Tucker Martine
and
Wayne Horvitz
have worked together a lot over the last decade or so, with
Martine
generally acting as engineer (his role in
the 4 + 1 Ensemble
was "limited" to live processing), but
Mylab
is their first fully collaborative effort together. The songs started with
taking various ancient public-domain
folk
recordings (from around the turn of the last century), which he then sampled and looped in order to form the basis for new compositions, fleshed out by
Horvitz
together. A long list of Seattle's musical luminaries was then brought in for overdubs, sometimes adding new parts and sometimes replacing the part created by the old samples. The result is a thoroughly modern-sounding recording built from the familiar rhythms and melodies of the
music tradition that
country
,
blues
, and
rock & roll
were built from. It's a fascinating juxtaposition made more interesting by the fact that many of the instruments and the samples themselves were treated further, so sometimes it's difficult to discern whether the source is the old recordings or the recent playing. And given the modus operandi, the amount of stylistic ground covered is impressive.
"Varmint"
is built on a mournful fiddle figure, with
Danny Barnes
' dobro adding a further
bluegrass
flavor, which is tempered by one of several excellent
Bill Frisell
solos. The next track,
"Fancy Party Cakes,"
is loaded with crazy electronic squelches, programmed (or highly treated) drums, and backward effects.
"Phil and Jerry"
(an ode to
the Grateful Dead
?) starts out sounding very African, thanks to the ngoni playing of
Kassemadi Kamissogo
, then moves into
Pharoah Sanders
territory with
Skerik
on sax. The title
"Old Days"
might be an allusion to
's old band
the President
, as the tune strongly recalls that band (with
Andy Roth
doing his finest
Bobby Previte
imitation on drums, while
Previte
appears on several other tunes). Despite the fact that there are a lot of different styles on display here,
's tonal palette on keys and individual compositional voice really ties all the songs together.
is a unique-sounding project that has succeeded in making an album that is interesting and challenging while being utterly approachable. This is sonic alchemy of the highest order. Well done. ~ Sean Westergaard