Mess Hall

Number three in a trilogy nearly a quarter century in the making, Mess Hall is also another entry in what Joe Morris terms the Big Loud Electric Guitar end of his prolific discography. Plenty of humor underlies that awkward placeholder considering that big and loud only describes the waterline of the iceberg-sized totality of what Morris accomplishes with his instrument. The guitarist isn t one to let the listener wonder as to his intentions. He heads off any critics prone to erroneous conjecture with a detailed set of liner notes that elucidate his goals for the project in clear and cogent prose. That willingness to explicate without being pedantic is both refreshing and surprisingly sporadic in improvised music. Recorded in October of 2011 with longtime collaborators Steve Lantner on Yamaha electric piano and Jerome Deupree on drums, the disc s five improvised pieces revolve around a core set of ideas that seek to employ the guitar as a post-Hendrix sound generator. The past two entries in the project, Sweat Shop (1990) and Racket Club (1998) explored various avenues of melodic composition with detours into ostinato and groove forms. Here the structures are more open-ended and concerned with color, texture and weight. To that end Morris breaks a rule set earlier in his career (although discarded with increasing regularity these days) by incorporating effects pedals into his sound and eschewing clean single-note runs.

Number of Discs: 1

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