Customer Reviews

Tao of Mad Phat Fringe Zones

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The music of Steve Coleman is always inspiring. I recently played it to a pianist friend of mine who immediately said "this is how music should be made today". I had the same thought when I first heard Coleman's music.
This CD features Coleman and the Five Elements in their sizzling best - with Andy Milne (piano/keyboards), David Gilmore (guitar), Reggie Washington (electric bass), and Oliver Gene Lake Jr. (drums and percussion). The rhythms are as tight as they come, with each instrument free to take the music to different places, without any chaos taking place. Coleman's playing is so many things - smooth, rough, free, structured... certainly the most intersting performer today in my mind.

This CD was recorded live in front of a studio audience. The tunes sometimes sound like funk, sometimes like mainstream jazz, but it is misleading - the rhythms are never simple, the meters never symmetric. One would think this is how Charlie Parker would sound had he been born 30 years later. Try to follow the amazing "Alt Shift Return", and see how intersting the seemingly simple rhythm becomes !

Hopefully, this is where music is going, and every music lover should tune in.

There really isn't much of anything out there in the jazz, rock and funk world that sounds quite like this. Although this material is rather free form and highly creative, it feels at the same time as if it's tightly held together by the knockout rhythm section. All players are very fine, and Steve himself has a beautiful and easily recognizable tone. Part Coltrane and part Maceo Parker, with a little Bird in there too. It's all very hip, and it is one of those recordings that will stand up very well in the future I think. I've been listening to this for 6 or 7 years now since I first heard it on Oscar Treadwell's program in about '03. I don't really understand Steve's "M-Base" concept-i suspect that no one really does except him- but whatever it is, it is great creative American music.