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Altitude
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Altitude
Current price: $18.99
Barnes and Noble
Altitude
Current price: $18.99
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The third installment of the
trilogy sees
and
inviting
to be the third wheel. With both
on board, one could be forgiven for thinking this was going to be a funky good time, but
is about pure spontaneous improvisation and totally unconcerned with getting people out on the dancefloor. There are two discs: Above Sea Level is the electrified set and Below Sea Level is the acoustic set. The electric set has
playing his full array of vintage keyboards (including some really nice Mellotron) with
playing a hybrid electric/acoustic drum kit and electronics and
using a near lethal amount of distortion.
compete for wicked tones, and with
's knack for triggered samples, it can be difficult to figure out who's doing what at times.
have both been recorded in "out" situations, but you've never heard
playing like this. The
leanings are mostly abandoned and there's a raw aggressiveness to his playing and tone that's a bit surprising. On
he actually lets his completely distorted chords ring into feedback. At other times, you'd almost be hard pressed to identify his sounds as guitar and not some keyboard.
moves back and forth between his acoustic drums and the electronic ones as
coaxes some really odd sounds from his keys. They can go from spacy to noisy in a heartbeat, with all players clearly listening to each other and responding.
The acoustic disc is another beast entirely.
sticks to a regular kit,
plays acoustic piano (melodica on one track) and
plays acoustic exclusively (his first acoustic recordings), so here, you can easily identify the players. This disc is really out there; closer at times to a
project than anything
has been associated with. Much of
's playing sounds almost like prepared guitar although he adopts an almost
style for part of
probably the prettiest track on the second disc. And he doesn't just play the strings of the guitar either, throughout you can hear him tapping and slapping the body of the guitar as well.
plays lots of skittering piano while
's role is more of a colorist than a timekeeper. The tunes on Below Sea Level are generally more sparse, although
sounds almost like a busy locked loop.
has an Asian flavor to it, with some low groaning vocalizing in the background. It's interesting to contrast the two sets, where the same basic method of operation leads to two very different sets based on the instrumentation.
probably won't get your toe tapping (at least not in any steady time), but it's filled with the magic of spontaneous music creation from three modern masters. ~ Sean Westergaard