While not fusion, Studio 1 is most certainly a blend. Drawn together by film-maker Philip Mullarkey to play live as a part of a film project, Scorch Trio guitarist Raoul Bjorkenheim, John Zorn and Fantomas bass player Trevor Dunn, Frank Zappa collaborator Morten Agren, and Supersilent/Humcrush synthesizer maestro Stale Storlokken engage in a dialogue between control and intuition. It's an animated discussion, to say the least, one in which the agreements are many, the quarrels fiery, and the rhetoric polished.
Although improvised, the crew generates jump-cut structures and incongruous juxtapositions of material with a surprising consistency. Somewhere between, around, above, beyond, jazz and rock, the anarchic guitar scribble of Bjorkenheim stands in these free-for-all improv works as an eviscerating fury, perpetually slaking its thirst at the well of unashamedly grandiose synths, scruffy and frayed bass lines, and a mulch of percussion squelches.
This routine dominates throughout much of the album, and inasmuch as the fulsomeness and stamina impresses and the virtuosity ensures that each tiny cluster of notes is fastidiously voiced at times, it is flashy and lacking any real thrust (in other words, sound and fury signifying nothing...). An impressive record, one loaded with points of structural intrigue, but it lingers without a voice of its own, and accordingly its importance is curtailed.
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