Bassist-composer Dunn has come up with an intriguing twist on the guitar trio format. His idea involves lots of liberty for wacky invention balanced with a goodly amount of discipline to navigate through some rather demanding heads. Guitarist Adam Levy (one half of the two-guitar attack in Joey Baron’s latest band, Killer Joey) joins with Dunn and ubiquitous drummer Kenny Wollesen for this unconventional trio date, which is marked by heightened interplay, an audacious sense of creativity and a fearless commitment to group improvisation.
They drift from sensitive offerings like “Perfumed With Crime” and “Aromatherapy” to metalesque fury like “An Attempt at Jealousy,” “Echidna” and “Ann-Margret,” an open-ended noise jam freakout in which Dunn treats his upright bass with a Mu-Tron pedal and Levy cranks the distortion box up to 11.
There is a niche audience for this defiant stuff. It’s the crowd that is equally open to Frank Zappa and Sonny Sharrock, Derek Bailey and Naked City, Painkiller and Mingus. Dunn seems to be drawing on all of those influences on this provocative debut, which is not for the faint of heart. But more adventurous listeners may want to go there.
Related Posts
Sonny Terry/Brownie McGhee: Backwater Blues
Start Your Free Trial to Continue Reading
Become a JazzTimes member to explore our complete archive of interviews, profiles, columns, and reviews written by music’s best journalists and critics.
Jonathan Butler: The Simple Life
Jonathan Butler’s optimistic music belies a dirt-poor childhood growing up in a South Africa segregated by apartheid. Live in South Africa, a new CD and DVD package, presents a sense of the resulting inner turmoil, mixed with dogged resolve, that paved the way to his status as an icon in his country and successful musician outside of it. Looking back, the 46-year-old Butler says today, the driving forces that led to his overcoming apartheid-the formal policy of racial separation and economic discrimination finally dismantled in 1993-were family, faith and abundant talent.
“When we were kids, our parents never talked about the ANC [African National Congress] or Nelson Mandela,” he says. Butler was raised as the youngest child in a large family. They lived in a house patched together by corrugated tin and cardboard, in the “coloreds only” township of Athlone near Cape Town. “They never talked about struggles so we never knew what was happening.”
Start Your Free Trial to Continue Reading
Become a JazzTimes member to explore our complete archive of interviews, profiles, columns, and reviews written by music’s best journalists and critics.
Harry Connick, Jr.: Direct Hits
Two decades after his commercial breakthrough, Harry Connick Jr. taps legendary producer Clive Davis for an album of crooner roots and beloved tunes
Scott LaFaro
Previously unavailable recordings and a new bio illuminate the legend of bassist Scott LaFaro