Medeski Martin & Wood have traveled a most intriguing career path over the course of their near-thirty years together. Since their formation as an unusually ambitious jazz trio through the blossoming as groovemeisters in the next decade than on to today’s de facto hiatus, the threesome has followed its collective instincts as unerringly as they do within the spontaneity of their moments live on stage. In essence, these three musicians constantly challenge themselves, exhibiting confidence in their individual technical abilities as deep and abiding as their bond as a band. That, in turn, has allowed them to formulate, then deconstruct, a style that’s (almost) immediately recognizable no matter what altered shape it might take.
As a result, just as no two MMW concerts will ever be quite the same, so too their studio recordings are quite distinct from each other, whole and complete unto themselves, yet still of a piece within their overall body of work. That may well explain why, apart from the retrospective covered here and the Best of (1991-1996), there have been no archiving initiatives devoted to their discography. Nevertheless, returning to their recordings always brings new sensations and revelations.
Friday Afternoon in the Universe: The cryptic design prominently emblazoned on its front cover signaling its ascension to Medeski, Martin & Wood’s logo. This January 1995 installment in the visionary trio’s evolutionary process arrived underpinned with grooves as deep as the two previous records’ quirks were provocative. As such, the threesome’s music could now elicit as much of a visceral reaction as a cerebral one. And that’s true here despite the relative brevity of cuts such as “Last Chance To Dance Trance (Perhaps)” and “Chubb Sub:” there’s a palpable flow to this near hour of music over the course of fifteen tracks interspersed within which are melodic fragments (Tea”) and pieces of beats (“Paper Bass”) the likes of which MMW would subsequently embed into their sound, then refine even further on future records for Blue Note and their own Indirecto Records.
Shackman: The Band had Big Pink and Traffic their Berkshire cottage, but for Medeski Martin & Wood, it was their shack in Hawaii to which the trio repaired to even more fully embrace their collective individuality as proffered on the previous record. Chris Wood’s earthy acoustic bass is both interwoven with and counterpoint to Billy Martin’s NOLA-influenced drumming on “Bubblehouse,” while John Medeski foregoes acoustic piano in favor of Hammond B-3 organ and clavinet (plus a few other assorted keyboards) during numbers such as “Nightmarchers.” The overall result is a homage to Jimmy Smith via New Orleans (rather than Monk and Mingus as depicted on It’s A Jungle In Here and Notes From The Underground), so it’s little wonder MMW found such favor with the jamband audience right around this time in 1996 (to the mutual benefit of both parties!).
John Scofield – A Go Go: Released in 1998, the same year as MMW’s Blue Note debut Combustication, this first documented team effort between the trio and guitarist John Scofield would lay the groundwork for a longstanding creative partnership. Scofield had proven himself a humble, generous musician in his work with Billy Cobham and Miles Davis, among others, but it’s arguable he’s ever collaborated with a group of musicians so clearly in sync with what he wanted to do. The same is true of Medeski Martin & Wood, who were just hitting their stride as a unit, an evolutionary process only furthered by working on this project: on this collection of ten original Sco compositions including the title tune and “Hottentot,” the threesome extend the continuity of their previous work and, in doing so, aid their classy, esteemed collaborator in creating a novel sound for himself as invigorating as it is fresh.
Note Bleu: Best of the Blue Note Years 1998–2005: Anthologies such as this usually don’t qualify for probing revisitation, but since MMW utilized their time at the venerable jazz label to experiment more than playing it safe, Note Bleu is worthy of hindsight. It is, in fact, as idiosyncratic as the band itself, a retrospective as originally issued separately on CD with three bonus tracks as well as in a limited-edition package including the disc with those three cuts (and noticeably enhanced, deeper sound quality) plus a DVD of assorted videos; a documentary and live footage from multiple concert appearances clearly illustrates their evolution from a variety of perspectives. Consequently, the end result of thoroughly perusing Note Bleu not only summarizes how wisely the Medeski Martin & Wood spent their tenure on the iconic label but also depicts how their collective persona blossomed in all its iconoclastic glory during that interval.
The Radiolarians Series: After stylishly inaugurating their own Indirecto Records through another collaboration with John Scofield (Out Louder), MMW then embarked on a wide-ranging series of projects including an album of children’s songs (Let’s Go Everywhere), followed by a collection of John Zorn compositions (Zaebos). Having thus stretched themselves, MMW was primed for the most ambitious project of their career, Radiololarians. The independent-minded trio created the three installments of the series in a reversal of the usual process: the band composed and then developed the material through purposeful live performances before recording the music in the studio. With more or less abstraction mixed with ample grooves (albeit many implied), Medeski, Martin & Wood synthesized those two approaches in a more streamlined fashion than ever before and presented the imaginative work within cover art that mirrored the dense, intricacy of the music.
The post Revisiting Selected Medeski Martin & Wood Recordings Of The Past 25 Years appeared first on Glide Magazine.
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