Mental Images

Robin Eubanks | Format: Audio CD

Product Details

• Audio CD (May 10, 2005)
• Number of Discs: 1
• Label: Winter & Winter
• ASIN: B0006BLIHC
• Also Available in: Audio CD
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #188,300 in Music (See Top 100 in Music)

Track Listings

1. Matatape (For President Mandela and the A.N.C.)

2. Mental Images

3. Union 2 - Brotherly Love

4. Collage

5. Skin 'N' Bones

6. For What Might Have Been

7. X-Base

8. Egoli (Formerly Johannesburg)

9. CP-Time

Editorial Reviews

No description available.
Genre: Jazz Music
Rating:
Release Date: 0000-00-00
Media Type: Compact Disk

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A slighted masterpiece, May 16, 2004

By 

Jan P. Dennis "Longboard jazzer" (Monument, CO USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Mental Images (Audio CD)

Sometimes brilliant artists get overlooked.

Why?

Who knows?

In the case of Robin Eubanks, trombonist and brother of long-time Tonight Show Band leader and guitarist Kevin Eubanks, it's probably a case of bad timing and hooking up for his best disc (this one) with a failing record company (JMT). Yes, this company resurfaced as Winter & Winter, with an fabulous catalog of some of Europe and North America's best cutting-edge jazz, but their last releases on JMT are sadly neglected.

But make no mistake, Robin Eubanks recorded two of the absolute finest discs of the past decade, the one under consideration here in 1994 and Wake Up Call three years later.

Featuring a veritable Who's Who of jazz luminaries, such as Dave Holland (acoustic bass), Gene Jackson (drums, a dude who ALWAYS brings it, though he's largely ignored among the first echelon of jazz drummers), Marvin "Smitty" Smith (another rather unheralded drummer), Antonio Hart (a brilliant world jazz saxophonist, again somewhat neglected), brother Kevin, Randy Brecker, featuring some of his most inspired playing on disc, and the huge presence of Michael Cain on piano, another inexplicably neglected jazz musician, this album rocks the house with some of the very finest jazz of the mid-nineties.

Together these top players lay down a tough but entirely listenable and thoroughly engaging world-jazz vibe of the first order.

The closest analog to this music is that marvelous (and, again, sadly neglected) disc, Mad Nomad(s) by Henri Texier on Label Bleu, although this disc is slightly funkier and more accessible (and, perhaps, even more brilliant) than that altogether magnificent recording. With the same chug-a-chug rhythms, Afro-jazz vibe, and outre-accessible playing as Mad Nomad(s), Mental Images carves out a space in world-jazz seldom approached, and perhaps never surpassed.

This has always been one of my absolute favorite world-jazz discs. You'll definitely want to pick it up if you have even the slightest affinity for this, probably my all-time favorite mode of music-making