The third installment of the
Groundtruther trilogy sees
Charlie Hunter and
Bobby Previte inviting
John Medeski to be the third wheel. With both
Hunter and
Medeski on board, one could be forgiven for thinking this was going to be a funky good time, but
Groundtruther is about pure spontaneous improvisation and totally unconcerned with getting people out on the dancefloor. There are two discs: Above Sea Level is the electrified set and Below Sea Level is the acoustic set. The electric set has
Medeski playing his full array of vintage keyboards (including some really nice Mellotron) with
Previte playing a hybrid electric/acoustic drum kit and electronics and
Hunter using a near lethal amount of distortion.
Medeski and
Hunter compete for wicked tones, and with
Previte's knack for triggered samples, it can be difficult to figure out who's doing what at times.
Medeski and
Previte have both been recorded in "out" situations, but you've never heard
Charlie Hunter playing like this. The
funk and
soul-jazz leanings are mostly abandoned and there's a raw aggressiveness to his playing and tone that's a bit surprising. On
"Pyramid of Giza," he actually lets his completely distorted chords ring into feedback. At other times, you'd almost be hard pressed to identify his sounds as guitar and not some keyboard.
Previte moves back and forth between his acoustic drums and the electronic ones as
Medeski coaxes some really odd sounds from his keys. They can go from spacy to noisy in a heartbeat, with all players clearly listening to each other and responding.
The acoustic disc is another beast entirely.
Previte sticks to a regular kit,
Medeski plays acoustic piano (melodica on one track) and
Charlie Hunter plays acoustic exclusively (his first acoustic recordings), so here, you can easily identify the players. This disc is really out there; closer at times to a
Derek Bailey project than anything
Hunter has been associated with. Much of
Hunter's playing sounds almost like prepared guitar although he adopts an almost
flamenco style for part of
"Mariana Trench," probably the prettiest track on the second disc. And he doesn't just play the strings of the guitar either, throughout you can hear him tapping and slapping the body of the guitar as well.
Medeski plays lots of skittering piano while
Previte's role is more of a colorist than a timekeeper. The tunes on Below Sea Level are generally more sparse, although
"Submarine Canyon" sounds almost like a busy locked loop.
"Cold Seep" has an Asian flavor to it, with some low groaning vocalizing in the background. It's interesting to contrast the two sets, where the same basic method of operation leads to two very different sets based on the instrumentation.
Altitude probably won't get your toe tapping (at least not in any steady time), but it's filled with the magic of spontaneous music creation from three modern masters. ~ Sean Westergaard