Modulator is Trey Gunn with uber-drummer Marco Minnemann; but with a gigantic twist. This entire recording was composed and produced over the top of a 51 minute, live drum solo by Marco.
For this project, alternatively known as "Normalizer Two", Marco has enlisted several different musicians to create a full cd, each, from the same drum solo. No editing of the drum performance was done. All the music had to fit with what Marco played and, ideally, make it seems like only this drum performance could go with this music.
"This was the hardest recording I have ever taken on," says Gunn. "The challenges of this process prove the old adage that 'with great restrictions come great creative leaps'."
Trey Gunn has a name reminiscent of an Old West outlaw. He is also
one of current progressive rock’s go-to soundmakers, mainly wielding his
Warr guitar (a Chapman Stick-like instrument built to explore notes
from bass to guitar range with a tapping technique), touring and
performing with the likes of Tool, Brian Eno, and, most famously, prog
giants King Crimson, of which he was a member for nine years and four
studio albums.
On
Modulator, the music is a thick, weird, pulverizing,
battlefield of touch guitars, spacy sound effects, and free jazz
drumming. The concept is even
weirder—for
Modulator, the
writing took place backwards, with Gunn writing and overdubbing
soundscapes and riffs on top of “rhythmic illusionist” Marco Minnemann’s
51-minute drum solo, recorded live in Senden, Germany in 2006. Gunn
spent years toying with the material, literally re-thinking the process
of songwriting before finally settling on an appropriate method of
deconstruction: 22 tracks of controlled chaos.
Modulator
won’t win over any doubters. If your idea of proggy experimentation is
“that Coheed album with all the sound effects”, this ain’t gonna float
your boat. But if you’re up for the challenge, Gunn, Minnemann, and
Modulator
offer a headphone-absorbing headfuck that only gets better the closer
you listen. If the idea behind “progressive rock” is to literally
“progress” rock music beyond its normal confines, exploring the limits
and possibilities of what the genre is capable of, then
Modulator is one of the most progressive (and
interesting) things you’re likely to hear this year…or any.
Fusion and electric avant-garde jazz are two different things. Fusion--as envisioned by
Miles Davis,
John McLaughlin,
Chick Corea,
and others back in the '70s -- combined jazz with rock and funk in a
way that didn't emphasize outside playing, whereas electric avant-garde
jazz (as in
Ornette Coleman's Prime Time,
Jamaaladeen Tacuma,
Ronald Shannon Jackson, and
James Blood Ulmer) savors the dissonant pleasures of the outside. But there are times when the two merge, and that is what happens on guitarist
Trey Gunn and drummer
Marco Minnemann's
Modulator.
Actually, this instrumental CD is more than a combination of fusion and
electric avant-garde jazz; it is a combination of fusion, electric
avant-garde jazz, and progressive rock. And
Gunn and
Minnemann end up sounding like a freewheeling yet coherent "duo," which is interesting in light of how
Modulator was put together.
Gunn and
Minnemann didn't enter the studio at the same time and record as a traditional duo. Instead, an unaccompanied
Minnemann recorded a 50-minute drum solo by himself in 2006, gave the recording to
Gunn and asked him to compose music for his drumming.
Gunn
was reluctant at first, but after agreeing to take on the difficult
project, he composed some music -- and from 2008-2010, he played various
instruments (including guitar, bass, and keyboards) and combined them
with
Minnemann's
drums. Of course, there are those who will argue that recording an
album that way has no place in jazz -- that jazz is about real musicians
playing together in real time, not musicians playing separately and
later mixing it all together. But then,
Modulator
never pretends to be straight-ahead jazz; this is a hybrid mixture of
fusion, electric avant-garde jazz, and prog rock. And as abstract and
eccentric as
Modulator is at times, the music is also logical; it's clear that
Gunn put a lot of thought into what he added to
Minnemann's drums. Music this challenging isn't for everyone, but
Modulator is well worth exploring if one is the type of broad-minded, eclectic listener who appreciates electric
Miles Davis and
Coleman's Prime Time as much as he/she appreciates
King Crimson.
Some concepts look grand on paper, but don’t execute well. Some ideas are great in concept, but fail to launch in practice.
Trey Gunn‘s
Modulator is a project that succeeds on both counts.
The former
King Crimson guitarist approached the making of this album in a unique manner. First, he enlisted the aid of drummer
Marco Minnemann.
The percussionist set up his kit and recorded a one-hour drum solo. No
stopping, one take. I kid you not. Then Gunn took that recording and
proceeded to write music to play atop the drum parts. Gunn broke the
solo into twenty-two sections, but other than that, did no chopping,
channeling or editing. In a Seattle studio more than two years after
Minnemann laid down his solo in Germany, Gunn added guitars, basses,
keyboards and samples. Save some Uilleann pipes and fiddle on a bit of
cacophony called “Spectra,” the recording is only Minnemann and Gunn.
But how does it sound?
Modulator is surprisingly accessible
and organic. The pieces don’t jump out at the listener all full of
hooks, but they’re not cold, remote exercises, either. There’s a
constant and welcome juxtaposition between the percussion and the other
instrumentation: sometimes when the drums are simple, the other
instruments head toward angular, complex territory. When the drums get
all complicated, the instruments sometimes traverse smoother sonic
regions.
Some sections of
Modulator — though it’s broken into tracks,
it’s best approached as a single composition with movements — are
quite melodic, while others are static and nearly devoid of melody.
Both approaches, work set as they are against each other. In a very
real sense, even though the music was carefully constructed, most of
Modulator
feels (and sounds) more like a series of high-level improvisations.
One could imagine achieving a similar result (assuming one has players
of this caliber) if, say, hours and hours of improvisations were
recorded over the period of months. Then an intrepid producer could
comb over the tapes, select the best bits and edit them together to
create a rewarding finished product.
Alas, that’s not what happened here. Such a course, apparently, would
have been too easy, too lacking in challenge. Artists like this are
sometimes willing to take chances — because, in the end there was no
guarantee that a project like this would yield listenable, enduring
music — and adventurous listeners are all the better for having heard
it. And if all this weren’t enough, no less than five other musicians —
including
Mike Keneally — are each planning to take individual cracks at layering their compositions atop Minnemann’s solo. Yikes.
Tracks Listing
01. Contact
02. Flood
03. Spray I
04. Fall Time +/-
05. Fall Time -/+
06. Lumen
07. Switch
08. Daughter
09. Pole
10. Scatter
11. Up Spin
12. Down Spin
13. Spectra
14. Superstish-a-tron
15. Californ-a-tron
16. Spray II
17. Mono-Punkte
18. Coupling
19. Incantation
20. Slingcharm
21. Twisted Pair
22. Hymn
Line-up / Musicians
Marco Minnemann (drums);
Trey Gunn (guitar, fretless guitar, keyboards, sampler);
Michael Connolly (Uilleann pipe)
