Vital Information is guitar shredmeister Frank Gambale and drummer Steve Smith with bassist Baron Browne and keyboard monster Tom Coster. Gambale has a cleaner, more boppish tone with Vital Information than he does in some other more rock-oriented projects, and Coster adds textural diversity to Show ‘Em Where You Live (Intuition). The quartet is anchored by Browne’s low-end nastiness, allowing it to taste a wide range of musical flavors, from the J.B.’s spank of “Shagadelic Boogaloo” to the quirk-funk of “Soul Principle” to the Coltrane referencing “Mr T.C.,” which is less a typical rock-fusion shootout and more postbop on meth. That’s not to say that there isn’t plenty of hard-core instrumental sandblasting: check tunes like “Cranial #4 Where We Live” and “Cranial #7 Brake Failure” for the grit.
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