DRASTIC MEASURES

Michael Manring could have been the successor to Jaco Pastorius. In fact, at times his bass playing sounds similar to Jaco's. But what happened? He pigeonholed himself into the new age style. He got himself signed to the Windham Hill record label, the label that was proud to create nothing more than unobtrusive musical wallpaper.

This album is yet another Windham Hill release. The majority of the songs are light (almost impossibly light) fusion pieces, with telling titles like Wide Asleep. The only interesting songs are the bass solos, where, as good as they are, I get the feeling that the Windham Hill executives were in the room, telling him to "Keep it down, We don't want to wake our listeners."

2.5 stars - rounded down

Starting with an useless cover of a famous Police track, in my opinion, wasn't a good idea. That song hasn't the right structure to be an instrumental, and using the highest notes of an electric bass to replace the voce of Sting doesn't add anything to it. After this false start , "Hopeful" sounds like another instrumental cover, but I honestly don't know if it's really so. I can't understand what a piano solo does in a bassist's album. So the first proper Manring's track is the third: "Red Right Returnng". Not different from the usual bass overdubbing, but this is what he was used to do on his solo Windham Hill albums.

Things start going better with "Gizmo". It's still a newage track, but there's at least some fusion and Manring shows his instrumental skills also with a good riff in the middle part of the track. Bass harmonics open "Oyasumi Nasai". Plain newage again, with a synth which tries to sound like a Mark Isham's trumpet. Nothing negative, I like newage and I have a lot of Windham Hill stuff at home, but I can't call this "fusion", "Jazz-rock" or "progressive".

More interesting is the cover of Hendrix's "Purple Haze". I don't know how many artists have recorded it. My personal favorite instrumental cover of this song is that of Quintorigo, but this is quite good, too. Then I can imagine what has made the artist decide to make it followed by "Déjà Voodoo", the first track in which there's effectively some fusion and I'd say some progressive, too. The longest track is also the best.

"Watson & Crick" is a strange title for an instrumental track. I ignore the reason why Manring decicated a track to the two nobel prizes. Maybe the harping tries to resemble the structure of DNA, who knows? Another newage track but showing his great bassist skills. On "Wide Asleep" you could expect Pat Metheny's guitar or Eva Cassidy's vocals. The melody and the tempo remind to the famous "Last Train Home" by Metheny. A really nice track. Next we have another skillful excersize with a touch of Sapnish flavor in a Paco de Lucia style but played on bass. "500 Miles High" is one of the albums highlights. The closer is quite good, too. A slow jazz track driven by fretless bass. Ir's when Manring crosses the borders with jazz that I understand why this artist is featured on this site. Again, it's more or less the kind of music that Metheny was used to compose in the same period, newagey but jazz with no doubts.

This album is not a complete waste. At least half of the tracks are of a good level, but the remaining half can be skipped with no regrets. Good for fans and for who likes the bass as main instrument. With some cuts it could have been a 3 stars album.