Customer Reviews

Lunar Crush

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

The opening strains of John Medeski and David Fiuczynski's "Lunar Crush" say it all; Medeski's innate (not that it's easy) keyboard mastery conjures up an earthy and rambunctious line that inevitably yields to the band's screaming entrance, and the song takes off, winding through a nice complex arrangement but never abandoning its pure and natural rhythm, its gut-wrenching power. Fiuczynski plays guitar with a unique harmonic and melodic rhythm that lends the album its engaging and utterly new sound. Medeski, who has never pulled a musical punch and never will, is a true co-leader, challenging and cajoling his colleague without sacrificing an iota of the music at hand. The semi-operatic singing on three of the tracks is simply as bad-ass as it gets, further emphasizing that this album must stand alone. It's not MMW, and it's not the Torsos; Lunar Crush is a moon with which we are not familiar.

Dave Fiuczynski is the most innovative guitarist to come out after the whole shredding-guitar wanking era. His mixture of funk, rock, blues and jazz is all tied up within a Middle Eastern scale that erupts across the fretboard. I have seen Fuze live in NYC roughly a dozen or more times in the past year and the best representation of his show would have to be "Slow Blues For Fuzy's Mama." You can hear McLaughlin and Vai in his solos. Medeski's sound with the Morg is fat and tubular and when he lays down the intro to "Slow Blues" you can feel the air shake around you. A must have for guitar fans and for those that require their music collection contains something constructive and innovative in the midst of the ridiculous bubble gum pop.

Some songs on this album are a refreshingly new take on the idea of "funk." However, there is a lot of the old advant-garde styles ala Sonny Sharock, Sun Ra and Pharoh Sanders mixed in. This album may turn off listeners not into free-form jazz. More adventurous listeners will like having this in his or her collection.

this is an awesome fusion collaboration by organ grinder medeski from martin medeski and wood and guitarist david fuzyinski, a talented jazz guitarist with a penchant for sonic youth type distortion and lots of effect pedals. the only thing that's kind of annoying on this record is the tracks that have vocals(lilies that fester,pacifica, and gloria ascending are just horrible. they try to have weird vocals like yoko ono or captain beefheart or something, but it just doesn't work well. these are weird effects drenched vocals are a hindrance and merit physically getting up and forwarding to the next track. there's one track with vocals that's decent, it's called 'freelance brown. but there are pleanty of reasons to buy this cd: 1. it is being sold here on amazon very cheap (a couple of dollars)2. you get more than your money's worth with the other 70% of the album, which is great, fuze's guitar and medeski's organ interwoven seamlessly throughout.

if you like freaky, energetic, be-popping, soul-tweakin', mind-expanding music that almost sounds live its so fresh then you MUST own this disc. not for the kenny G or william akermann fan.

Lunar Crush is a CD that is completely overwhelming in musical fireworks. It sounds like the musicians literally can do no wrong in the composition and performance of a variety of impressive musical adventures. This CD is so good that the exceptional quality of this music on Lunar Crush has gone unmatched, especially by the musicians (Fiuczynski/Medeski) who were involved in the creation of this CD.

I agree with the person who wrote "Raw, dirty grooves beautify a musical tour de force". Sadly this type of music rarely connects with the mainstream audiences who prefer less challenging sounds to listen to. Too bad for them but for those of us that did this type of funky, frantic fusion this is a great disc to groove out to. [...]

"Lunar Crush" is a collaboration between John Medeski (whose music I like) and one of the most God-awful guitarist I've ever heard in my life, David Fiuczynski. This music isn't even worthy of 1 star, because in my eyes, jazz-fusion is a dead style. Jazz has evolved since the early 70s fusion era. Fusion is just a word describing a fusion of different styles of music. This has been done to death! Add the annoying habbits of funk and you got what this album sounds like: uncreative babbling. Anyone with technical ability can sit around and create a bunch of tunes comprised of shred-licks and tremolo wanking, but it takes REAL musicians to create something that is heart-breakingly emotional and painful and at the same time joyous. It's these two sides of the psyche that co-exist together and if you look at music as something that's just about flash and how many notes you can play, you loose the sheer beauty and power of the music. Simplicity and complexity can also be evident in music, but the way these guys are playing on this album, it seems like there isn't anything at all simple or complex. It's just a pure and utter waste of perfectly good CD space. This album is awful and though I love the work of keyboardist/organist John Medeski, one question comes to mind almost immediately: What where you thinking?

I would encourage anyone who loves guitar playing to check out real jazz guitarists like Bill Frisell, Pat Metheny, John Abercrombie, Ben Monder, and John Scofield. I would also like to mention that a guitar tone is very important, in fact, I might wager that it's one of the most important, from another guitarist's perspective, but Fiuczynski's tone is absolutely terrible! It sounds like knives scrapping a chalkboard! My advice for Fiuczynski is loose the tone and the attitude that technical ability is more important then playing with feeling, because they're weighing you down.....BIG TIME.