SCENARIO

So little reviews ? I always thought 'Scenario' was one of the best known albums from guitarist Al Di Meola. This instrumental album was released in 1983 and you can notice that quite easily. It seems the jazz rock/fusion was mixed with cold drum machines, dry sounding keyboards and clean sequencers. The result is a restrained sound but still the Di Meola's delicate guitar offerings are extremely enjoyable in a song like "Cachaca". The emotion is spattering off the crying guitar solo's and the combination with the technical dry rhythm section is surely interesting. On the opening track "Mata Hari" there's also eastern elements included in the guitar parts. This track has a wonderful feeling of mystery. But there's also some flaws. On a track like "Island dreamer" you're wondering if you are listening to music they played in the supermarket during the eighties. The melodies are cheesy and forgettable. There's a effort to give the percussion in "African nights" an African flavour but the result is silly. Still the track has some intriguing arrangements. There's some beautiful acoustic guitar & piano parts on the title track but you definitely have to be in a very quiet mood to enjoy this and it's not an easy listen. If you're not, I would consider to call it boring. "Sequencer" has too many commercial "Miami vice" elements to please me. Here the sound is streamlined a tad too much.

The quality of the composition is improving near the end of the album. "Calliope" is one of the highlights of the album. There's a challenging duel between the organ chords and Al's guitar. There's a speeding up of the tempo several times and the melodies are brilliant. There's lots of variation in the arrangements of the closing "Scoundrel days". Here the guitar parts are clearly influenced by the rock and wave trends of the decade. Once again the main theme is a simple, almost childish melody, only this time it works out fine.

After all "Scenario" isn't that memorable as a whole album but it does contend some great tracks and a nice atmosphere throughout even if it is sounding completely out of date nowadays.

This was an interesting phase for Mr. Di Meola. It was the 1980s after all, not an easy time for any musician who'd been around as long as he, and he found himself adapting to that brave new musical world the best way he could. The result was 'Scenario', and it turned out to be quite a tasty little album. The line up for the session was also an asset; Jan Hammer on keys, Fairlight CMI, piano, Linn and Roland drums, and Moog bass. As well, Bill Bruford and Tony Levin guest on a track, and Phil Collins appears. This didn't produce a prog supergroup for the 80s but it did make for one of the better synthetic projects of that often garish period.

The winds of the East and an Indian Bansuri, all electronic, open the desert pictures of 'Mata Hari', a track that showcases fluid rhythms from Hammer's Linn drums and Fairlight with Di Meola's cool plucking on top. The obligatory Adult Contemporary pap follows with 'African Night' and the record is further diminished by the dreadful 'Island Dreamer'. Luckily, these two maestros snap out of it and give us the superb title cut, a lovely and passioned duet of Al's Flamenco strings with Hammer's alternating piano and synth. A diamond in the rough and one of the things worth admission. 'Sequencer', in many ways the flagship of this project, is a bright electro-rocker where the blend of high-tech with hard rock is best illuminated and features one of this guitarist's best, most elegantly fierce staccato performances. 'Cachaca' slows the pace a bit but the guitar still cuts like a knife as it does in 'Hypnotic Conviction'. The eerie 'Calliope' develops into an odd-metered romp with melodic solos and the album finishes with the racing and clipping 'Scoundrel', an exercise in instrumental prowess. And please note the hats-off to Jeff Beck's 'Blue Wind' at the end, a well-deserved homage to that rock fusion giant.

Don't be fooled by the prestigious line-up announced on the inside sleeve, Bruford, Collins and Levin appear on only one track each, the rest being just the ADM and Jan Hammer duo sharing all the instrumentation. While not a bad album per se, Scenario is plagued by the usual stinking 80's flaws that include weak/[&*!#]ty synth sound (sorry Jan), bad synthetic beats and a general lack of good songwriting. Clearly ADM is now in the complete routine part of his career, recording one album after another, without actually really investing himself as much as a few years back. This album could easily match some of the weaker ECM releases of the era, but even then, this is not really bad, either.

The duo develops a highly synthesized music, ADM even using a Roland Guitar synth, and the music is often reminiscent of Jan Hammer's hit soundtrack of that idiotic Miami Vice TV series (you know, the one where cops drives Ferraris and Garden Dwarf Collins will make a "memorable appearance") and others softer jazz gizmos. The tracks where the three guests appears are not really much different than the rest of the album either. Although not a true stinker of an album, it is best avoided by everyone, especially Mr Bruford!

That album is interesting in sense how Al Di Meola transformed his music during 80-s. Big positive side is his ELECTRIC guitar there. Negative - plenty of synthesizers all around, filling almost all the space.

The first track is really good, presenting jazz fusion based on synth and electric guitar complex sound. But things go wrong right after. If the second song is still average synth based melody with al most warm (!) guitar mixed in third, thisrd song is synthy-pop in classic form. Drum machine, new age stupid optimistic rings and whistles,etc.

All other album after "Island Dreamer" is a mixed bag again. In it bests it contains of synth based guitar scented jazz-fusion. But mostly it is more synthy-pop without melodies, but played by professional team. Listenable, but not too much interesting.

All in all - very average album, and really doesn't include nothing really good from long Al Di Meola career.

Bill Bruford, Phil Collins and a sequencer

Scenario was the album where Al Di Meola's approach changed radically and for ever after. He turned away from the kind music he had been doing on albums like Casino and Elegant Gypsy and took a large step towards the music he would do later. Some fans of those earlier albums might really dislike this one and I myself was left a bit confused with it. However, when judged for what it is, on its own merits and not in relation to earlier works, it is actually not that bad. Indeed, Mata Hari is a very good track with a Far Eastern feeling. Sadly, the album tends to drift more and more towards easy listening as we approach the middle of it. For me it becomes rather tedious after a while and it is very difficult to find motivation to listen to the whole album in one go.

As I have implied, the sound and feeling is very different from on earlier albums. There are sequencers here sounding very much like on Vangelis work of the time and Di Meola even seem to borrow some moods from Vangelis. The music is often laid back, not very colourful and a bit sterile. The role played by sequencers and drum machines is much larger than the presence of guest drummers Bill Bruford and Phil Collins. With such drum greats involved, it is disappointing to hear so little great drumming. But it is clear that Di Meola was not afraid of change and trying out new things. There are still electric guitars here and the all acoustic, World Music influenced, works Di Meola would do later are only hinted at here. But it was with this album he changed direction.

When in the right mood I can enjoy parts of this album very much, but overall I find it difficult to listen to the whole album. I can recommend this only for fans and collectors.

On this album Al and long-time collaborator Jan Hammer display their awkward mastery of the new computer-technologies that had come available in the 1980s including drum machines and synth guitars, but more specifically, the Fairlight CMI.

1. "Mata Hari" (6:07) I like the slow build and nice, intricate weave of sophisticated programming with Al and Jan's multiple tracks of guitars and keys on this one. Al duelling with himself is a bit much, but the slightly-Mediterranean sounds and melodies are interesting. A top three song. (8.875/10)

2. "African Night" (4:52) a beautiful creation of something that takes one to tropical places one usually only dreams of. I picture myself looking out over the mesmerizingly shifting colors of the Sahara Desert as I lounge on a reclining chair on a hotel roof top in Marrakesh as the sun is setting behind me, luxuriating in my fruity cocktail. Yes, it's sappy, but Al's begun to master the art of pleasing the listener, not just impressing them. My favorite song on the album. (9.5/10)

3. "Island Dreamer" (4:07) neither an interesting sound palette nor the presence of Phil Collins can save this rather monotonous song from its 80s tedium. (8.7/10)

4. "Scenario" (4:00) Jan plays piano in a pleasant if subtle duet with Al's acoustic guitar(s). This song is an example of how the virtuosity on display in this album's music is oft-times woefully hidden in subtlety and nuance. (8.75/10)

5. "Sequencer" (4:08) Al going full-techno with this "Theme from Miami Vice"-like song. The sounds coming from the drum machines are the worst (as is the metronomic 4/4 snare beat) while those emanating from the guitar synth and Fairlight CMI are pretty decent. The guitar-less first half of the third minute is the most interesting, but Al's partially- muted guitar solo that follows is pretty awesome. (8.875/10)

6. "Cachaca" (5:36) Jan and Al trying to conjure up some kind of techno-funk!? Multiple guitar tracks sometimes feel at odds with each other--as if Al was experimenting with many sounds and styles (and melody lines) filling several tracks and at the end decided to keep them all in the final mix. Almost Allan Holdsworth-like in both its unusual creativity but also the meandering, lost feeling it ends up conveying. Like Allan, maybe Al was so into his own world that he ended up creating music for a different planet? The weird thing is that I actually like it! (8.875/10)

7. "Hypnotic Conviction" (3:52) more techno-rhythm tracks (some surprisingly simple considering the two men behind their creation) over which Jan and Al try fabricating something interesting. There are some nice sounds here but way more cheesy ones playing even cheesier riffs resulting in a rather epic fail. (8.5/10)

8. "Calliope" (4:20) Tony Levin and Bill Bruford's contributions here lift this nicely hypnotic song to a different level. A top three song--and not just for the presence of the Dynamic Duo, but they definitely help. (9/10)

9. "Scoundrel" (3:46) opens with some ominously rock guitar riffing before the country-western drum track joins in. Things settle a little differently for the second motif as Jan's contributions get a chance to show, but then we switch back to the guitar-driven C&W motif, alternating back and forth until the two-minute mark when Jan is given space for one of his old trademark Moog solos--which turns out to be the glove-drop for an on-going duel between he and Al, both trading classic solos back and forth until the song fades out. Good old-fashioned jazz-rock fusion (despite the C&W bent). (8.875/10)

Total Time: 40:48

Al (and Jan) are still on it though they haven't quite figured out how to express instrumental skill and virtuosity on the drum machines and Fairlight CMI sequencing. Sometimes the excellence is buried in the mixes--too subtle for their own good--at other times it's buried in the schlocky sound choices. Still, this is another fairly good album from two of J- R Fusion's masters.

B/four stars; an excellent addition to any prog lover's music collection--especially if you can forgive the technological excesses that were the 1980s.