PAINTED ROCK

Swiss born Marc Wagnon moved to USA and got together with excellent bassist Percy Jones from Brand X fame and formed in mid '90s Tunnels. They have a moderate succes among jazz fusion listners with 4 albums released so far. I happed to get one of their albums and one considered their best , is the second album from 1998 named Painted rock. Well, what we have here is a solid jazz fusion album with complicated twists coming from each musician and great musicianship, they remind me a in places of Brand X manner of composing. The guitar is strong , Van Manakas done a good job, specially on first 4 pieces who are the best from the album. In the middle of the album it becomes little experimental like on Boyz in the Ud, not bad but not really for my taste. They cover almost all areas of jazz fusion world with great guitars and here and there keyboards, resulting a fine album, but I don;t think is groundbreaking, is great but not excellent. All in all, fans of the genre must take some spins and specialy this one and next one Progressivity being their best. 3 stars rounded in some parts to 3.5.