Xenoblast

Amazon.com
This oddball power trio's third album is also their major-label debut. It blasts into jazz consciousness with a jungle-meets-fusion title track that sounds like Flatt & Scruggs jamming with Phish. Xenoblast flies high from the get-go, but you can tell JMP are just warming up. With Jamie Masefield on mandolin and mandola, Chris Dahlgren on bass, and Ari Hoenig on drums, JMP incorporates dazzlingly unusual melodic fare with hardy improvisations that gallivant with all the promise of mad youth on a swinging bender. They sail through subtle hard bop in "Double Agent," do a country-reggae march on "The Milliken Way," caress Celtic funk with "Dromedary," romp through the American heartland in "Shaker Hill," and pay tribute to Stravinsky with the complex arrangement of "Igor." JMP's cleverness sometimes mires their rambunctious improvs, and band loses the plot while building mindless climaxes. Xenoblast is feast and famine, a blend of innovative ideas and musicianship occasionally sabotaged by JMP's enthusiasm and whirlpool of ideas. --Ken Micallef

Xenoblast,The Jazz Mandolin Project,Blue Note Records,Chamber Jazz,Contemporary Instrumental,Jazz,Jazz Music,New Acoustic,Pop,Progressive Bluegrass

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