Mat Maneri

Pentagon

(Thirsty Ear)

Record Review by Daniel Brody

Jazz has had a rough time of it the past few years.  It was embalmed as a distant event in history in a Ken Burns documentary, bastardized into chart-topping housewife schmaltz by multiplatinum elevator musicians like Kenny G, and basically ignored unless it took the form of horns playing pop music.  Even jazz powerhouse Blue Note needed coffeehouse lounge singer Norah Jones to prop itself up.  These are the sort of queasy developments that brought Thirsty Ear Records’ “Blue Series” of recordings into existence.  Since Thirsty Ear’s artists are also its record executives, the label has been free to pursue the outer limits of jazz, rap and electronica without distraction from smooth jazz nonsense.

Mat Maneri’s Pentagon is the latest in the Blue Series, and, to its credit, sounds nothing like the stereotypical swing-band or bebop horn toots that the word “Jazz” has become synonymous with.  The record sounds like Medeski Martin and Wood finally starting to resent their frat-guy audience and darkly deciding to see how extreme they need to be before the last white guy with dreadlocks leaves the concert hall.  As the song title “Witches Woo” makes obvious, the starting point for this music is “Bitches Brew”-era Miles Davis.  Instruments sound like they are recorded underwater, soupily flow in and out of each other and the mix, and get run through wah-wah pedals until it is unclear which instrument is making what sound.  Occasional vocalists wander in, their voices bewildered among the cacophony.  There is no rest or release; slower songs like “America” and “ava” sound disquieting, while more raucous numbers such as “War Room” careen and explode every which way, daring your ears to make sense of it all.  Snippets of recognizable songs like “America the Beautiful” and “Motherless Child” are evoked and then smashed to smithereens underneath shifting time signatures and electronically mangled acoustic instruments. 

Pentagon requires some serious time to figure out what the hell is going on, but it is never safe and never boring.  This is as close as jazz gets to meeting its romantic notion of constant improvisation leading to new and exciting musical territory.  Prepare to wig out!