A GO GO

The music character of John Scofield and flexibility might be especially the points in a variety of jazz musicians that should make a special mention. Especially, the ability to catch an element of New Orleans Funk and a certain kind of POP that John Scofield likes and folk music well and to reflect in own music might be overwhelming.

Part that he takes to expression method further acknowledging item of Jazz to say nothing of it enough. It will be able to be guessed that the system obediently accepted is always straightened even by the genre of a different vector. It might be in the contribution and the bump style to Jam Band Scene that John Scofield was gradually establishing it as a result at this time. This album can be enumerated as a work that remarkably shows it.

The union of John Scofield and MMW in this album will not be coincidence. Uniting the announcement of the work and the vector as Jam Band in Gramavision makes this combination an embodiment as a result and has both forms of very comprehensible John Scofield plus3.

The music character that John Scofield always pursued, and absorption and openingOr, the motto out which MMW hangs. It was to have expressed the style of a former Jazz musician interpreting it depending on oneself. The member of MMW was making remarks that Jazz had always to change in the age. It is guessed that music to express as music that the musician including John Scofield naturally derived while taking a variety of music characters always exists in a word. In it, it might be a well-known fact to conceive a peculiar happening of Jazz by accident in the flow that the necessity and music are constructed.

This album is said that it is assumed beforehand that John Scofield competes with MMW and John Scofield wrote all tunes for this combination. Music that can indeed feel the necessity overflows in it if it listens to this album. Neither the expression as Funk Jazz nor their Jive have the border.

Fans of the Brooklyn jazz combo Medeski Martin & Wood who can't get enough of that unique MMW sound will definitely want to check out this 1998 album, the first of several collaborations with ace guitarist John Scofield. Just don't expect anything near the same high plateau of innovative creativity heard on the trio's own albums.

An acknowledgement by Scofield in the CD booklet says it best: "Thanks to MMW for putting their vibe on my tunes." In other words, these are notably John Scofield tunes, and it would be a mistake to approach the album as even a secondhand Medeski Martin & Wood session, despite the familiarity of their vibe.

It isn't really a fair comparison anyway, kindred spirits though they obviously are. The undemanding retro-lounge sound of this aptly-titled effort seems almost designed to glide smoothly into one ear and out the other, and even with players of this caliber there's hardly enough substance to hold the interest of listeners looking for more challenging musical fusions.

Make no mistake, however: it's an undeniably pleasant experience, at times even reaching the acme of cool (in the groovy musak of the title track; in "Jeep 35"; and elsewhere). Scofield's typically fluid guitar work often takes on an intriguing, almost Fripp-like angularity (see: "Deadzy"). And it's hard to dismiss an album featuring a song named for maverick filmmaker Stanley Kubrick. With its offbeat chord structure and arrangement it's the most unique cut on the album too.

Strangely this first collaboration, with the MMW trio employed strictly as hired sidemen, works better than the later album ("Out Louder", in 2006) on which they all shared compositional credit, a case perhaps of too many cooks, so forth. It definitely helps to hear the quartet's initial efforts not as an extension of the Medeski Martin & Wood discography, but as a point of entry into the extensive back catalogue of a celebrated veteran guitarist.