Pentagon

Matt Maneri | Format: Audio CD

Product Details

• Audio CD (October 25, 2005)
• Original Release Date: 2005
• Number of Discs: 1
• Label: Thirsty Ear
• ASIN: B000BBOFQ8
• In-Print Editions: MP3 Download
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #302,366 in Music (See Top 100 in Music)

Editorial Reviews

Review

Striking a curious balance between the accessible and the abstruse, violinist/violist Mat Maneriâ TMs latest release is a study in contrast. Ranging from abstract free improvisation to off-kilter orchestral beauty, Pentagon is a fair summation of Maneriâ TMs career to date though heâ TMs still in only his mid-thirties.


Considering Maneri began playing with his father, microtonal explorer and multi-instrumentalist Joe Maneri, at the age of seven, consolidating thirty years of experience becomes less strange. But what he does here is tie together his vast experiences on the outer edges of improvised music into an hour-long suite where each piece flows into the next, sometimes seamlessly, other times more jarringly.


With a core group featuring trombonist Ben Gerstein alongside keyboardist Craig Taborn and drummer Tom Rainey who share an immediate chemistry through their longstanding collaborations with renegade saxophonist Tim Berne Maneri has both texture and free thinking at his disposal. â W.W.P.⠝ is a free blowing affair with all manner of electronic manipulation expanding the landscape of organized chaos: proof positive that free improvisation should be about collective listening, reaction, and response, as opposed to solitary musings. The equally free â Irenam⠝ is darker, with Maneriâ TMs instrument so altered as to be nearly unrecognizable, while â Wound⠝ evokes a spacious and restrained sense of anarchy with its contained maelstrom of sounds driven by Maneriâ TMs wavering viola.


Elsewhere Maneri aims for deeper beauty. â .ava⠝ and â America⠝ bookend the disc with a transformed kind of beauty, pairing Maneriâ TMs â real⠝ strings with Jamie Saftâ TMs mellotron. On the latter, Maneri references â America the Beautiful,⠝ but amidst the grandeur is discord, politicizing the piece without uttering a word. Saft and Maneri also collaborate on the equally lush â Third Hand The Fallen,⠝ where the shifting pitch of the mellotron creates an unsettled feeling, and T.K. Ramakrishnanâ TMs mridungum (Indian two-sided hand drum) flitters throughout, acting as a thematic link to the more freely-improvised â Witches Woo.


Structured rhythms are hard to find, because Rainey's playing is more color and texture than pulse. Still, â Inslut⠝ revolves around a hip-hop-style drum program and turntable scratching, although Tabornâ TMs jagged Fender Rhodes keeps things angular throughout. â Howl in My Head/Motherless Child⠝ also features a more defined rhythm, with some surprisingly in-the-pocket alto playing from Joe Maneri, before segueing into a truly skewed rhythm track for Sonja Maneriâ TMs outré vocal rendition.


What makes Pentagon so successful is its continuity, the way it links sometimes disparate thoughts in surprising ways. The title track featuring mridungum, mellotron, and Joe Maneriâ TMs disconcerting vocalizing segues into the cacophony of the appropriately titled â War Room,⠝ with Joe Maneri saying â I donâ TMt know, it just sounds crazy!⠝ â War Room⠝ is the albumâ TMs most extreme track, cinematographically building things to a climax, with the softer coda of â America⠝ bringing things to a gentler, albeit still ambiguous, close, as well as a full-circle return to the disc's equally orchestral yet subtly off-balance beginning.


As much emotionally cathartic experience as captivating listen, Pentagon proves the true power of music as a provocative instrument of expression and ideation.
--All About Jazz

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Plugged In, October 25, 2005

By 

Troy Collins (Lancaster, PA United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Pentagon (Audio CD)

Violinist Mat Maneri's third album for Thirsty Ear's groundbreaking Blue Series finds him wading deeper into electronic waters. With each previous album in his discography slowly building up to this, "Pentagon" feels like a natural progression for Mat, the son of iconic microtonal improvisor Joe Maneri. From 2000's "Blue Decco," an acoustic homage to Eric Dolphy to 2002's "Sustain," an electro-acoustic groove excursion, this third installment pushes the boundaries of his previous experiments into new territory.

Maneri has assembled an impressive cast of players for this journey. Drummer Tom Rainey and bassist John Hebert join pianist Craig Taborn, this time on Fender Rhodes, for a free-wheeling rhythm section approach. Taborn himself employed Rainey and Maneri on his exquisite, recent album for Thirsty Ear - "Junk Magic," so their intuitive interaction is well documented. Trombonist Ben Gerstein acts as Maneri's front line sparring partner in addition to a number of guest musicians, including Mat's father doubling on alto sax, piano and organ.

Acoustic instruments are often run through a bank of electronic effects, sometimes so extreme in their manipulation that it can be difficult to discern what instrument is being played. Maneri's violin often sounds like a guitar overdriven to the brink of feedback and Gerstein's trombone is regularly run through a wah-wah pedal. In addition, melatron, organ, laptop and Indian percussion make appearances. While all this makes for a fascinating collection of sound it can sometimes get a bit congested in the album's denser moments.

Opening (and closing) the album with a stately, neo-classical motif, Maneri quickly dispenses with the formalities and launches headlong into the electronic miasma. The album's lyrical centerpiece, "Wound" is primarily acoustic, with Maneri's slightly distorted violin surrounded by ethereal dissonant keyboard washes and sporadic piano interjections, the tune is an exception to the album's gritty electronic rave-ups. The predominant feel here is the rhythmic pulse of free-jazz, albeit with the electronic coloration of early fusion. Hip-hop rhythms and funky break-beats make brief cameos, but stuttering Fender Rhodes, churning percussion, languid bass vamps, Milesian, wah-wah trombone and blistering, distorted violin lines dominate. Vacillating between the spectral and the mercurial, Maneri and company embark on a dynamic set that is rich in improvisational interplay and less concerned with conventional melody and harmony.

Deriving inspiration from the 1970s fusion experiments of Miles Davis, ala "Dark Magus" and "Live-Evil," the group here sounds like a 21st Century version of Herbie Hancock's short lived, but impressive Mwandishi Sextet, one of the best free-jazz-fusion ensembles ever assembled. "Pentagon" may be light on catchy melodies and memorable tunes, but it more than makes up for its impenetrable facade with inventive collective improvisation.