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Wayne Horvitz has been pressing piano and synthesizer keys in the downtown New York tweaker jazz and Seattle freak beat scenes since the early '80s. Known to many for his work with tight groove unit Zony Mash, he's teamed up with Tucker Martine for a record swirling with the ghosts of numerous traditions. Mounted on a jazz framework, Mylab incorporates Gnawa trance, Appalachian methamphetamine banjo, wounded desert caravan strings, gurgling New Orleans trumpet, a whole Babatunde o' drums, and not a little electric keyboard slink. His main collaborator, Martine, who the quite nifty Fear of Speed rightly describes as having an "impressionistic mixing style," brings a burgeoning trick bag full of sound manipulations, drums, and field recordings to bear here. The long list of their co-conspirators includes guitarist Bill Frisell, singer Robin Holcomb, saxophonicist Skerik, viola champ Eyvind Kang, bassist Keith Lowe and Maktub's Reggie Watts amongst a page-filling list of others. It all bubbles like a science experiment gone awry, the colors and general fizz too compelling to turn away from even if you're afraid it might blow up in your face. It charges and retreats, many cuts seeming like the prelude to something more nefarious or more grandiose that doesn't quite arrive. There's a strange distance to this music, something heard from over the next mountain ridge or around the curve of a slow moving creek. It's out there in the woods, beautiful and scarifying like Jean Cocteau's Beast approaching Belle, tentative but filled with an ache that transcends words. At times we may want Mylab to be more bold, more direct but that may not be the point. There's a breeze redolent with fragrances and memories from around the world blowing in these 50 minutes and like a line from Rumi or a Jackson Pollock painting the real value of the thing may not be understood without careful rumination. It's out there, in several respects, and one's suspicion is it's worth the time needed to peel away the layers on top of its true face.
Dennis Cook
JamBase | Oakland
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