My review of #awesome, the latest from guitarist Alex Machacek and his Fabulous Austrian Trio (FAT), today at All About Jazz.
While the appropriately titled #awesome represents Alex Machacek's third album in six years with his (similarly witty and self-effacingly monikered) FAT (Fabulous Austrian Trio), this trifecta of virtuosic Austrian musicians goes much further back. Both bassist Raphael Preuschl and drummer Herbert Pirker appeared on roughly half of the expat-Austrian/Los Angeles-based guitarist's acclaimed 2006 Abstract Logix debut, [sic], while Machacek and Preuschl can be heard together on the even earlier The Next Generation of Sound (Extraplatte, 2000).
In the intervening years between [sic] and Machacek, Preuschl and Pirker's first official release as FAT, FAT (Abstract Logix, 2012), the guitarist released a number of similarly impressive albums for the label, including 2007's Improvision and '10's especially impressive 24 Tales. But with FAT it became clear that Machacek had found the perfect group for his appealing complex compositional constructs that, predicated on the guitarists's keen attention to sound, form and detail, also provide no shortage of space for freewheeling, dazzling improvisational élan and the trio's increasingly empathic interaction.
And so, with #awesome, Machacek's Fabulous Austrian Trio continues to move even further towards the more relaxed environs that defined (Living the Dream) (Abstract Logix, 2016), albeit with some differences. First and foremost, while (Living the Dream) moved FAT in a more egalitarian direction, compositionally speaking, with Preuschl contributing four of its eleven tracks, #awesome returns the writing focus to Machacek, who contributes nine of the album's ten tracks, with only the through-composed 53 seconds of "Turing" credited as "Preuschl's idea.'" Its unknown whether Machacek's guitar voicings were actually written by the bassist but, with Machacek delivering them alongside his band mates, this brief interlude and de facto introduction to Machacek's episodic "Holiday in Temelin" still feels as one with the rest of the album.
Yes, plenty has already been written about his roots in Allan Holdsworth's legato style and expansion upon the late guitarist's knotty harmonic voicings, but Machacek has long since asserted his own identity. Amongst many other things, Machacek's approach to harmony allows for shaping chord changes with internals that can, at times, ascend and descend concurrently in seemingly impossible ways. Similarly, much has also been spoken about the guitarist's penchant for Frank Zappa-informed writing, featuring episodic, rapid-fire compositional shifts that often feel more like complex collages that traverse a broad range of terrains than writing possessed of more straightforward form. But as the guitarist enters the south side of his forties, with a resume that includes Eddie Jobson's UKZ and semi-U.K. reunion, an ongoing teaching gig at LA's Musicians Institute and collaborations with British keyboardist/drummer Gary Husband, the late ex-King Crimson/Asia bassist/vocalist John Wetton and drummer Virgil Donati, amongst others, Machacek has long since emerged as a unique voice that is truly greater than the sum of its multifaceted musical touchstones.
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