After listening to this album if you told me this is not a Frisell-led effort, you would have fooled me. There's his gently, slightly off-kilter Americana brand of avante garde jazz all throughout. The soundtrack-style soundscapes and subtle but effective studio treatments provide just the right motif for Frisell's mastery of variable timbre. And true to form, Bill throws in such a wide variety of genres that it doesn't matter what's being mixed in because in the end, it's just "Bill Frisell" music.
The title song that kicks off the CD is more in the reggae genre, but the dub-in parts and a faraway-sounding cornet give it a dark tone, and Frisell himself some sharp notes without getting too far out front. "The Passenger" is one of those signature atmospheric Frisell tunes that sounds like Brian Eno classical music with a Nashville attitude.
And then there's Frisell's swampy side, like the wonderfully bent backwoods ditty "Mississippi Rising," the blues-sounding-but-not-blues "Louisiana Lowboat," or the creole funk of "Swamped," where Frisell plays Wes Montgomery-styled lines over a melodic theme that sounds a lot like Smokey Robinson's "Way You Do The Things You Do."
Chamberlain is no freeloader on this collection; his drums have great tonality and he's a stickler for precision over risk taking. Combined with Frisell own strong sense of timbre and texture, Chamberlain is Bill's kind of drummer. The percussive "Monsoon" is a perfect demonstration of his strengths, where his aggressive waltz combines with Frisell power chords that smoothly builds then recedes in intensity.
"The Future" and "Frontiers" are pieces that really shows off the studio audio imagery skills of Townsend and Martine, who created some distinctive grooves that rely more on textures then heavy rhythms.
Nevertheless, Floratone overall sounds like a mainline Bill Frisell album, if there is such an animal. The devil — or should I say — distinctions, are in the details, and it's fun to listen for all the subtleties in this album where the players and producers left their marks. Bill Frisell, with some help from his cohorts, serves his fans another slice of that sweet, sublime weirdness that only he can deliver.
Article comments
1 - Mark Saleski
that's the funniest pic of Frisell i've ever seen.
somehow, it fits tho...
2 - Pico
It's just his way of saying "this record is scary good!"