ARTiST: Charlie Hunter Trio
TiTLE: Mistico
LABEL: Fantasy Records / Concord
GENRE: Jazz
TiME: 53:39 min
SiZE: 64,2 MB
BiTRATE: VBRkbps
RiP DATE: Aug-26-2007
RELEASE DATE: Jul-31-2007
WEBSiTE: n/a
Track List:
01. Lady! 05:52
02. Speakers Built In 06:20
03. Estranged 05:02
04. Balles 04:57
05. Wizard Sleeve 05:07
06. Drop A Dime 04:39
07. Spoken Word 03:38
08. Special Shirt 05:40
09. Mistico 07:33
10. Chimp Gut 04:51
Release Notes:
On Mistico, Charlie Hunter finally, after a couple
of near misses, gets in touch with his inner rock
guitarist. The disc's immediate
predecessorsùCopperopolis (Ropeadope, 2006) and
Longitude (Thirsty Ear, 2005)ùinhabited similarly
full-on visceral territory, but here those albums'
funk quotients are reduced to practically zero in
favor of dirty, confrontational, rock 'n' roll.
Nothing on Mistico is on the one. It's all on the
two and four. It ain't bad so much as it's nasty.
It's simple, lo-fi music, and we're told that most
tracks were recorded in one or two takes, without
any charts. There's only one ballad, ôEstranged,ö
with the rest in the main consisting of greasy
mid-tempo guitar riffs bounced off fat drum
backbeats. Uncluttered, rhythmically and
harmonically unsophisticated, but always flowing,
and played with total conviction. Simple in the best
sense of the word.
It's also post-modern, in the best sense of that
word, with Hunter's singular, twisted guitar
textures and Erik Deutsch's inventive keyboard
sonorities mashed up with a host of rock and
electric blues references going back over thirty
years. Heliotropic psychedelic flashbacks figure
large in the schema, in Deutsch's playing and in
Hunter's too, and the leader's 7-string guitar (he's
recently had the eighth string removed and the neck
shaved down) sometimes sounds more like a revved up
Hammond B3 or Mellotron than a string instrument.
From back in the day I hear, or imagine, keyboard
adventurer Keith Emerson with the Nice, the Doors,
guitarists George Harrison and John Lennon rocking
out on The White Album (Apple, 1968), bluesman Buddy
Guy making his guitar weep with pleasure. From more
recently, ZZ Top and Lynyrd Skynrd. Emerson
sometimes plunged a nine-inch Bowie knife into his
keyboard, producing a sustained wailing dissonance
and, more importantly, striking a no-nonsense
theatrical attitude. That pretty much sums up the
tenor of Mistico.
Some of Hunter's original listenersùif they're still
listening to him, which most of them probably are
notùwill hear Mistico as the nadir of a trajectory
which started promisingly with the relatively
straight-ahead Bing...Bing...Bing (Blue Note, 1995)
before beginning its final groove-driven ôdescentö
with Tales From The Analog Playground (Blue Note,
2000). I love those earlier albums myself, but I
love Mistico too. We all need a little mindless
boogie in our lives.