In his liner notes to Miles Davis’ post-Bitches Brew recording At Fillmore: Live At the Fillmore East, Morgan Ames quotes J.J. Johnson on Miles’ new direction. “If you put Miles and his new group in the studio and recorded them on spearate mikes, and then you cut the band track and just played the trumpet track, you know what you’d have? The same old Miles. What’s new is his frame of reference. ”

Musicians reinvent themselves not so much by changing their personal style but by putting themselves in new contexts. David Murray, a prodigious recorder has done that times over since the mid-1970s. Whether in small groups or large, the World Saxophone Quartet, avant-garde or ballad programs, Murray’s voice, a unique blend of swing, bop and free expression, is instantly recognizable.

His best playing, certainly currently (and it’s all great), can be heard on his Afro-Caribbean projects.  Murray’s connection to the  French possession, Lesser Antilles island Guadeloupe, heard on 1998’s Creole, and 2004’s Gwotet, has given him new life. His brother-in-law, Klod Kiavue and a group of Guadeloupe Creole musicians known as the Gwo Ka Masters contribute to this Africa-America connection. To make The Devil Tried To Kill Me an overarching fusion hybrid, Murray brings in Californian funk drummer Renzel Merrit. To make it a fusion of arts as well as styles he integrates the poetry of Ishmael Reed  and brings in folk-blues interpreter Taj Mahal to sing them.

Despite all this stirring –and the Rabbit, no stranger to stews, promises to use no more food imagery– the one ingredient (sorry) that stands out here is Murray. His ability to catapult an improvisation into a squeaky, high-register and just as gracefully fall back is familiar to those of us who’ve been following his work since his early recordings on the Italian Black Saint label.   Murray’s willingness to combine elements of classic swing and bop, to recall masters from Ben Webster to Albert Ayler, and to do so in fresh, invigorating ways, is unique among tenor players. Then there’s his tone: rich, robust and razor sharp. The purity of his sound, even at its most wild, even when he somersaults through those previously mentioned upper- register squeaks or caterwauls deep in the low, makes his every solo, especially in these Afro-Caribbean rhythms, a thing of marvel. Yet there’s no doubt, no matter how different the frame of reference, who the saxophonist is.

The lyrics and background chanting provide much of Murray’s motivation to overachieve. Surprisingly, they’re a mixed bag.  Reed’s poem that gives the recording its name is a driving story of recovery, powered by interwoven percussion and vocalizations. Singer Sista Kee makes the lyric flow against the rambunctiousness of her piano and the JuJu paced rhythm guitar of Christian Laviso. But even Taj Mahal can’t make Reed’s “Africa” fit the music in a meaningful way. The poem’s imagery of illness and recovery (a theme on the recording– “Africa, if I were a hospice worker…”–on lyrics by Kito Gamble as well as Reed) are apt and moving as spoken word. Setting them to music — this music — seems to dilute their message. Much more meaningful to the song: Murray’s heart-felt, flowing bass clarinet solo.

The rhythm section is the heart of this recording and it beats best when it is driving a bloodline of chanting that gives way to solos from Murray and trumpeter Rasul Sikkik. Bassist Jaribu Shahid provides just enough support and none of it overly repetitious, even as it grooves. Murray seems particularly responsive to the bass — or is it the other way around — and the effect is one of a single voice coming from eight different musicians. Lovers of both African pop and American jazz will find things to like, even love, here. What comes together on the Island won’t stay on the Island. And lucky for us.–Cabbage Rabbit

Spirituality has long haunted the music of guitarist John McLaughlin.  But its a different kind of spirituality than commonly accepted.  Serenity is replaced by driven purpose sometime almost furious in its speed and direction. The organic is overcome by the electric. The enlightened sense of  “taking it as it comes”  is replaced by a lock-step unison through structured themes and powerful rhythms. This is an enlightenment with weight, purpose and intensity.

It may have been difficult to make the spiritual connection when McLaughlin’s Mahavishnu Orchestra arrived on the scene in 1972. The imagery was all there — the band’s name, the album’s title The Inner Mounting Flame, its candle-lit album cover — but the music, more fire than flame,  was something else again, mostly speed, spark and machine-gun rhythm. But not exclusively. “Lotus On Irish Streams” a meditative, acoustic number better fit the cliche of spirituality. These loud-quiet contrasts have been present through out McLaughlin’s career, begining with the devotional acoustic and avant garde sensibilities of his first recording, Extrapolation, through the dichotomy of Shakti and Electric Dreams.

The mistake we make is to type-cast spiritual music as acoustic, pastoral, reverent or reserved. Think of spiritual music that is not easily defined by these terms — Santana, Alice Coltrane, Charles Lloyd, the more fiery ragas played by Ravi Shankar — and its a simple matter to see that spiritual music, like spirit itself, can be all things, including intense, acutely rhythmical music.

John Coltrane’s solos on  A Love Supreme, possibly the most spiritual of jazz recordings, carry an intensity that expresses the yearning and the search of the seeker. Something like it is heard on McLaughlin’s latest, To the One, an electric jazz-rock outing that relies on tough drumming, tight vibrant bass lines, shimmering keyboards and its leader’s high-voltage electric transmission. Without McLaughlin’s explanatory notes on the inside cover — “The inspiration behind this recording stems from two sources: Firstly from hearing the recording ‘A Love Supreme’ by John Coltrane in the 1960’s (sic), and secondly from my own endeavors towards ‘The One’ throughout the past 40 years” –  listeners might think that the guitarist was making another turn towards jazz-fusion.

There’s less insistence and more acceptance on To the One than heard in the Mahavishnu recordings, electric or acoustic. From the recording’s opening bass slide and cymbal splash, the music is positive, serene and upbeat. There’s nothing here to suggest the path to The One is long, arduous or otherwise marked with temptation. It’s as if McLaughlin has already attained what he seeks and now is enjoying it.

The 4th Dimension  (not to be confused with the 5th) is McLaughlin’s most polished band. Much of its drive and cleanliness comes from bassist Etienne M’Bappe whose rich tone and detailed play are the fine line underscoring the proceedings. M’Bappe is something of a juggler, supporting every note from his bandmates and propelling it back into the air. His solos are busy, buzzing affairs filled with lyricism despite their speed. Drummer Mark Mondesir is crisp and tasteful, having the drive of Billy Cobham and the inventiveness of Jack DeJohnette. Keyboardist (and sometimes drummer) Gary Husband finds the right moods and tonal combinations to complement any direction the music might take. His accompaniment is smart and reflective, his chords often coming a step behind the lead as if to give them a split moment to sink in. His solos, especially the one on “Discovery,” are warm and sophisticated. Just when he seems ready to overstate his case, he finds a place of conviction, a sense of contentment.

McLaughlin brings a sense of joy to his play that reflects the recording’s attainment. Listen to him on”Special Being” as he spins and pirouettes like an accomplished gymnast. He gives a characteristic roughness to his tone on “The Fine Line” before sliding into a singing theme. “Lost and Found” is the disc’s most relaxed piece and its most beautiful. It’s resonating synthesizer backdrop and McLaughlin’s smooth synth-guitar tones give it a meditative feel heightened by M’Bappe’s repeated bass motif presented at different octaves.

The most spiritual of the six pieces on this short, 40 minute-plus recording, is the title tune. Husband’s clipped cymbal work (he doubles on drums for this number) accents McLaughlin’s synth strolls in a way that suggests idle contentment. In a nod to A Love Supreme, there’s some unison chanting over a drone at the end that suggests the journey isn’t yet over. Note how in his comments McLaughlin writes after “periods of indolence, doubt and even plain laziness” he hears the call of his soul and returns to his “inner ear,” not his inner being. We find this brilliant; the portal to enlightenment being the ear rather than the mind or the soul. It’s certainly the place where so much joy, so much beauty, so much knowledge has entered.–Cabbage Rabbit

The Rabbit has long complained that Keith Jarrett’s standards trio, fine as it is, limited the pianist. Maybe that ’s because the Rabbit was one of those “hippies,” as one reviewer described his audience, who found salvation in Jarrett’s early solo work, beginning in 1971 with Facing You and continuing through Solo Concerts and The Koln Concert, albums we played again and again to hear the sheer weight of Jarrett’s wide-ranging improvisational creativity. The size of the massive Sun Bear Concerts (six CDs) left us a bit cold, as if ego had replaced accomplishment, something suggested back in ’73’s three- LP Solo Concerts with the inclusion of endless European applause that seemed to eat up more vinyl than the music.  While the trio work seemed, after a few releases,  all of a sort, I always found something to like, if not love. His solo work was another matter, as if the connection he was able to make with his trio mates was turned inward to connect with himself.  When Radiance was released in 2002, Jarrett, having grappled successfully with health problems, again found a way to go beyond.

Released last fall, Testament may be Jarrett’s most expansive solo package, covering the full range of his styles and approaches without over-indulgence. The three-CD set,  holds two full concerts recorded within days of each other at the end of 2008, one at Paris’s Salle Pleyel,  the other at London’s Royal Festival Hall.  Jarrett explores free forms and dissonant counterpoints, grand harmonic themes and rollicking, gospel-influenced anthems. He swings and sails, even when creating Rachmaninovian lushness. Ranging across the entire keyboard for full effect, his play can be deep and dense one moment, light and ethereal the next. The pieces tend to be shorter than in his previous solo work and each seems to find context in the larger program. Numbered in Roman numerals, neither concert is so long or self-absorbed that you’ll be buried in its weight (as I was by Sun Bear).

The joys of solo Jarrett come of evolution. His ability to spontaneously create themes and then grace them with variation makes us focus on every note. Not only do lines evolve but rhythms as well. His phrases, especially in the more free form pieces, are never cut-and-dry but meander seamlessly, usually towards unexpected conclusions. This is something missing from his trio play and is a good part of what makes the pianist so unique. His ability to climb his way to some precarious perch and then lower himself out of it is truly amazing. He is a master of conflict and resolution.

It’s hard to find anything here to criticize. Only the last  cut from the London concert “Part XII,” fails to strike its rhythm, turning from a warm, major -key theme into a stomp and shout gospel-like close. If Jarrett’s conviction doesn’t exactly make believers of us, at least he won the audience. Their applause at the tune’s conclusion, probably the concert’s conclusion as well, goes on and on.–Cabbage Rabbit

Eight years past Up Past Two Lips, composer-saxophonist Henry Threadgill continues to pare down his carnival of sound into something that’s more than a sideshow but less the three-rings his Very Very Circus bands once performed. Composition, as always in Threadgill’s music, is important and one can’t help but think of Bartok reworking folk forms into modern, dissonant forms when listening to Threadgill’s contemporary spin on jazz marches and other rhythmic forms.  While the six-piece band on Two Lips carried certain exotic touches with cello and oud, Volume I’s quintet goes for straight-ahead orchestration. Yet its sound is anything but straight-ahead.

The best way to understand Threadgill’s approach is to consider the band’s name. A “zooid”  is an organic cell or organized body that has independent movement within a living organism (think spermatozoa).  Likewise, the individuals in Zooid both create Threadgill’s musical form and move inside it.  The shape may come from the rhythm section as it does in “To undertake my corners open,” with fluttering rhythm guitar, Elliot Humberto Kavee’s twittering drums and two-steps-forward-one-step-back bass. Or it may go through a sort of osmosis, as in “White Wednesday off the wall,” with its pensive introduction stirred by an awakening flute and guitar unison.

Once a tune gets moving, the soloists take over . Liberty Ellman’s guitar is the most pensive instrument in the lineup, taking time to let his improv evolve into something that creationists wouldn’t have predicted. Bass guitarist Stomu Takeishi turns from support to being supported with wooden flute edging him on in the middle of “White Wednesday.”Jose Davila who doubles on trombone and tuba is the most aggressive of the soloists, pushing hard on the musical mebrane as if to split it in two.

Threadgill brings a toothier edge to his play here than his work of a decade ago. The sleeker lineup requires it and there’s a file-rough tone to his alto phrasing, a honed sharpness to his flute.  His solos are much like the titles he gives his songs (”Mirror mirror the verb”). There’s identifiable phrasing but no easy meaning to be had; lots of suggestions to what to think, but nothing concrete.

Given all that, the music has a recognizable, natural beauty. Much of that comes from the interplay, more symbiosis than survival of the fittest. But form is the binding factor and Threadgill’s composing skills are as smart and fluid as they’ve ever been. When the group perks up to procreate together, as it does on “Sap,” it gets your juices flowing. The more we listen, the more we hope for off-spring (indeed, Volume II is scheduled for release sometime this year)–Cabbage Rabbit

We’ve long had a love-hate relationship with saxophonist Jan Garbarek, loving many of his releases while finding his tone irritating to the point of distraction. After championing some of his early work (Afric Pepperbird, Witchi-Tai-To, the career-defining, one-of-a-kind Dis) we suffered mixed feelings towards what followed, even when it included great musicians like John Abercrombie, Nana Vansconcelos, David Torn and and Bill Frisell.  Star,  with Miroslav Vitous and Peter Erskine from 1991, re-established our interest and we admired his forays into Indian traditions — Ragas and Sagas, Madar – as well as 1993’s Twelve Moons which defined his far-ranging tastes and methods.

But after the huge success of Officium,  what seemed to us a forced marriage between hundreds-of-years-old choral music and contemporary saxophone, our hipness (in which popularity never equals same) forced us to look away.

Now Dresden, a two-CD set recorded live in that German city in 2007, reminds us of what we loved about Garbarek, without all the Nordic and early-music atmospherics that are a large part of his popularity. Dresden is a reminder of what true fusion music, prior to its commercial bastardization, promised to become: a wide-embrace of forms and geographical influences played in a style of sincere, technically-proficient abandon with an emphasis on (mostly) accessible rhythms and melodies.  The 62-year-old Garbarek has lived up to this early promise.

The disc’s opening number, Lakshminarayana Shankar’s  “Paper Nut,” makes the case for the beat end of the true-fusion argument. Powered by drummer and long-time associate Manu Katche’s Cobham-like rolls, the tune’s probing-but-simple theme stands as a take-off point for Garbarek’s soprano ascent. Brazillian bassist Yuri Daniel pushes his lines against the drums , welding a jazz-rock hardness to the piece.

Still, the disc’s highlights are its less driven moments. Commercial fusion, reduced to beat tunes and ballads, contains nothing like the thoughtful pieces Garbarek  pulled from his history to perform in Dresden. There’s a progression of tunes on the disc, opening with Garbarek’s “Heitor” and proceeding through “Twelve Moons,” “Rondo Amoroso” and Harald Saeverud’s “Tao” that combine influences, both worldly and stylistic, as well as a sensitivity that has long marked Garbarek’s play. Notice how easily, this time on tenor,  he moves through the theme and tempo changes of Milton Nascimento’s-Fernando Brant’s “Milagre Dos Piexes, ” popularized on the Nascimento-Wayne Shorter collaboration Native Dancer. Hear how little reluctance his play carries on “The Reluctant Saxophonist.

That Garbarek has always been of the wide-embrace school is evidenced by the older numbers pulled from his songbook. “There Were Swallows”, with its cleanly-cut bass solo, astute acoustic piano and Garbarek’s pensive-without-passivity play is particularly telling. “The Tall Trees” opens with figurative synthesized sounds of wind in the boughs and the slow, on-the-bass development that Joe Zawinul might have penned for Weather Report. There’s enough eastern, Northern European and good ol’ American influence–both jazz and rock– throughout the disc to show that its more than just a fusion of commercial styles.

Yes, we still have problems with the saxophonist’s tone. His tenor sound, though not unpleasant, recalls too many smooth-jazz saxophonist to make us comfortable. And there’s still some whining in his soprano, at times sharp enough that it’s felt in one’s sinuses. But we’ve learned to hear past it–like looking past a blemish on our beautiful love’s face– and what’s left gives us great joy.–Cabbage Rabbit

The implication of three, staggered releases in Medeski, Martin and Wood’s title-and-concept-sharing Radiolarians series is that the second will be an improvement on the first and that the third will be best of all. Of course, this assumption is false; no such claim is made or warranted. And the Radiolarians process–developing material first in performance and then taking it into the studio–guarantees a certain amount of familiarity and polish when the music is recorded. But will there be some kind of artistic progress?

To these furry ears, the answer seems to be yes. Radiolarians III is the most sophisticated, the most inventive and the most satisfying of the three recordings. As much as we loved Radiolarians II,  III offers more of the off-beat, more melding of influences, more sonic satisfaction. Sure, we have our favorite cuts from I and II. But III is consistently pleasing, without undo reliance on any one direction.

The disc opens in familiar, groove territory. But then, across a layered chorus, Medeski offers constrasting backdrop and melody before taking to acoustic piano and improvising in a style that recalls Gene Harris, Ahmad Jamal and finally Cecil Taylor. The second tune, “Satan Your Kingdom Must Come Down” is a traditional number that seems, in this incarnation, directed towards metal heads, a blend of hand-clapping piano and fuzzy, electric bass that at times seems to shout “hallelujah!” “Kota” is from the acoustic, new-music school, moving to exotic rhythms and Medeski’s oud-like electronics (we’re guessing here, maybe Chris Wood is overdubbing actual oud?).  “Undone” grooves with bass and drums out front and “Wonton” is a frantic, organ trio dance.

So it goes. Nothing here is completely new; MM&W are well known for combining an eclectic array of keyboard, bass and percussion sounds through a variety of styles and rhythmic influences. It’s that they’re doing more of it here and in more successful ways. Take “Broken Mirror,” a moody piece that seems designed as a soundtrack to a noir movie. It’s the intruding harpsichord chords, the synthesized electric guitar wash and the sultry bass that make the tune something not easily categorized.

There’s no doubt that the Radiolarians concept of developing music in performance before recording has brought something fresh to the trio which seemed to be stuck in, uh, a groove of late. There’s also no doubt that the threesome’s music would have continued to evolve without this concept. Or was it just a marketing ploy? One has to wonder who outside die-hard fans with coin ($89.99) will purchase the extravagant  Radiolarians: The Evolutionary Set with its bonus tracks, bonus discs, remixes, live recording and two-lp set…plus DVD! It might be the only way to say that it was worth all the trouble, but then again. Only die-hard fans with the coin –I wish I were one!–will go the distance.-Cabbage Rabbit

The same old thing wasn’t going to cut it in the early 1970s. And just about anything recorded before Miles Davis’ Bitches Brew, in other words before 1969, was the same old thing. That wasn’t going to grab the ears of the hip new audience Miles had attracted with his magnum opus. And record companies wanted that audience…bad.

The music collected on Bridge Into the New Age, all of it (with the exception of one cut) recorded between 1971 and 1974 documents attempts to bring jazz into the age of Aquarius. There are reflections of the political, social and cultural trends that influenced the music, mirrored by peace-and-love themes and cries of “Free Angela!” as well as attempts to meld Afro-centric rhythms and soul–the “bad” sounds of James Brown, Sly Stone and Issac Hayes among others–to an art form which was popularly seen as  becoming to intellectual and formless  (though this wasn’t necessarily so).

As Bridge illustrates, there was much about this movement that was successful. The period (and earlier) produced some great music, not all of it by Davis. Any comprehensive selection of the era’s hits would have to include Miroslav Vitous’ Infinite Search, Herbie Hancock’s Mwandishi, Wayne Shorter’s Super Nova, Joe Zawinul’s Zawinul, Weather Report’s eponymous first album and a host of others. Bridge documents the Milestone/Prestige label’s attempts at staying current. That most of the music here is satisfying and timeless in its appeal speaks to the musicians on the label’s roster–Joe Henderson, McCoy Tyner, Idris Muhammad, Gary Bartz–and their ability to maintain their individuality even as their approach to music changed.

The music reflects trends of the era: spiritual and ethnic-consciousness themes, electric instrumentation, emphasis on vocals, percussive color, accessible beats that supported strong and sometimes free-form solos, attempts to include non-traditional instrumentation into the mix, movement towards larger ensembles. Here, those trends are represented by drummer Muhammad’s eight-piece ensemble playing “Peace,” with two additional percusionists (occasionally augmented by saxophonist Clarence Thomas on bells) joining the drummer in rhythmic layering.  Larry Willis attaches echoplex and ring modulator to his keyboard for Henderson’s “Tress-Cun-De-O-La” with the leader’s vocal and guitarist James “Blood” Ulmer providing dissonant elements.  Alice Coltrane brings harp to Henderson’s “Fire.” Todd Cochran, performing then as Bayete, balances clavinet against the horn section on one of “Free Angela”’s three sections. Gary Bartz sing lyrics from Langston Hughes before cutting loose on alto.  None of the tunes would be identified (except by militant purists) as anything other than jazz. Yet they all sound different than earlier schools of swing, be-bop, post-bop. New.

It’s impossible to tell if (or how much) this direction resulted from label influence (as it did from the Columbia label) or if it came from the artists themselves.  And not everything here is music to our ears. Compare vocals from artist themselves (Henderson, Bartz, Cochran’s chorus) to Jean Carn’s strong and convincing voice on Azar Lawrence’s tune that gives the collection its title, or her work on  “Mother of the Future” from Norman Connors’ Slewfoot. The one piece that stands apart from the rest–Jack DeJonette’s “Brown, Warm and Wintry”–was recorded in 1968. Maybe something from the 1975 Prestige date Cosmic Chicken would have better fit the program (his excellent1970 recording Have You Heard? on Milestone may have been too far out or its trio too underpopulated to be included).

Needless to say, much of this music’s positive direction lost out as jazz recording moved on to jazz-rock and fusion. Too bad. But the Rabbit, who owned all but one of these recordings as a bunny, remembers the hopeful feeling this music gave him…and the conviction it gave that there indeed was something new under the sun. Dumb bunny.–Cabbage Rabbit

The Rabbit was slow to come to Jon Hassell’s Last Night the Moon Came Dropping Its Clothes in the Street. The music certainly caught the attention of our floppy ears on first preview. But it was months past the February (’09) release date when we finally gave it serious airing–I’m late! I’m late!–and then mainly because we recognized Hassell’s influence on fellow-trumpeter Arve Henriksen’s Cartography, an album we truly admired. Sure enough, the recordings were two of a kind.

The danger here is misunderstanding who influenced who.  Hassell, of course, has the longer career, and Henriksen openly declares its effect on his work. But our study of  Cartography before we seriously listened to Last Night tended to confuse things. The similarities stood out.  The music from both is impressionistic, creating aural landscapes and establishing mood with repeated melodic lines and percussive phrasing. “Hypnotic,” “haunting” and other mesmeric words come to mind. Music of this type is often dismissed as background but careful listeners know better.

That’s when we started to listen for differences.  Droning backgrounds and electronic crackling give both recordings the impression of being of two ages. But modernism seems to win out in Hassell’s recording. Indeed, at least two of the nine musicians on Last Night are credited with performing “laptop” as well as more traditional instruments and a third is credited with “sampling.” Hassell’s trumpet, swirling through a mix of guitar, violin and percussion, often doesn’t sound like itself.

It’s tempting to label the ten tracks on the recording as “soundtrack” and start pulling out the movie screen images. Cartography certainly fits that bill with its emphasis on narrative and scenery shifts.  Last Night is more literate than visual (its title is drawn from 13th century Persian mystic poet Rumi) , more like a surreal novel in which plot takes a backseat to symbolic, psychic impressions. Indeed, we found it wonderful backdrop to readings of Jung. Hassell’s trumpet play, unlike Henriksen’s  speech-inspired phrasing, is more painterly, more about color, form and light.  The music seems to settle in the memory like a splashed canvas and , at times, can be just as gripping. If anything, it recalls the1970s  Pangea period of Miles Davis, especially in its thudding, Michael Henderson-like bass simplicity, airy percussion and unexpected electric guitar  chords.

Two pieces–both, disappointingly among the three not available for download at Amazon– seem to best represent the whole. “Abu Gil”, the recording’s longest piece at over 13 minutes is a shifting, East-meets-electronics version of Juan Tizol’s “Caravan“  It contains all the qualities that we find so attractive in this music, threaded together by a repeated theme. “Blue Period” is a languid, turquoise-colored dream with echoing keyboard, lush guitar and looped trumpet lines providing accompaniment to Hassell’s new cool. We don’t believe in top-ten lists (despite the fact that we’ve been paid to write many) but Last Night, as well as Cartography would both be on our short list of recordings that most reflected our mood in this long and troublesome year. We like to program one after another with Hassell leading and then sit back and feel the contrasts of our life bubble into the audible. –Cabbage Rabbit

Disfarmer is Bill Frisell’s Pictures At An Exhibition, a series of 26 short, impressionistic pieces inspired by the photos of Mike Disfarmer (1884-1959), an Arkansas photographer who captured both place and time in his starkly-lit portraits.  Disfarmer’s revealing black-and-white portraits of country and small-town folk, posed without background, are perfectly reflected in the Frisell quartet’s fuzz and twang. Much like the timeless statements made by Disfarmer’s  70-some-year-old photos, Frisell’s music sounds both period and contemporary.

The Rabbit has previously compared Frisell’s brand of plugged-in Americana to the rolling impressionism of  Grant Wood’s paintings and that sound is played to maximum effect here.  The sound is reminiscent of Frisell’s Music For the Films of Buster Keaton done some 15 years ago, with horse-and-buggy rhythms sharing space with country waltzes and laments. Not only does Frisell’s own compositions mirror the moods and faces in the portraits, he’s chosen a handful of classics that fit the bill: Hank Williams’ “I Can’t Help It (If I’m Still In Love with You)” and a giddy-up version of Arthur Crudup’s “That’s Alright, Mama.” Greg Leisz ‘ steel guitars and mandolin color the music with backwoods sweetness,  and the omnipresent Jenny Scheinman makes both melancholy and whoopie with her violin. Who know what it was like to live in rural Arkansas in the 1930 and ’40s? Disfarmers photos–and Frisell’s music–gives us a dusty sense of hardscrabble life and small joys. –Cabbage Rabbit

There’s a strong temptation to turn descriptions of Arve Henriksen’s Cartography into a litany of map and topography images. They’d be apt. But this strange, haunting collection of aural effects and audible vision quests is more about the journey than its path. A mélange of synthesized sounds, samples, organic percussion, spoken word and Henriksen’s soft and pensive trumpet play, Cartography takes us into uncharted territory. It’s dozen selections meld in a sort of somber tone poem framed beginning and end by spoken word. The country that it travels is seldom wild but primitive, impoverished and sometimes despondent. What good feeling exists comes of collective, almost religious voicing, as in “Assembly” with its repeated choral samples, sandy percussion and radio static; or in graceful celebration of the individual heard in the waltzing, chamber-backed trumpet on “The Unremarkable Child.”

Henriksen, a disciple of Jon Hassell and other acoustic-electronic experimenters, has spent plenty of time on the borders of this country, recording with Jon Balke, Arild Anderson, Tygve Seim and other European art-music innovators. His trumpet playing follows the pitch and cadence of speech, often utilizing whispers to dramatic effect. Voice is central to the recording, the collection holding two suggestive, dream-like poems written and recited by former glam-rocker David Sylvian. Sylvian’s opening recitation, “Before and After Life,” follows a path past “hayseed haloes” through Napa Valley to “Temple” Mountain where, “I throw down a rope that others might follow/ but no one came.” The words are spoken against a chill background of spare percussion and crude wooden flute lines, the syllables sometimes obscured in echoes. The second poem is even more dreary with its “cold in that place of perpetual summer” and a woman ”born bearing the face/of irrepressible grief.” The disc’s few encouraging moments are grounded in an undefined spirituality. When Stale Storlokken’s sweet, solemn chant against a spare electronic background gives way seamlessly to the trumpet, there’s a moment of hope. Still, with the title “Famine’s Ghost,” it’s hard to take much comfort.

Cartography’s very best moments come when Henriksen plays against firm tempos and extended electronic shimmers. “Migration” swings subtlety with the rhythms of burdened beasts and families on foot. “Sorrow and Its Opposites,” despite the title, brings the program to a lilting close with something other than nihilism. ECM, currently so focused on hybrids, is introducing a number of traditional-and-experimental, acoustic-and-electronic musical blends. While time-travel recordings including Ambrose Fields and John Potter’s mix of renaissance voice and electronics Being Dufay get all the attention, the mood of Henriksen’s synthesis of disparate sounds and primitive devolution seems better matched for the current winter of discontent. Cartogrqphy doesn’t offer respite from anxious times, but offers a guide to its desolate and rocky terrain.—Cabbage Rabbit (apologies to all musicians whose names are missing umlats and other diacritic signs).