Chicago Underground Duo, Age of Energy, Chad Taylor and Rob Mazurek

Here's a good one, the 6th recording by the Chicago Underground Duo, Age of Energy (Northern-Spy 020). It's Chad Taylor on drums and percussion and Rob Mazurek on trumpet, and I assume both on computers, keyboards and drum machines.

Both players play and compose with a deep structural sense. That comes out here in a series of really engaging electro-jazz-rock-funk things that are as much rooted in earth as they are cascading toward space.

The electronics work very well with the conventional instruments. All work together like different colored threads in a tapestry. They fit. They give you much more than what each individual thread might if left alone and unintegrated.

The ghost of psychedelic Miles lurks in the wings as an important influence, as well he should. But Taylor-Mazurek are light years away as far as what they do with the free-electro-rock idea. Much of it has a soundscape richness that in its own way makes use of the sound-color legacy of Fripp-Eno but in a more linear manner.

Chad sounds great, Rob sounds great and the electronics give it all a big, cosmic sound. This one smokes it in very futuristic ways. Dive into this one and you'll be glad you did.

Tim Hagans, The Moon is Waiting

The riff and space electric music of Miles in the late '60s to later '70s has shown a resiliency and resurgence in the jazz improv of today. Tim Hagans' The Moon is Waiting (Palmetto) gives a particularly lucid example of how creative players can continue to develop and expand within and out of the forms Miles devised back then.

It's a convincing ensemble of Tim going a post-Milesian out-and-in route, Vic Juris bringing out the more outer rock melodic-harmonic aspects of his playing, Rufus Reid anchoring the proceedings on acoustic bass with subtlety and style, and Jukkis Uotila providing fire and magnetic traction on drums.

The solos, collectively and individually, are saying something, the compositional vehicles have depth, and Mr. Hagans sounds great.

Give it a good listen and I think you'll go for this one.

The Kronos Quartet Performs "Uniko" with Kimmo Pohjonen and Samuli Kosminen

There are musical works that come along now and then that go beyond what categorical pigeonholing comfortably handles. Such music is all-the-more welcome in the sense that it expands the boundaries of possibility for music as we understand it in the present tense.

Such is most assuredly the case with the new Kronos Quartet offering Uniko (Ondine 1185-2), featuring the music of Kimmo Pohjonin and Samuli Kosminen. First of all, this neither sounds like or is a typical string quartet-chamber music suite (there are seven contrasting movements or segments involved). That is because the quartet is augmented by Pohjonen's accordion and voice and Kosminen's string & accordion sampling and electronic manipulation. What you end up with is something that sounds orchestral in texture, though with a quartet component that is central to the music.

Secondly, the music itself. It has some of the drive of rock, a minimalist element that does not rest on repetition so much as it makes use of it in passing as a way to flesh out structural moments (again sometimes in the manner of progressive rock, but also sometimes in the way of the more traditional classical use of ostinato). The variations that appear in parts of the work have a kind of fusionoid thrust meets dance-folk ornateness that gives the listener a new plane on which to hear the music. There are also (as implied above) Northern Euro-vernacular strains very much a part of the music--allusions to dance forms, folk melodies, etc. This is especially apparent in the accordion parts, but generally permeates the entire work on a number of levels. Thirdly there is a deeply resonant sound achieved in the electronic processing of the initial live signal and a sometimes attractively horizontal soundscaping that comes into play--not, though, in a consistently obvious or formulaic sense. That brings us to point four: the music most definitely eschews the formula as standard operating procedure. They throw out the book on what constitutes the expected way to do things today. Pohjonen and Kosminen meld all the various aspects together in ways that in no way sound rote or programmatic.

Finally, then, it is a musical experience that delights with unexpected juxtapositions, invigorates with the excitement and drive of the powerfully virtual ensemble in tutti overdrive, and brings in a wealth of musical content and continually varying sound color.

This is one of the most interesting and unusual bodies of music I've heard yet this year. It is like the Kronos Quartet to come up with unexpected syntheses that help define the 21st Century musically. They've done it once again, thanks of course to the considerable compositional and arranging talents of Pohjonen and Kosminen. It's one of Kronos's very best! That is indeed something.

Toby Driver and His New Music

Composer-instrumentalist Toby Driver is the creative force behind the group Maudlin of the Well/Kayo Dot. From what I understand, the group manages to combine new metal styles with classical form and orchestration. I have not had the pleasure of hearing them, but I have had the pleasure of hearing Driver's second album for Tzadik, To The L...L...Library Loft.

There are four pieces on the record, each a world of its own. Driver's hyper-electric ensemble guitar gives three of the four pieces some added metallic weight. Greg Massi is the guitarist on the fourth work. Every piece makes a convincing case for the viability of Toby's vision. Metal and new music can indeed be transformed into a powerful amalgam.

The instruments and participants for each work form a particular chamber/rock configuration. A series of moods and sound environments result. Some are soundscapes where atmospheric sounds conjoin with metal-derived musical washes; others are more hard-edged.

I don't know of anyone else creating music like this. And it's not just that Toby Driver dares to create such hybrids; he does so with absolute musicality. These are works to live within and grow into. They are so unique that a first hearing left me mystified. By the fifth hearing I began to appreciate concretely what was happening on this disk. I still need to listen another, say, five or six times to really get to grips with it. That is how unprecedented and unusual Driver's music seems to me. What could be more interesting?

Percy Howard's Meridiem in a Third Outing

Percy Howard and his Project Band Meridiem has two CDs out there, one from 1998, one from 2000. I have not yet heard them. However his third, A Pleasant Fiction, Meridiem Volume Three (Voiceprint/Pangea) has been grabbing my ears for a week. It is time to report in on it.

Percy gathers together a fairly large group of musicians for this current volume, most notably Vernon Reid, Bill Laswell and Buckethead. Percy Howard does most of the vocals and he has soul. I believe it is Jill Tracy that is also a vocalist here and she contrasts Percy well. There may be others vocalists appearing too, but I don't know and it doesn't matter, really.

What we have is a musical trip that circumnavigates all kinds of progressive, alt and metallic-fusion realms. There is a story line that threads its way throughout and it has a romantic flavor. It is the well-crafted and excellently performed songs that musically stand out. The ensemble is top notch, guitar work notable and everything gels in a way conducive to the ears of 2009. I am sometimes reminded of Kip Hanrahan's imagery of love on the hot griddle. This is in Percy's own bag, though.

The songs are sophisticated and complicated enough that a single hearing does not do them justice. (And I sometimes wonder what reviewers think they are doing when they react to a recording based on a single listen, if there are any out there who still do that. OK if you know the music more or less beforehand. Not OK for a virgin slab of music.) Repeated listening reveals the content and puts the songs firmly in the memory. They are the sort of things Carla Bley, Mike Mantler and others pioneered in the '70s, art-rock songs, if you will.

Anybody who wants something with a lot of thought and care put into it, who likes rock but doesn't like the more banal versions, who looks for the edgier forms, would do well to hear this CD at least two or three times, or ten. . . .