Electronics For You 2014

Adam Rudolph - Morphic Resonances (2017) {Meta Digital Download, Bandcamp 16-44.1}
FLAC (tracks) - 16bit/44kHz - Official Digital Download (bandcamp.com) -> 244 Mb | MP3 @320 -> 132 Mb | Cover | 5% repair rar
© 2017 Meta Records | META 021
Classical / Modern Classical / Jazz / Progressive Jazz / Creative Music

Listeners should be advised that Adam Rudolph doesn’t play a beat on this album; it’s a gathering of recent compositions performed by various others, including members of his own New York-based Go: Organic Orchestra. The clear standouts are the first two tracks, in which the Momenta String Quartet gives incisive readings of “Morphic Resonances” and “Syntactic Adventures”—the latter piece dedicated to Rudolph’s mentor Yusef Lateef. Rudolph’s background as a percussionist manifests itself in the use of what he calls “ostinatos of circularity,” layered polyrhythms that create the effect of one part blending almost imperceptibly into another.

It's a bold concept; take Pink Floyd's iconic Dark Side of the Moon (Harvest, 1973) and reinterpret it in a big band jazz setting. With upwards of forty million copies sold, every note, every nuance of Floyd's eighth album is so firmly entrenched in the minds of the band's legion devotees that to tamper with the work in any way is to leave oneself open to facile criticism. French-Vietnamese guitarist Nguyên Lê, however, is nothing if not adventurous. Lê has already demonstrated on Purple: Celebrating Jimi Hendrix (ACT Music, 2007) and Songs of Freedom (ACT Music, 2012)—his tribute to classic pop and rock songs of the 1960s and 1970s—that he can breathe new life into old material without being overly reverential.

The 28-year old Norwegian bassist and singer Ellen Andrea Wang is currently on tour with her new album “Diving”. It reminds me a lot of the genre-crossing Becca Stevens in her compositions which can be at times jazzy, then again more rock-oriented, singer/songwriter-like or on the folky side…