Released in the heart of the Blue Note era, Uninvisible is one strange album. Aside from the throwback album Tonic (which was live and not technically a part of the studio canon), the band had been on a steady trajectory away from the classic piano-trio sound that characterized their first album. By the time of Combustication (1998), they had pretty much thrown in every imaginable change: electric bass, more types of keyboards that I can list, spoken word, turntables, loops, etc. etc. and so forth. Further albums then took all of these elements and mixed them up further. Essentially the band was doubling down on everything. After a brief respite on previous album The Dropper, turntables are back with a vengeance, featured on half the tracks (compared to the Combustication three). "Your Name is Snake Anthony" makes "Whatever Happened to Gus" seem quaint in the spoken word department.
Admittedly, I'm still a newcomer to this album, having only picked it up from the library earlier this year, so I probably need to spend a little more quality time with it, especially to appreciate some of the really strange tracks in the middle part of the order. However, it does seem like on the weirdness scale they sort of maxed out around this point. What I've heard of the later albums seems a little more reined in, though I don't think we're in any danger of losing MMW from the outer limits of jazz.
No comments:
Post a Comment