BELEDO

A delicious album!

This is the debut Beledo album on Moonjune Records, but it is my debut and introduction to Beledo's music, a truly talented multi-instrumentist who was born on Uruguay, and who nowadays is primarly known for his amazing guitar style. He has been active making music in the local scene but also working and collaborating with artists from other countries. I am really happy to have been introduced to his music because believe me, it is great, as we can notice in this 2016 record entitled Dreamland Mechanism, in which he is of course the main character, but he is accompanied by wonderful musicians such as Gary Husband and Dewa Budjana, just to name a couple.

This jazz fusion and experimental album features 10 songs and almost one hour of wonderful music, starting with "Mechanism", a cool introductory track that brings truly fine instrumental jazz, taking me to the past, reminding me of some 70s fusion acts such as Mahavishnu Orchestra (maybe because of the violin) and even some Canterbury bands. But don't judge so quickly, because after some minutes, the guitar maestro begins to delight us with a jam in which is wonderfully accompanied by the one and only Gary Husband on drums, and Lincoln Goines on bass. That part without violin is more like jazz rock rather than jazz fusion. A great opener!

It is worth mentioning that in each track there are only 3 musicians, Beledo is obviously in all of them, but the rest of the musicians change. "Bye Bye Blues" has delicious keyboard appearance that puts an elegant sound on this fast and passionate jazz fusion track, the same Beledo is who plays those keyboards, so he shows us his great skills on guitars and keys, amazing. "Marylin's Escapade" is the longest track here with almost 9 minutes of excellent music. What I like of it is that you can listen and enjoy the music no matter your mood, no matter what you are doing, the music enters to your brain and pass so fast that you will suddenly notice that it has ended.

And as I said, all of a sudden you will find yourselve immersed in a delicious Spanish-like piece entitled "Lucila" in which Beledo, maestro of maestros, plays Spanish and electric guitar, as well as the beautiful sound of a fretless bass, which are perfectly complemented by Sudanese percussion, giving us a wonderful track full of mediterranean textures. "Sudden Voyage" is another great tune that perfectly fits in the jazz fusion realm, creating great atmospheres that any fusion fan would love.

The Beledo ? Goines ?Husband combo appears in the next 3 tracks, and though the songs are of course different, we might notice that the same musicians are working there and giving us songs that have their own touch. These track are "Big Brother Calling", "Mercury in Retrograde" and "Silent Assessment", three great tracks but the second one is my favorite, very dynamic and passionate.

There is an exception to the rule on track 9 "Budjanaji", in which 5 musicians participate instead of 3. Here, as the tite suggests, Indonesian mastermind Dewa Budjana is a guest musician playing the 2nd electric guitar solo, in a song that is much calmer than others, but full of fineness and greatly fulfilled by Sudanese percussion. It also features voices (without lyrics) for the first and only time in the album. It is a Bbautiful and delicious track. The album finishes with "Front Porch Pine", an extraorinary closer that simply makes more evident that this release is nearly a work of art, an amazing record that I would not hesitate to recommend to my friends and people who like jazz fusion. Please listen to it and get it, you will not regret.

Enjoy it!

The result is an instrumental album which shows a musician very much at home in whatever genre he is playing, and this sounds like a seasoned band as opposed to session musicians who have come together just for the occasion. He has such a deft touch on piano as well as lightning-fast breaks on guitar that it is difficult to realise it is the same musician on both, while he skips through pure jazz into fusion and world music with ease. It is an album which takes the listener on a journey, never knowing what is going to come next and not needing to understand the destination. Take "Marilyn's Escapade" for example, here he provides lead roles on accordion, piano, guitar and violin ? who does that? All the time in the background there is the shuffle of Husband, who spent so many years with Holdsworth, and Goines with his warm and delicate basslines ensuring Beledo has the foundation to go off and create a masterpiece. This is an inviting album, one for the listener to sit down with headphones and really get inside the music and is a great introduction to the world of Beledo.

Somewhat unusually for a multi-instrumentalist, Beledo is truly at home on two very different instruments so each track features both his wonderfully fluid piano and dynamic guitar, with Levin and Grohowski slotting into the groove. Apparently, they recorded this facing each other (vocals added later) and I am guessing Beledo played piano first on some, guitar on others, although it is hard to tell as this really does sound like a quartet bouncing ideas off each other. Each musician learned the arrangements first, and then when recording they were all given the opportunity to improvise around that, so everyone knew where the piece was headed and the rough idea of how to get there but they could take different paths. This means we have an incredibly relaxed album which contains both spontaneity and structure, almost as if they are in concert playing something they have already recorded. There are times when they come across like classic Hatfield and the North, and it is obviously the fusion of the Canterbury scene has had a huge impact on them. The centrepiece of the album is Beledo's arrangement of Eberhard Weber's composition, "Seriously Deep". Originally appearing on the ECM album, 'Silent Feet', the album and that track in particular had a huge impact on Beledo and his friend Jorge Camiruaga when it was released in 1978, and here it is turned into a 14-minute vehicle for everyone to show their wares, especially Levin.

There are times when it drifts somewhat into straight jazz, especially on the delightful "Mama D" which has wonderful female vocals, but for the most part this is fusion of the highest order from three incredibly musicians and truly worthy of investigation by anyone who enjoys the genre.

Hence now the obvious, the title track Seriously Deep turns out to be a re-arrangement of a composition that originally was released in 1977 by Eberhard Weber. Who is a bassist of course. And so it's not really surprising that this evolves into a new Tony Levin masterpiece in the consequence. Kicking off with a space/ambient intro my album favourite would be the touching Knocking Waves though. Simply wonderful, and totally improvised I assume. In between BELEDO presents diverse fusionesque guitar styles, sometimes it's really 'holdsworthy'. Vocals are playing a minor role on this album, concerning two songs this sees either a male (Boris Savoldelli) and a female singer (Kearoma Rantao) guesting. Plus some vibraphone contributions which are enriching the whole thing. A superb album! That means 4.5 stars on the stairway to heaven.