Dewa Budjana - 2016 "Zentuary"

New studio album (double cd) by the iconic Balinese guitarist Dewa Budjana, featuring TONY LEVIN, GARY HUSBAND, JACK DEJOHNETTE with special guests TIM GARLAND, DANNY MARKOVICH, GUTHRIE GOVAN, SAAT SYAH, UBIET, RISA SARASWATI, CZECH SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA.

Indonesian guitar legend, Dewa Budjana is offering his most ambitious album to date, "Zentuary." Supported by an all-star cast of enormous proportions -- including jazz legend, Jack DeJohnette (over forty years on the ECM label), the iconic progressive bass and stickman, Tony Levin (Peter Gabriel; King Crimson), and the extraordinary superstar sideman talents of Britain's Gary Husband (Allan Holdsworth; John McLaughlin) -- Budjana offers a profusion of cross-cultural delicacies which tease, cajole, enthrall and, ultimately, satisfy listeners. Special guests include guitarist Guthrie Govan (The Aristocrats; Steven Wilson, Tim Garland (Chick Corea; Bill Bruford) and Danny Markovich (Marbin).

A veteran player whose career has already been marked by collaborations with a virtual "who's who" of musical luminaries, Budjana still manages to raise the stakes and elevate the level of his game on his fifth solo album.

Budjana's compositions are as detailed, finely honed and richly designed as ever, but Zentuary also features some of his most open-ended work to date. The easygoing groove and singable theme to "Uncle Jack," for example, deceptively bookends an 11-minute collective blowout, where DeJohnette puts down his drum sticks and, bolstered by Husband's equally inimitable kit work, moves to piano for the flat-out freest track of the set. Ebbing and flowing with a chemistry all the more remarkable for a core group of musicians—well-known names all—who have never played together before in any permutation or combination, it's a clear demonstration of Budjana's increasing comfort in such improv-heavy environs.

Zentuary's opener, "Dancing Tear," begins with a soundscape of plaintive vocals layered atop fretless nylon-string guitar and synth bolstered by Husband and Levin's foreboding rhythm section work. But within a mere sixty seconds everything changes as a more frenetic vibe emerges, with Levin's electric upright and Husband's effusive kit work driving a thematic, arpeggio-driven construct clearly referencing John McLaughlin's lifelong west-meets-east explorations...though this time, it's more appropriately east-meets-west.

Budjana takes the first solo, and it's a career-defining turn that still, fuzz-toned and staggeringly virtuosic as it is, never dissolves into flashy excess; instead, it's one of the most impassioned, beautifully constructed solos he's ever delivered—and it's still just Zentuary's first track. If there are any suggestions that his masterful technique is relegated solely to overdriven electric instruments, Budjana immediately follows that solo with a second, this time on nylon-string guitar, building to its own thrilling climax. Husband closes the tune with a synth solo of epic Mahavishnu Orchestra proportions...no surprise, perhaps, given that Husband has been keyboardist and percussionist of choice for over a decade in MO founder John McLaughlin's current 4th Dimension group—which is, coincidentally, in preparation to revisit the Mahavishnu Orchestra's legacy for an upcoming North American tour.

Knotty contrapuntal ideas mesh with the complex polyrhythms that drive Zentuary's largely episodic writing. Zentuary may shine a strong spotlight on Budjana, but it also provides plenty of space for Husband—a musician who first garnered a reputation for his unrelenting virtuosity behind the drum kit, but who has increasingly proven just as impressive on keyboards, whether it's contributing a motif-driven acoustic piano solo to the ferocious "Solas PM" (also featuring fellow Moonjune label mate/soprano saxophonist Danny Markovitch) or mind-bending synthesizer work on the following "Lake Takengon," where DeJohnette assumes Zentuary's drum chair for the first time on the record, demonstrating that as stylistically far-reaching as his reputation has long been considered, at nearly 75 he still has the capacity to surprise in the best of ways.

The album's more aggressive stance finally takes a breather on "Sunikala," with its more ambling groove driven as much by Levin's muscular but spare bass lines as it is Husband's similarly spartan backbeat. Introducing the first of two appearances by the Czech Symphony Orchestra, its lush textures lean more towards a progressive rock feel...no surprise, given Levin's long association with the genre as a member, in addition to his tenure with Peter Gabriel, of all but one King Crimson lineup since 1980. The tune's progressive ambience is further supported by guest guitarist Guthrie Govan, who contributes a solo as viscerally soaring as any of his existing work as a member of the power trio Aristocrats and as a former member of progressive singer/songwriter Steven Wilson's band from 2012-2015, heard on the ex-Porcupine Tree founder's The Raven That Refused to Sing (And Other Stories) (Kscope, 2013) and 2015 follow-up concept album, Hand. Cannot. Erase (Kscope), amongst others.

Beyond contributing a wonderfully finger-picked acoustic guitar solo that follows Govan on "Sunikala," the idea that Budjana would recruit such a highly regarded, masterful and evocative guitarist—truly a guitarist's guitarist—into his own project only speaks to the Indonesian's innate humility and desire to do everything possible to serve the music. By this time in his relatively short career on the international jazz scene, he's already well past the need to prove himself, but recruiting a guitarist of Govan's repute is as much a reflection of Budjana the man as it is Budjana the musician.

Levin's reputation has, for the past four decades, been largely in the progressive rock sphere, so it's easy to forget that he first emerged as a jazz bassist in the mid-to-late '60s, with an early career résumé filled with impressive names ranging from Mike Mainieri, Buddy Rich and Deodato to Herbie Mann, Ben Sidran and Gary Burton. Driven by DeJohnette's signature cymbal work and coming before Budjana's own searing, linguistically rich work on "Dear Yulman," the bassist takes a commanding electric upright solo whose lyrical touches, deep-in-the-gut resonance, personal idiosyncrasies and reverence to the heart of the song would be unmistakably identifiable, even if his name wasn't listed in the credits.

If it's true that we are all the confluence of our own lives' experiences, then Levin is but one of Zentuary's many examples of how these exceptional players prove not just capable of bringing any and all of their extant career work to bear, but are equally adept at meeting new contexts head on, in this case Budjana's infusion of Gamelan—though, in Levin's case, his early days in Crimson were informed by this specifically Javanese and Balinese music—and other musical concepts unique to Indonesia.

Track Listing:

CD 1:
1. Dancing Tears;
2. Solas PM;
3. Lake Takengon;
4. Sunikala;
5. Dear Yulman;
6. Rerengat Langit (Crack in the Sky).

CD 2:
1. Pancaroba;
2. Manhattan People;
3. Dedariku;
4. Ujung Galuh;
5. Uncle Jack;
6. Zentuary.

Personnel:

Dewa Budjana: all guitars, soundscapes;
Tony Levin: electric upright NS Design bass (CD1#1-5, CD2#1-5), Chapman Stick (CD1#6);
Gary Husband: drums (CD1#1-2, CD1#4, CD1#6, CD2#1, CD2#4-5); keyboards and acoustic piano (CD1, CD2#1-4);
Jack DeJohnette: drums (CD1#3, CD1#5, CD2#2-3), acoustic piano (CD2#5);
Danny Markovitch: curved soprano saxophone (CD1#2, CD2#4);
Tim Garland: tenor saxophone (CD2#2);
Guthrie Govan: guitar solo (CD1#4);
Saat Syah: custom-made Indonesian suling flute (CD1#6, CD2#3);
Ubiet: vocals (CD1#3);
Risa Saraswati: vocals (CD1#6);
Czech Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Michaela Růžičková: orchestra (CD1#4, CD2#6).