Musique Mechanique [Original recording reissued, Import]

Carla Bley | Format: Audio CD

Product Details

• Audio CD (July 25, 2000)
• Number of Discs: 1
• Format: Original recording reissued, Import
• Label: Ecm Import
• ASIN: B000026FML
• Also Available in: Audio CD  |  Vinyl  |  MP3 Download
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #285,685 in Music (See Top 100 in Music)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com

Lunatic creativity and great technical polish are seldom heard in close combination, but Carla Bley's 1978 band had plenty of both, making it a brilliant forum for some of her most playful and challenging compositions. Tenor saxophonist Gary Windo and trombonist Roswell Rudd are the outstanding soloists--Windo an explosive compound of free-jazz wailing and R&B punch, and Rudd the wry and romantic master of every vocal sound effect in the jazz trombone legacy (he literally sings on "At Midnight"). They're matched with consummate sectional players like Michael Mantler on trumpet and John Clark on French horn, as well as unclassifiable musicians like anarchic guitarist Eugene Chadbourne. The opener, with its title reference to concert pitch, is an exercise in tuning, while "Jesus Maria..." is an extended pastiche of most things musically Spanish. The title suite, inspired by a broken musical toy, is the pièce de résistance, complete with erratic interruptions and mechanistic repetition. --Stuart Broomer

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars well, well, well ...Carla, you did it again, February 3, 2003

By 

miguel hiraldo (miami, FL United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Musique Mechanique (Audio CD)

This is definitively Carlas best...The compositions are tight and very original (check samples)and as the title implies, it is all about mechanical structures with looser parts all around. The solos by some of the guys in the band are amazing ....not that they are fast or anything...they are totally original and wacky for the most part, and fit well with this type of music. In this period i think Carla did her best music...check "social studies" if you like this one. Highly recomended to Jazz , jazz rock and progressive / avant garde music fans!

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Jazz with Humor, February 25, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Musique Mecanique (Audio CD)

Like Jazz? Like to laugh? - O yeah!, who doesn't?

Bley's band, composition, and the improvisations on this album are very creatively, calculatedly bombastically humorous.

440 starts with delightful expansion from a simple tuning procedure - a very tentative them walks down over an insistent pedal tone and driving beat. However, recalling Beethoven's Ninth Symphony, it seems arrogant by comparison, except that the rhythms are so hip, so good-naturedly cool that you wonder if the intention is to feign pretention, to parody.

The trombonist, as featured in "Spanish Strains", lets out a very ticklish monolgoue with his fun, slippery-slidy technique, comical in the way a drunk might be.

The 'mechaniques' guide the ear via expansive but risky harmonies, flavored with taps and ticks and jetting sounds occasionally - "At Midnight" is an overwhelming intimation of a fatigued dreamland that is yet beautiful and appealing (and hilariously non-sensical!). The musicians rhythmical precision is cause for many ooohs and ahhs as they mimic a scratch in a recording!

Try it! It's *great fun!*