Power Tools - Strange Meeting
Power Tools
Strange Meeting
Antille/Island 1987
Personnel:
Bill Frisell - Guitars
Melvin Bibbs - Bass
Ronald Shannon Jackson - Drums
Produced by David Breskin
This rather unknown album has a very well known pedigree. Frisell is the ranking icon of jazz cum Americana tinged guitar playing who has worked with John Zorn, Vernon Reid and Elvin Jones. Gibbs is an alumni of the NYC session scene, as well as Decoding Society, Defunkt, and would eventually join Eye & I and Rollins Band. Ronald Shannon Jackson worked with Ornette Coleman, James "Blood" Ulmer, and eventually founded The Decoding Society and Last Exit (the latter with Sonny Sharrock and Bill Laswell). It was recorded live to digital with no remixing, no editing and no overdubs on a 3 day session in early 1987. It is pretty heady stuff from a mini avant-garde supergroup.
This album does predate Gibbs's conversion to jazz-metal rockonaut and Frisell's full blown fascination with mixing American folk traditions with jazz, and it falls in the period when RSJ was running a particularly tight Decoding Society and a particularly noisy Last Exit. The results are an album of sweetly performed tracks that showcase a bone-deep understanding of studio stage telepathy and high-flying improvisation that rarely disappoints. Frisell plays in full tweak-mode, providing a complex set of structures kept mostly in check by the fuzzy logic disjointed free-funk edifice of Gibbs and Jackson. Gibbs time with Decoding Society means that he understand the unpredictability of RSJ and he is able to play along, follow, and occasionally coerce him as needed. The albums vacillates between a very quirky pastorial vibe and a rage hard free-for-all, and for the most part, it works better than expected -- and gets better with subsequent listens. The closing track, a cover of Unchained Melody is a oddly stuck coda (Odd mostly because you would never gues sthat is what it was, although it is a wonderful 'version')
While it does not get the rolling boil of some of Gibbs's and RSJ's other work, it is an excellent album to have for those who are adventurous in their jazz/fusion tastes. This is astill avant-garde jazz after all, and has its own charm. Sad that this group only made one album and a few limited tour dates. Makes you wonder of any of those gigs were ever recorded.
You might like this if you like:
Ornette Coleman - In All Languages
Material - Live in Japan
Steve Coleman - Lucidarium
Henry Threadgill - Too Much Sugar For a Dime
the second side of King Crimson - Beat
Strange Meeting
Antille/Island 1987
Personnel:
Bill Frisell - Guitars
Melvin Bibbs - Bass
Ronald Shannon Jackson - Drums
Produced by David Breskin
This rather unknown album has a very well known pedigree. Frisell is the ranking icon of jazz cum Americana tinged guitar playing who has worked with John Zorn, Vernon Reid and Elvin Jones. Gibbs is an alumni of the NYC session scene, as well as Decoding Society, Defunkt, and would eventually join Eye & I and Rollins Band. Ronald Shannon Jackson worked with Ornette Coleman, James "Blood" Ulmer, and eventually founded The Decoding Society and Last Exit (the latter with Sonny Sharrock and Bill Laswell). It was recorded live to digital with no remixing, no editing and no overdubs on a 3 day session in early 1987. It is pretty heady stuff from a mini avant-garde supergroup.
This album does predate Gibbs's conversion to jazz-metal rockonaut and Frisell's full blown fascination with mixing American folk traditions with jazz, and it falls in the period when RSJ was running a particularly tight Decoding Society and a particularly noisy Last Exit. The results are an album of sweetly performed tracks that showcase a bone-deep understanding of studio stage telepathy and high-flying improvisation that rarely disappoints. Frisell plays in full tweak-mode, providing a complex set of structures kept mostly in check by the fuzzy logic disjointed free-funk edifice of Gibbs and Jackson. Gibbs time with Decoding Society means that he understand the unpredictability of RSJ and he is able to play along, follow, and occasionally coerce him as needed. The albums vacillates between a very quirky pastorial vibe and a rage hard free-for-all, and for the most part, it works better than expected -- and gets better with subsequent listens. The closing track, a cover of Unchained Melody is a oddly stuck coda (Odd mostly because you would never gues sthat is what it was, although it is a wonderful 'version')
While it does not get the rolling boil of some of Gibbs's and RSJ's other work, it is an excellent album to have for those who are adventurous in their jazz/fusion tastes. This is astill avant-garde jazz after all, and has its own charm. Sad that this group only made one album and a few limited tour dates. Makes you wonder of any of those gigs were ever recorded.
You might like this if you like:
Ornette Coleman - In All Languages
Material - Live in Japan
Steve Coleman - Lucidarium
Henry Threadgill - Too Much Sugar For a Dime
the second side of King Crimson - Beat
posted by theloniusfunk at 3:23 AM
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