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
Jazz Music:
- Yardbird Suite [Import]
- Yesterday, Today and Tommorrow
- 1937-1938
- 8:30 [Limited Edition] [Original recording remastered] [Import]
- Africa/Brass [Import] [Limited Edition] [Original recording remastered]
- After the Rain
- Baby Come to Me
- Bebop Starburst
- Best of the Big Bands: Evolution of a Band
- Blue Note Essentials, Vol. 1
Jazz Music
Mozart: Jupiter-Symphonie; Divertimenti KV 137 & 138; Serenata Notturna
I Love Techno 2003 Presents Stanny Franssen [Import]
Live In Japan 2002 [Enhanced] [EP] [Live] [Import]
Complete Beethoven Edition, Vol. 5: The 32 Piano Sonatas
Lady in Satin-Vinyl Classics [Import]