Swedish keyboardist
Mats Oeberg
and drummer
Morgan Agren
and band pushed their
Zappa-isms
into jaw-droppingly tight and precise grooves at the 1999 Stockholm club date documented on
Live
, released by
Cuneiform
two years later. The 76-plus-minute album journeys through alternately straightforward and impossibly skewed rhythms, ever-changing keyboard voicings, and melodies and themes sometimes drawing from
Zappa
's gigantic influence but with a unique
Mats/Morgan
avant prog/fusion spin. When
Oeberg
and
Agren
hit the stage with bassist
Tommy Tordsson
, keyboardists
Robert Elovsson
Eric Carlsson
, and
Morgan
's brother
Jimmy
on fiery guitar, they were well prepared to wow the friendly crowd, and the home listener will be wowed as well. The band doesn't waste any time getting started. Dedicated to
Lars Hollmer
, 12-minute album opener "Hollmervalsen" begins "normally" enough, with a snaking synth melody and variations over a two-chord vamp that moves through some mildly tricky rhythmic changes but nevertheless remains situated in a gliding form of keyboard-heavy jazz fusion. Two and a half minutes in, the music explodes into a powerful 7/8 bridge before picking up the tempo and plunging forward with manic clavinet and wah-wah-infused funk. But this is all just a minute-long precursor to the ridiculously off-kilter lunacy of the track's central portion, a panoply of stuttering rhythms nearly mimicking a skipping CD player as man becomes machine and
the Mats/Morgan Band
transforms into a fusion facsimile of
the Bang on a Can All-Stars
interpreting
Louis Andriessen
.
's funky jamming does suggest that the musicians are human beings after all, but the album's layered and contrapuntal interludes are nevertheless executed with such accuracy that the likes of
Philip Glass
Steve Reich
almost seem sloppy in comparison. The herky-jerky theme of "Ta Ned Trasen" is strongly
Zappa-esque
-- although fractured into abrupt unexpected inflections -- before the tune morphs into a rolling jumble of crazily percolating sounds that wreak havoc with the rhythmic thread. Later on, after the band settles into a more conventionally escalating jam,
swivels from wah-wahed to squawky to toylike to flat-out uncategorizable in the wild array of voicings deployed during his keyboard solo. Throughout
,
is positioned in the center of the stereo field as he flies high, dips low, glides, and funks it up, trotting out one crazy sound after another while the other keyboardists deepen the album's immersive mix and the
/
Tordsson
rhythm tandem punches on and on.
begins his "Jigsaw Variations" solo with a Middle Eastern flavor over the band's hypnotic, ever deepening groove; after a popping solo spot for
, a tinge of
Zawinul
creeps into the keys during "Guardian Pitch," before the tune stokes the fusion flames higher and segues into "Paltsug," 31 seconds of pure
. As the head-spinning experience of
approaches its conclusion, the cartoony stops and starts in "Banned Again" bracket jams that burn hot enough to make the glistening vibraphone-voiced follow-up "Igloo" seem like a calm respite, despite its speedily swinging pace. ~ Dave Lynch