Vernon Reid - Mistaken Identity
Vernon Reid
Mistaken Identity
1996 Sony550/Epic
Produced by Prince Paul, Teo Macero & Vernon Reid
Personnel:
Vernon Reid - guitars (both real and imagined), whispering
Masque:
Don Byron - clarinet, bass clarinet
DJ Logic - turntables
Leon Gruenbaum - samchillian tip tip tip cheeepeee, theremin, melodica
Curtis Watts - drums
Hank Schroy - bass, fretless bass
Additional personnel:
Lawrence Fishburne, Sekou Sundiata - spoken word
Graham Haynes - cornet
The Crazy Baldheads - percussion
Beans, Chubb Rock - raps
When I first picked up and listened to Mistaken Identity, I had been anxious for years. The album was Vernon's debut with his name only on the marquis, and it had been delayed over 2 years. Rumors were few, because no one had any idea what on earth he had planned. By the time it made it to shelves, no one knew what to do with it.
Had this type of album been released in 1969-1970, it would have been placed on the same footing as Bitches Brew or A Tribute To Jack Johnson, by Miles Davis. This album is a colossal explosion of power, a calamity of finesse, and an atomization of primal force suited up in the finest arrangements.
It was also an album released to no promotion, by an artist who had been laying very low for a few years, and in the beginning of the era that we have now in terms of the music industry: if we do not know how to categorize it, we will ignore it.
And no one would have known what the hell this thing is. I love this album, have listened to it from every perspective, and still have my doubts as to what it really is.
Just looking at the line-up, you have a mix of some of NYCs finest underground avant-garde jazz and funk players, some serious heavy hitters in the production chairs, and a cross section of stylists brought together into one mans kaleidoscopic musical tour de force. No style or method was taboo, and nothing was played safe. This album is one of the 10 greatest albums in my collection of thousands, and is one of the top 5 of the 1990s as far as I am concerned.
Vernon came off the then dissolution of his band Living Colour, and took fragments of what he had done within LC and instead of the tight, aggressive but coherent linear genre-spanning songs, produced a form of Attention Deficit inspired sound collage and frenetic collisions of spiralling aural chaos. This is an album for someone that wants to sample all the sections of the music store in one go, but in a way that everything works.
This album works, both in that many tracks work on their own, but that in their wildly divergent characters, they actually produce a rather interesting collective result. It is King Crimson and James Brown and Bad Brains and DJ Shadow and Nirvana and Eric Dolphy and Zappa and Blaxploitation films and Stanley Kubrick musically interpreted paranoia and the kitchen sink and some of the adjacent plumbing as well as the main line back to the city resovoir. There is some underground hip hop, campy spoken word interludes, biting situational skits (including one as a bonus track), strange noises, serrated riffing, angular solos and the only time that clarinet and industrial have been melded in a way that works. This is the ultimate indie album.
The album was never followed up with a successor. Vernon's sophomore album, while very impressive in its own right, was a much more straight ahead, linear affair. The closest you get to a natural heir to this is his debut under the Yohimbe Bros. moniker (with DJ Logic oddly enough), Front End Lifter.
Mistaken Identity
1996 Sony550/Epic
Produced by Prince Paul, Teo Macero & Vernon Reid
Personnel:
Vernon Reid - guitars (both real and imagined), whispering
Masque:
Don Byron - clarinet, bass clarinet
DJ Logic - turntables
Leon Gruenbaum - samchillian tip tip tip cheeepeee, theremin, melodica
Curtis Watts - drums
Hank Schroy - bass, fretless bass
Additional personnel:
Lawrence Fishburne, Sekou Sundiata - spoken word
Graham Haynes - cornet
The Crazy Baldheads - percussion
Beans, Chubb Rock - raps
When I first picked up and listened to Mistaken Identity, I had been anxious for years. The album was Vernon's debut with his name only on the marquis, and it had been delayed over 2 years. Rumors were few, because no one had any idea what on earth he had planned. By the time it made it to shelves, no one knew what to do with it.
Had this type of album been released in 1969-1970, it would have been placed on the same footing as Bitches Brew or A Tribute To Jack Johnson, by Miles Davis. This album is a colossal explosion of power, a calamity of finesse, and an atomization of primal force suited up in the finest arrangements.
It was also an album released to no promotion, by an artist who had been laying very low for a few years, and in the beginning of the era that we have now in terms of the music industry: if we do not know how to categorize it, we will ignore it.
And no one would have known what the hell this thing is. I love this album, have listened to it from every perspective, and still have my doubts as to what it really is.
Just looking at the line-up, you have a mix of some of NYCs finest underground avant-garde jazz and funk players, some serious heavy hitters in the production chairs, and a cross section of stylists brought together into one mans kaleidoscopic musical tour de force. No style or method was taboo, and nothing was played safe. This album is one of the 10 greatest albums in my collection of thousands, and is one of the top 5 of the 1990s as far as I am concerned.
Vernon came off the then dissolution of his band Living Colour, and took fragments of what he had done within LC and instead of the tight, aggressive but coherent linear genre-spanning songs, produced a form of Attention Deficit inspired sound collage and frenetic collisions of spiralling aural chaos. This is an album for someone that wants to sample all the sections of the music store in one go, but in a way that everything works.
This album works, both in that many tracks work on their own, but that in their wildly divergent characters, they actually produce a rather interesting collective result. It is King Crimson and James Brown and Bad Brains and DJ Shadow and Nirvana and Eric Dolphy and Zappa and Blaxploitation films and Stanley Kubrick musically interpreted paranoia and the kitchen sink and some of the adjacent plumbing as well as the main line back to the city resovoir. There is some underground hip hop, campy spoken word interludes, biting situational skits (including one as a bonus track), strange noises, serrated riffing, angular solos and the only time that clarinet and industrial have been melded in a way that works. This is the ultimate indie album.
The album was never followed up with a successor. Vernon's sophomore album, while very impressive in its own right, was a much more straight ahead, linear affair. The closest you get to a natural heir to this is his debut under the Yohimbe Bros. moniker (with DJ Logic oddly enough), Front End Lifter.
posted by theloniusfunk at 4:53 AM
1 Comments:
You damn right about this album. Your little piece damn well written so I have nothing more to say. I was disappointed by 'Known Unknown' which lacks the addictive melodies and elastic funk of M.I. and his solos seem less inspired. However, I went to see the great man in concert earlier this year and the tunes he previewed from his forthcoming album are back up to the standard you can find on this disc. His playing has never been better or more diverse. So look out for that...anyways nice site and nice article. Take care, Jay-Chilli
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