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: : Addison Project - Mood Swings : :
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Band/Artist
Addison Project
Title:
Mood Swings
Released
2003
Label
Unicorn Records |
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Track List:
Sleepwalking
The Muffin
Montee De Lait
Mood Swings
Le Grand-be (Wrath Of Chateaubriand)
Mceuet
After All (Demon’s Dance)
10h10
Controlled Freedom |
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: : Lineup : :
Stéphane Crytes (drums)
David Gauthier (electric and acoustic guitars)
Michel St-Pere (electric guitar)
Eric St-Laurent (electric guitar)
Philippe Lauzier (alto sax)
Dany Roy (tenor sax)
Luc Aubry (piano and keyboards)
Mario Di Blasio (electronic drums)
Robin Boulianne (violins)
Pierre Nadeau (piano)
Richard Addison (basses and programming) |
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: : REVIEW : :
The Addison Project’s “Mood Swing” album arrived on my door for review with such a
buzz about it that I heard it coming clear down the street. Maybe I should have
taken the warning, turned out the lights and pretended I wasn’t home.
Oh don’t get me wrong. Its not a bad album. In fact, there’s quite a lot to like
about it. Former Mystery bass player Richard Addison has assembled a crack group of
prog and jazz musicians for his project and, quite frankly, they play like a bunch
of crack studio musicians. The album oozes chops. More specifically, it oozes jazzy
chops. It absolutely oozes them. I had to wipe the ooze off the tray of my CD
player. How an album that is so cleanly produced could give off such ooze is beyond
me.
And, when you get right down to it, there really is quite a lot of good composition
on the album too. The frenetic bass and hard-edged, jagged guitar lines manage to
recall King Crimson and Return to Forever at the same time. Nowhere is this clearer
than in “Le Grand-be (Wrath Of Chateaubriand)” on which, after setting up the
bass-guitar dynamic, Philippe Lauzier’s saxophone nearly shrieks a lead line and Luc
Aubry’s keyboards provide a haunting background.
At its best, on the opening track “Sleepwalking” and the closing track “Controlled
Freedom,” the compositions on the album are compelling and confident. At times the
pieces plough well-worn Fusion Jazz territory, at times they are a bit proggier, at
times a bit funkier.
And yet sometimes this is the album’s weakness. It seems to smack too much of trying
to be all things to all people. Is it a jazz album? Is it a prog album? Is it fusion
jazz or is it Canterbury? And yet it is not exactly something new either. The basic
problem is that Addison does not seem to have figured out what the goal of his
project was. Perhaps that can be his next project.
7 out of 10.
Reviewed by: Aaron Jazy
: : Visit the artist website : :
http://www.unicornrecords.com/addisonproject/
: : Discography : :
Mood Swings - 2003 |
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