Pat Metheny - Orchestrion

The jazz guitar meister becomes a one-man band…

Even though this is a solo album in the truest sense – no other musicians appear alongside Metheny – it’s also a solo album unlike any other. It is, in fact, a large acoustic ensemble recording, but with the guitarist creating and playing all the other parts, from bass and piano, to drums and an assortment of percussion instruments. But there are no layers of overdubs – rather, Metheny got together with some electronics boffins to create a 21st-century version of a Victorian Pianola-type contraption called an orchestrion, and played everything to tape in real time using what he describes as “solenoid switches and pneumatics”.

Inevitably, of course, there’s a danger that the methods by which this album has been made will overshadow the music itself. Ultimately it’s the quality of music – and not how it’s been created – that counts and, judging Orchestrion entirely from that perspective, it’s a very good record indeed, one which will probably earn the 56-year-old musician his 18th Grammy. The title track is a lyrical, freewheeling piece of organic music where all the component parts flow as naturally as a stream. Of the four remaining cuts, Spirit Of The Air impresses with its cinematic ambience, rolling rhythmic gait and sheer fecundity of musical ideas. Astonishing.

4 stars 4 stars 4 stars 4 stars

Nonesuch | 204

Reviewed by Charles Waring
<< Back to Issue 373

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