My review of Tony Levin, Marco Minnemann & Jordan Rudess' Levin Minnemann Rudess, today at All About Jazz.
For a first crack at a fresh idea for Lazy Bones Records葉hree well-known musicians brought together to create improv-based music with a minimum of planning有evin Torn White (2011) was a set that, beyond finding common ground amongst bassist/stick master Tony Levin, guitar sound sculptor David Torn and drummer Alan White, also proved, unequivocally, that White is capable of far more than he's demonstrated recently with his longstanding membership in the overly inflated dinosaur of Yes. But Levin Minnemann Rudess is an even better outing, if for no other reason than the two musicians associated with Levin this time around are even more impressive, both from sheer instrumental mastery and in their ability to shape a far more focused 65-minute set of thrilling material that leans even more heavily into progressive rock territory with complete aplomb and no shortage of reckless abandon.
It should come as no surprise, given the trio's collective pedigree. Aside from Levin's decades-long history with Peter Gabriel and King Crimson, drummer Marco Minnemann謡ho seemed to burst onto the scene early in the new millennium with the same relentless vitality that he demonstrates in his playing, ranging from his Normalizer 2 project, which gave a 51-minute drum improv to artists like Mike Keneally and Alex Machacek, who then composed music around it, in Machacek's case the superb 24 Tales (Abstract Logix, 2010)擁s currently on a career crest, bringing almost impossible virtuosity and ingenuity to The Artistocrats, which also features guitar phenom Guthrie Govan様ike Minnemann, a member of Steven Wilson's current band, responsible for the progressive rocker's successful The Raven That Refused To Sing (And Other Stories) (Kscope, 2013).
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