What's nice about this time of year is that, with the rush of kids back to school, the big labels seem to lay off of releases for a few weeks, which allows the smaller labels to push out some high quality stuff that might otherwise be overshadowed. This week comes two little surprises.
Floratone: The first is this sneaky little one that fans of Bill Frisell should pay very close attention to. A collaboration between the jazz guitarist and drummer Matt Chamberlain, it might seem pretty straight-forward upon first inspection - Frisell doing his Americana-tinged jazz guitar thing and Chamberlain laying down grooves behind him. But look at the names listed with them on the cover and you might begin to realize there's a lot more going on here - both producers Lee Townsend (a Frisell regular) and Tucker Martine are listed up there as members of the group.
Here's where it gets intersting: Frisell and Chamberlain got together to record some material a couple years ago. The two producers then took their material and worked their magic on the recordings, then handed the material back to Frisell and Chamberlain - who then added some more layers. In the end, frequent Frisell-band member, bassist Viktor Krauss dropped in bass on all the tracks while Eyvind Kang added some of his color to the mix on some songs. And what we get is another one of those genre-defying works that Frisell seems to be so closely associated with. It's not jazz, it's not Americana, but it has a strange forward-looking feel about it. This, by the way, is based off of samples I've heard. Frisell has been on a streak lately of great recordings, so I don't doubt this will be a fun listen, given how unusual it is.
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