b r a n d o n

Before this album, I'd never heard of Anthony Curtis. But the band he's put together for Book of the Key sure got my attention. Every prog fan probably knows about Tony Levin (King Crimson and about a million other bands and projects), and Mike Keneally is no obscure name either (from his stints with Zappa and his own wacky solo work). Slightly lower on the radar, but still an attention-grabbing name for me, is Jeff Gauthier, a fantastic violinist who also happens to be the founder of the forward-looking Cryptogramophone label. The music here is basically blistering jazz-rock fusion; unlike most fusion albums that seem to lean heavily towards one or the other of jazz or rock, this one has one foot solidly in each world. In fact, some of the most interesting moments come from the rhythm section: Levin is clearly a rock-based instrumentalist, while Pragasam is from a jazz background (though one tempered by fascinating non-Western influences). The two of their styles don't always seem to fit perfectly, but they create a tension together that is a big part of what makes this album so interesting for me. Above their fray, the spotlight mostly shines on Curtis' guitar work; frankly, I don't really have the vocabulary to describe it, but suffice it to say that he is both extremely proficient and extremely diverse. He seems equally comfortable playing hard-rock riffs and abstract modal solos. If there's one thing I found disappointing about the album, it's that Gauthier on violin and Keneally on Fender Rhodes kind of take a back seat for most of the album. Perhaps it's Gauthier's style to be laid-back, but at least on Bendian/Gauthier/Liebig/Stinson's Bone Structure, he's far more aggressive and I think this album could have really benefited from some of that chutzpah (he shows some fire on the full-out rocker "Saturnalia," and it's fantastic). Keneally is less of a factor than I'd like, as well, and not just because I'm addicted to the Fender Rhodes in fusion. With all that said, it's perhaps not surprising that the first thing that struck me when I listened to this was Tony Levin. He's still got that inimitable fluid sound that reminded me of nothing so much as the two Bozzio-Levin-Stevens records, only with a much looser and jazzier band. In fact, Levin actually sounds kind of stiff in the more free-form pieces like the 24-minute title track: he gets stuck for really long periods of time in unchanging grooves and I wish he would mix it up a bit more. On the other hand, his rhythm counterpart Pragasam is practically a chameleon, here playing with a light jazz touch, there with full-out rock bombast, elsewhere with the deft handiwork of a tribal or Eastern or other non-Western idiom. In the end, all the disparate elements — the tension in the rhythm section, Curtis' versatile guitar work, Gauthier and Keneally's subtle but welcome contributions — all come together to form a whole that is much better than the sum of its parts. The slow-cooking opener, the tribal "Balinus," and the aforementioned kick-ass rock song "Saturnalia" are my favorites; each offers up something tastefully unique. This is a long album, but stays pretty compelling throughout; a great treat and a nice surprise for fusion fans. review by Brandon Wu — 3-10-05 —