Guitarist Bill Frisell has always had an ear for unusual tonal colors, and they're particularly strong on this 1984 recording, an early and enduring document of a major musician's work. There's a distinctive emphasis on brass and the lowest registers, with Kenny Wheeler on trumpet and flügelhorn, Bob Stewart on tuba, and Jerome Harris on electric bass; drummer Paul Motian completes the quintet. The thick, bass-heavy textures and contrasting layers of sound give the music an almost orchestral quality, while Frisell and Wheeler's shared love of pitch bending sometimes gives the eerie sense of funhouse mirrors, a dream of sonic and temporal distortion. "Rambler" is a mirthful echo of mariachi music, "Music I Heard" is propelled by unlikely allusions to march rhythms, and "Resistor" has some of Frisell's most animated playing on disc, his guitar synth creating a Pandora's box of unexpected sounds and twisting, mercurial lines. --Stuart Broomer
Rambler,Bill Frisell,Ecm Records,Avant-Garde,Jazz,Jazz Music,Modern Creative,Pop,Post-Bop
Jazz Music:
- Retro - Sonic Music For The Moderns
- Revisited [Original recording remastered]
- Rhapsody in Hughes 101
- Rhodesmode [Import]
- Sax Dreams
- Silver Cycles
- Smokin' Java
- Solo Guitar
- Song Is You [Import]
- Spring Cycle
Jazz Music
Suk: String Quartet 2 / Martinu: String Quartet 7
Tango Music of Argentina [Import]
The Whole Thing Started With Rock & Roll Now It's out of Control [Original recording remastered]
The Complete Pet Soul [Import]
Today's Swing N' Jive Hits [Original recording remastered]