties and a program that combines the two elements in judiciously balanced contrasts.

Clint Bahr's bass playing has a fullness that might make you think there's a guitar in there as well, but there isn't. He's playing the 12-string so that the bass and chordal possibilities come out strongly. Keith Gurland's saxophony is well-suited for the music and gives the music the second melodic voice in the ensemble that fleshes it all out. Steve Romano plays a LOT of drums as is fitting, and that sounds great too.

The songs-vocals put it all in focus. This is some heavy prog that should not be missed if you like the edgy Crimsonian thrust as I do.

And Clint's 12-string bass alone is a listen in itself. It's first-rate prog-fuse in any event.

Spectrum Road, A Tribute to The Tony Williams Lifetime

When the Tony Williams Lifetime hit the ears of listeners in 1969 with their double-album release Emergency!, few people were prepared for it. Brilliant drummer Tony Williams had just left Miles Davis's band after a long tenure and was eager to try something of his own, something very different. He got together with then mostly unknown guitarist John McLaughlin and veteran organist Larry Young to make a music that was so unusual as to be inimitable. That first album sounded like nothing that had gone before. It was rock heavy yet rhythmically and harmo-melodically light years away from what was going on then. And Tony's vocals were...well they certainly weren't what you expected from jazz, rock or jazz-rock, as it was then known. The innovation took on life as improvisation, ensemble and song-form. It was NEW in the biggest sense, so much so that many audiences generally couldn't get on their wavelength when Lifetime first hit the venues.

Jack Bruce joined the band as the fourth member and bass-vocal powerhouse. The album Turn it Over followed. And it was a continuation of what they first set out to do. The band folded, Tony and Larry reformed with new members and the album Ego came to light, which had some masterpieces but was not completely on the level of what went before.

Many years have gone by since those days, and while those sides were enormously influential no band has ever come close to realizing the sound of the original Lifetime. Until now.

Jack Bruce has joined with guitarist Vernon Reid, organist John Medeski and drummer Cindy Blackman Santana to revisit the classic Lifetime music. The first CD is out, and they call themselves Spectrum Road (Palmetto).

They cover many of the significant numbers from the first three albums and one or two I do not recognize. Jack and Cindy do the vocals and the band gets it uncannily close in the ensemble to that original thrust. As individual players of significant clout, however, much of who they are, right now in 2012, individually and collectively, gets into the mix, especially in the solo sections. That's what you would expect and that's what works best in these sorts of situations, to my mind.

It's a very heady tribute to an incredibly important band, but more than that, it extends that original music in ways Tony would have liked. It's Lifetime music with the here and now built in.

And it's some landmark music, whichever way you look at it.

Ligro, Dictionary 2

From Jakarta, Java, Indonesia, there's Ligro, a guitar-bass-drums fusion outfit that brings it on. Their first international release, Dictionary 2 (MoonJune 047), is at hand, and I for one am glad of it.

It's a fusion trio that has absorbed the Lifetime-McLaughlin-and-beyond legacy and made something of their own of it. This is music with bite. No small part of that is due to the playing of Agam Hamzah. He has facility, a great harmonic-fuse sense. He writes well too. And he can pace a solo with taste and drama, never at a loss for ideas. Adi Darmawan plays bass the way bass should be played in an ensemble like this--strongly foundational and rock solid, yet loose when called for and in no way cliched. Drummer Gusti Hendi has great chops, the independence to get the complex sounds that drive and goes his own way to boot, avoiding the repetitive formulaic approach and hitting it with full force.

It's a rather amazing debut. It's hard-hitting all the way but there's plenty of variety, even including an interpretation of Stravinsky's "An Easy Piece Using Five Notes."

It's a surefire winner for anyone who digs on advanced guitar wielding, the fused arts, and a hot trio going at it with music that rises above the repetition of accepted formulas to make something very much new out of it all. You are warned: things are happening musically in Indonesia today. This is an important piece of that and it should not be missed! Hurrah to MoonJune for bringing this to us.

Gavin Harrison and 05Ric, The Man Who Sold Himself

Gavin Harrison? Porcupine Tree's drummer. 05Ric? Multi-instrumentalist, vocalist, bassist. Their third album, The Man Who Sold Himself (Kscope 5:1 DVD and CD) came out last February and it's a beauty. It has some of the art-song-meets-fusion qualities of classic Allan Holdsworth & IOU, it has the push and thrust of later King Crimson, and it manages to evoke all that without sounding like all that.

Gavin's drumming is superb, as is 05Ric's bass playing. The vocals are right on, the musical backgrounds always interesting and space-ly hip, and sometimes more than that too (like some of the guitar work), and the songs are grab-worthy.

So how come I am just coming to this one? I am running late. Better Nate than Lever Brothers?

Oh ye prog, fuze, post-progs and post-fuzes! Do not miss this one.

Allan Holdsworth, Hard Hat Area, Reissue

Allan Holdsworth over the course of his dozen or so studio albums has established himself as a guitarist with a style so distinctive, so musical and a sound so inimitable that he is in a category of one: guitarists who sound exactly like (because they are) Allan Holdsworth.

His eighth album, Hard Hat Area (MoonJune 044) in a welcome reissue, gives a great example of how that is so. In Barry Cleveland's excellent liner notes, he emphasizes that this recording was the product of a working band, and so has a kind of cohesiveness and interactive ESP some of the others do not always have.

It's Allan on guitar and synthaxe along with Steve Hunt at the keys, Skuli Sverrisson on electric bass, and Gary Husband on drums. They tackle seven substantial Holdsworth compositions that have an almost orchestral dimension thanks to the fullness of the arrangements, the synthesized harmonies and the richness of the players' approach.

All the elements are in place and when Allan gives out with his inimitable solo work, it is an integral part of the musical matrix in the same way a concerto for violin and orchestra might be. It's much more than an exercise of Allan's formidable technique and beautiful harmonic sense and tone, though it certainly is that. It's music. Very good music indeed.

One of his very best. Great to have it available again.

Planet Z: Rob Tomaro and Susan Aquila and Company Fuse It

You may note that fusion seems to be re-emerging after some years where for various reasons it was anathema in certain circles. It turns out that circles can influence the music, but they cannot stop a style dead in its tracks. And so they could not and did not.

Planet Z (Blue Chair) gives you a 30-minute look at the violin of Susan Aquila along with the compositions and guitar of Rob Tomaro and some good key, bass, drums support. Her violin lifts things up and so does Rob's guitar. The compositions are well-pieced-together chunks of classic fusion, rechanneling for today the legacy of Cobham, Corea, Ponty and Mclaughlin.

It's well done and a good start. They have not broken through to a totally original sphere at this point, but that may come in time. Ms. Acquila and Mr. Tomaro play enough solo-wise to get the juices flowing. So flow with it. If you are a die-hard fusionist you will hear the sort of thing you expect and no doubt that will please you. I look to future albums to continue to develop the music in a more original direction. As it is there are some very nice moments and a classic orientation.

The Galactic Cowboy Orchestra, All Out of Peaches: Prog-Fuze with A Southern Tinge

A little bit like the Dixie Dregs before them, The Galactic Cowboy Orchestra play a blend of prog-fuze that brings a shade of southern country comfort into the mix on occasion. That has something to do with the guitar-fiddle two-tandem of Dan Neale and Lisi Wright, who both have a little country in their sound, and both have no little command of how to bring that into the instrumental prog-jam fold the band resides in. They also solo with some authority. John Wright plays a very solid roto-sounding bass, he can take an interesting solo in the rock zone and generally has a good presence and out-front quality not always heard in this sort of band. Mark O'Day plies a respectable set of advanced rock drums and gives out with a driving sound much of the time. All this can be heard on their second opus, All Out of Peaches (New Folk 2302).

Together they run vigorously through a set of originals that have some of the busy qualities of the genre without sounding like they are aping other bands. There's a little odd-metered frontier-crossing and melodic arrangements that follow a somewhat original curve.

I do especially like what Lisi Wright does on fiddle, a kind of Richard Green sweetness and fleetness within the fiddle tradition and soaring solo lines, but everybody gets some moments to put their sound across. And as an all-member effort they do get a very interesting blend. Not routine fare by any means, this music will give devotees to the genre a new voice to listen to. They may not always get a hard edge to the sound (if that sort of thing matters to you), but there is real musicianship going here that one has to respect.

Slivovitz, "Bani Ahead": A Crack Jazz-Rock Outfit from Napoli in Their Second Outing

Today a very cool effort from the Napoli jazz-rock-fuze combo Slivovitz, Bani Ahead (Moon June 039). This has compositional-arranged goodness and solos with bite, in a Zorn-Zappa meets a mid-eastern mode, Slivovitz-style. It's a seven-man band: D. Angarano, bass guitar, D. Di Perri, harmonica, M Giannini, electric guitar, S. Rainone, drums, C. Riccardi, trumpet, P. Santangelo, tenor and soprano, R. Villari, violin.

This second album for the band comes through as only something a very seasoned, well rehearsed and well-gigged band could do. They are tight and musically integrated. This is all-original music penned by various band members. The music is strong, driving and unique, with the minor mode predominating, and front line voicings in deft counterpoint with the leveraged rhythm team. Solos are strong and set off the arranged material nicely.

It's a definite corker of an album! Like the other Moon June recording artists Moraine (whose new album I reviewed on this site yesterday), Slivovitz come up with another new way to be new. There is lots of excellent music to be had on Bani Ahead. Grab a copy or get more info on the Moon June site listed in the link section.

Moraine, Metamorphic Rock: The Band in Good Form Live at NEARFest, 2010

Moraine's first album showed the world they were a very smart prog/fuze outfit that offered a sound alternative to the usual ways of being new. Dennis Rea's torrid guitar styling led the way for a kind of great adventure in electric sound that drove home the idea that Moraine had an original vision and were well on their way to putting it forward for the world to dig.

Their subsequent 2010 appearance at NEARFest was well-captured and we now have what they played there on the new CD Metamorphic Rock (Moon June 040). This is especially strong as a all-band effort, with solid compositions by Dennis Rea and other band members and some interesting adaptations of traditional and contemporary world music. The instrumentation of electric guitar, baritone-winds, violin, eight-string bass, and drums is used to excellent effect in ways that make for an even more identifiable sound this time out.

The music generally is more sonorous and less edgy in this go-round, but no less original. It shows once again that Moraine is a band to follow closely in the years to come. And it's a terrific listen as well! Very much recommended.

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 Torben Waldorff Waxes Lyrical and Then Turns It Up A Bit on "American Rock Beauty"

Now I have not heard Torben Waldorff's other albums, but American Rock Beauty (Artist Share 0102) has a particular way about it that is not entirely the usual. There are some rock-fusion numbers, and a countified tune, but where everything gets interesting to my mind is on the lyrical end of things.

The band is quite solid. Young tenor saxophonist Donny McCaslin has a fluid and limber presence which distinguishes the album. Torben Waldorff puts this album in a specially good place through his singing-melodic-harmonic writing and the ringing lyricism of his guitar. He sometimes sounds Abercrombie-esque and he certainly has facility, but the times when he gets bell-like sustain and weaves beautifully expressive solos (like for example on the title cut) are times when he stands out.

Those moments are well worth the price of admission! You can only get this CD directly from Torben at his site www.waldorff.com. Go there and check out the details if you are interested. He makes for worthy listening.

Information Superhighway, Great Prog Band, Offers Free Live Album Download

There may be no such thing as a free lunch but there are musicians and bands out there that want you to hear their music and are letting you download some great stuff for free. Chicago's Information Superhighway is one of those bands. I reviewed their last album, This is Not the Ending on these pages a while ago (do a search and you'll find the article). The free live album is them in a looser framework, well recorded in July of 2009, and it's some fabulous music.

How to describe? Well they have a free-prog sort of outlook, with an excellent female vocalist, very good songs, and two good soloists on the keys and guitar. The rhythm section is very hip with all kinds of kicks and jolts during the song routines and solos. I suppose that tells you nothing, really, though, because it is the quality of the singing, the freshness of the songs and the collective strengths of the band giving a very excellent accounting of themselves that hit you on several listens. This is a band you must hear if you are into the prog-fuse nexus. Some label ought to sign them. If they would listen to this live session, perhaps they would!

Grab the download at http://informationsuperhighway.bandcamp.com/

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!

Gary Husband Comes Through with "Dirty and Beautiful, Volume 1"

Gary Husband has impressed me in the past as a dynamically lively and exciting drummer and a musical mind as tunesmith, keyboardist and all-around positive force in the universe. Some of Allan Holdsworth's albums made with Gary are of the very best sort, and Gary's doing good things as keyboardist and drummer with John McLaughlin's new group (see earlier posting for a discussion of the latest album).

That's all true, but what of his new solo album, Dirty and Beautiful, Volume One (Abstract Logic 027)? The answer is, "Wheeew, yeah!"

This is one of those albums whose personnel alone is something you can't help but take note of in anticipation. There's both Allan Holdsworth and John McLaughlin, which is saying much; then Steve Hackett and Robin Trower; then there are the old Mahavishnu heavyweights Jan Hammer and Steve Goodman. There are other significant cats too. Does the music live up to the promise of who is involved? In every way it does.

Gary has put together a program of solid originals plus a brief look at a Miles Davis perennial and an engaging Allan Holdsworth piece. They all have melodic substance and serve as excellent platforms for some eloquent songbirds to gather and achieve ensemble and solo excellence. This is good rocking fusion the way you might anticipate it but with the Gary Husband flair for subtle sophistication. Allan Holdsworth sounds like you expect him to, beautiful tone and line as always. John McLaughlin lets out with a couple of solos that are some of the best I've heard from him in a long time, showing rock-crank-velocity and gritty tone. The other Mahavishnus (Goodman and Hammer) make appearances that show you they have not lost a thing, and, well, everybody else makes good contributions.

It's the cumulative effect of the Husband smart-fusion way that makes this album a thrilling experience, if you love fusion. This is what fusion is and still can be, a real art form. I can't recommend this highly enough!

Trey Gunn Retrospective: I'll Tell What I Saw

Trey Gunn, integral later King Crimson member, touch guitarist and musical composer-conceptualist has created some important music in the last two decades. He has made eight solo albums (1993-2010) and collaborated with many artists. Some of the fruits of those efforts can be heard in his new 2-CD retrospective I'll Tell What I Saw (7dMedia 1012).

The cumulative effect of repeated listens to the more than two hours of music on this set is impressive. There are world-music-meets-Gunn-progressive-music excursions with musicians and singers from Mexico, Italy, Russia and elsewhere. There's the progressive rock-funk that relates to and extends what he was doing in his King Crimson days. There are soundscapes of a deep sort. And much more besides.

What strikes me listening to the back-to-back highlights of his solo career is the sheer musicality and sonic originality of it all. It's a style that needs your attention because the soundstage is commonly packed with musical colors and events. The time spent is rewarded with much to savor and linger over. There is wonderful guitar and bass work, there's the orchestral conception and the layering, there is compositional brilliance.

Trey Gunn may well be rock's premier sound-artist of the past 20 years. Certainly he is one of the very select few at the very top of the game.

Revel in this one. Highly recommended.

"Smooth Danger" from Grand Pianoramax

Genres don't hold steady if you look hard enough at them (or listen, anyway). The edges begin blurring and soon enough you feel that, with certain artists, it's really all about following a musical vision wherever it might lead, and that "where" does not always stay in one place docilely but circles around and doubles through any manner of possibilities.

Such is true of the duo Pianoramax, a Berlin-centered pairing of key virtuoso Leo Tardin and drummer Dominik Burkhalter. Their third opus Smooth Danger (ObliqSound) lands on hip-hop, rap, progressive rock, a hint of electronica, fusion and funk with a kind of anything goes attitude. That wouldn't matter if the music was just ordinary mass-cranked pablum. And there's plenty of that out there, music that was devised first and foremost to cash in on some horse-hockey fad. That's not what Pianoramax is about.

Rather they devise key-drum music rich in nuance, rhythmically vital, melodically and harmonically irregular with the kind of crystalline beauty you might find in a pile of shattered glass under an archaically humming arc streetlight at night.

I perhaps like everybody make assumptions, many of them, before I even listen to an album. I wont go into what they were for Smooth Danger. Suffice to say that the music wasn't at all what I expected, and that it grew on me as I continued to listen. It's a bit of a treat, dead serious about itself but affording a good ride into some idiosyncratic world that would not be there if it weren't for these two musicians.

You can nab this one as a download at your favorite downloadary.

Bill Bruford's Summerfold Collection

We continue with the second volume of the Bill Bruford retrospective. The first installment discussing volume one was posted earlier (see August 24, 2010 entry on this blog). This concluding release, “The Summerfold Collection” (Summerfold), covers Bruford’s recordings under his own name from 1987-2008. The emphasis during this period shifts away from vocals and guitars. Keyboard-horn ensembles and a well conceived brand of Fusiony sounds dominate these sides. With two loaded CDs in the set, there is much music. Generalization ends up being a little diffuse as a result. Suffice to say that Bruford’s drumming is the key element here. The compositions and arrangements do not function as a simple foil for a set of drum solos however. The music is subtle and well put together and the drumming is fully integrated into the routines. The drumming is without cliche and gives testimony to the creative musical mind at work.

It is the work with the bands Yes and King Crimson that gave rise to his reputation. It is by way of these latter recordings that he fulfilled the promise of his talent and showed himself a very productive, capable leader and musical conceptualist. Those who enjoyed his work with others will most certainly not be disappointed with the more personal side of his music here. Those coming to his music for the first time will be pleased with the wealth and quality of music offered. Good sailing to Mr. Bruford in his retirement. He’s deserved it.

Originally posted March 24, 2009 at www.gapplegate.com/musicalblog.html.