It’s spacey electronic improvised jazz. It’s weird as hell with a great groove. Muscular basslines, a steady pulse, flickering percussion, synth and electronic weirdness. Is it vocals I’m hearing? Is it electrics? Even when they’re obscure and odd they seem to just fall into a groove that defies all compositional sense. The only way you can get here is via long tripped out jams where the logic disappears and the music just takes control. The music is dense, fusion with balls, prog rock wrong, yet it’s also music about subtleties, about gentle drifts of ambience, lulling suggestions of near silence that will slowly build into skipping electronic warmth and the bashing of cymbals. Everything is possible, this is music that twists and turns repeatedly without ever seeming to tap into the egos of the players. So many things are bouncing around in so many directions that you become confused by genres and refuse to believe in them. Sure it seems like honkey tonk piano, but suddenly it evolves into these classical like runs. The drummer thinks it’s a jazz tune and you have to question if he’s even listening to what the others are doing, and there’s this ambient synth that seems to be looking for The Orb – yet somehow it all makes sense, despite the fact that there is no way that it should. A True Conductor Wears a Man is quite astounding, it’s the American outfit’s 8th album, 3 musicians and one video artist, creating these amazing experimental oddities. It’s so self assured that as a listener you start to wonder if the problem lies with you but instead they demonstrate how staid fusion can be, creating music, not a shrine to their musicianship, incredible sounds, amazing compositions that have to be experienced to be believed.
Bob Baker Fish
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