{"id":682,"date":"2012-01-03T04:44:54","date_gmt":"2012-01-03T09:44:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/?p=682"},"modified":"2022-12-16T08:13:52","modified_gmt":"2022-12-16T13:13:52","slug":"album-review-morgan-agren-henry-kaiser-trey-gunn-invisible-rays","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/2012\/01\/03\/album-review-morgan-agren-henry-kaiser-trey-gunn-invisible-rays\/","title":{"rendered":"Album Review: Morgan \u00c5gren \/ Henry Kaiser\/ Trey Gunn – Invisible Rays"},"content":{"rendered":"

Where a CD featuring Trey Gunn<\/strong> is concerned, one both knows and does not know what to expect. The former King Crimson<\/strong> touch guitarist is renowned for making crushingly heavy music that pushes the boundaries of conventional musical forms, yet he usually manages to impart the music with emotion; that quality keeps it from turning into cold, technocratic, humorless prog.<\/p>\n

Much the same is true of Henry Kaiser<\/strong>‘s work. The experimental\/improvisational guitarist composes wholly freed of the constraints of the pop song form. His work isn’t generally described using the word \u201caccessible,\u201d but it’s rarely less than interesting.<\/p>\n

<\/a>I wasn’t familiar with drummer Morgan \u00c5gren<\/strong>, but a quick search tells me that he’s a renowned prog drummer with connections to Frank Zappa<\/strong>. That’s good enough for me; Zappa never screwed around when choosing musicians, especially when it came to drummers (see also: Terry Bozzio<\/strong>, Chad Wackerman<\/strong>, Art Trip III<\/strong>, Ruth Underwood<\/strong>, etc.)<\/p>\n

<\/a>A new album titled Invisible Rays<\/em> brings together these three immense talents \u2013 Gunn, Kaiser and \u00c5gren \u2013 and finds them doing what you would expect: shredding, but in a fashion that will hold the interest of those more melody-oriented listeners. The opening (and title) track runs in excess of 22 minutes, and it serves up a dizzying array of textures from all three players (Gunn also plays bass). Fourteen minutes into the track, the trio briefly sounds a bit like Starless and Bible Black<\/em> era King Crimson. The number ends with jagged shards of metallic riffage.<\/p>\n

Perhaps taking a small leaf from Zappa’s modus operandi, the trio assigns witty\/goofy titles to some of its more outlandish instrumental numbers. Witness such titles as \u201cTake a Bath With Lenin\u201d and the cacophonous, noisy and minute-long \u201cGreatest Hits.\u201d When working in such a heavy improvisational area as these tracks, a bit of humor is welcome in most any form.<\/p>\n

On numbers like \u201cThe Magic Ring of Invisibility,\u201d the trio leans in a direction that suggest what Zappa’s Jazz From Hell <\/em>might have sounded like if performed on \u201creal instruments\u201d instead of the Synclavier. Things get a bit atonal on \u201cWhere is Juan?\u201d but some soaring guitar lines (probably from Kaiser) gives the track an almost 80s-power rock feel, albeit only for a minute or so. \u201cSecret Handshake with Danger\u201d kicks off up with some guitar that sounds uncannily like the opening of Cheap Trick<\/strong>‘s \u201cMandocello,\u201d of all things; then it evolves into something that wouldn’t be completely out of place on the O Brother, Where Art Thou<\/em> soundtrack. Then it heads for space-rock territory, setting the controls for the heart of Sun Ra<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Last Guru\u201d applies sample-and-hold synth effects to the guitars, and the result is sort of a kindred spirit of ConstruKction of Light<\/em>-era Crim with a dollop of Steve Vai<\/strong> string-bending. Gunn’s bass work here is devastatingly heavy. The opening of \u201cTake a Bath with Lenin\u201d finds Kaiser digging out his old wah-wah pedal and using it to good effect; from there the track descends into the maelstrom: its the trio at their most difficult. \u201cGhost Red Wires,\u201d on the other hand, is (along with \u201cInvisibility Clause\u201d) among the most accessible tracks on Invisible Rays<\/em>: here Kaiser channels his inner Andy Summers<\/strong> while \u00c5gren provides some subtle stickwork reminiscent of Stewart Copeland<\/strong>. Be advised, though: the result sounds nothing like the Police<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

With the exception of some overdubs of percussion and zither(!) the entire session took place in a single day in March 2011; that get-it-done aesthetic provides an immediacy to the proceedings, and all but guarantees a lack of fussy artifice.<\/p>\n

Decidedly not among the most mainstream of releases, Invisible Rays<\/em> nonetheless offers high entertainment value for those (such as this reviewer) receptive to technically brilliant displays of progressive improvisation. All others best steer clear.<\/p>\n

You may also enjoy my 2011 interview with Trey Gunn<\/a>. <\/em><\/p>\n

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Where a CD featuring Trey Gunn is concerned, one both knows and does not know what to expect. The former King Crimson touch guitarist is renowned for making crushingly heavy […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[65],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-682","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-review","cat-65-id"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/682","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=682"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/682\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":24560,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/682\/revisions\/24560"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=682"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=682"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=682"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}