Guitarist/leader Nels Cline continues to mix forward looking music and experimentation with the jazz tradition like few others. Here, on his band’s fifth release, he and his base team of Scott Amendola/perc, and Trevor Dunn/b mix electronics and loops along with some guests to make a rich pastiche of themes and moods.
The trio itself is displayed on “Companion Piece” and “Canales” with both include mixtures of delicate and intricate interplay melded with rising crescendos and waves of climaxes and dynamism. Guests such as Zeena Parkins/harp create an exciting traffic jam of strings and textures while Cyro Baptista’s extra percussion is used for the large scale treatise “Seven Zed Heaven” which is reminiscent of vintage Weather Report. Cline’s guitar work mixes jazz chops and solos with an amazing collection of sounds, distortions, volumes and fragrances, as with “Macroscopic” which takes you from a musical telescope through an electronic microscope of musical mixtures with electronics and various “particulate matter” joining into the fray to expand and contract at an alarming rate. Quite a thrill!
Mack Avenue Records