Zach Franz

This double-CD has 24 different groups of fusion musicians (including some from Europe) paying tribute to Weather Report. Despite the personnel and often the instrumentation changing from track to track, there is a unity to the project and many of the bands sound quite a bit like Weather Report, either purposely as part of the tribute or naturally. The programming is somewhat random and the bands bring back the sound, grooves, and spirits of Weather Report rather than necessarily always sticking to their compositions. All in all, this is a heartfelt and very well-played tribute that can also serve as an introduction to a cross-section of some of today's top fusion musicians, many of whom are not household names yet.

The dragon in our case is a tough, uncompromising and unpredictable beast, but this demanding, mythic creature can also be a gracious one, bestowing fascinating, poetic sounds to its worshipers. This dragon was nurtured by two idiosyncratic shamans - Lebanese, Beirut-based Sharif Sehnaoui, who focuses on expanding the sonic spectrum of the acoustic guitar without using any effects or electronics, and Polish, Poznań-based percussionist Adam Gołębiewski, who focuses on exploring the anatomical aspects of his drum-set and assorted objects, extending their expressive spectrum. Sehnaoui and Gołębiewski were recorded at MDK Dragon club in Poznań on February 2015.