ROBERT MUSSO

ACTIVE RESONANCE

  1/  A Dream Supreme                            (Musso)                       4.59
  2/  Alliance                                   (Musso)                       4.37
  3/  All Funked Up                              (Musso)                       6.17
  4/  Tanar!                                     (Musso)                       6.39
  5/  To Cross the Rubicon                       (Musso)                       5.06
  6/  Ancient Silk Road                          (Musso)                       6.27
  7/  Amu Darya                                  (Musso)                       7.11
  8/  The Squidge                                (Musso)                       5.31
  9/  Home Growning                              (Musso)                       7.06
  10/ A Late One                                 (Musso)                       4.09

          Recorded at Greenpoint Studio, Brooklyn, New York
          Additional recording: Oz Fritz
          Assistant engineers: Wes Naperstek, Imad Mansour, Jeremy Probber and
            Ben Face
          Mixed at Quad Studios
          Assistant engineer at Quad: Chris Theis
          Produced by Robert Musso
          Mastered by Howie Weinberg at Masterdisk
Bootsy Collins (3): vocals; Bernie Worrell (3,10): keys; Bill Laswell (1-6,8,10): bass; Jonas Hellborg (3): bass solo; Thomas Chapin: alto sax, saxello, musette; Aiyb Dieng: conga, chatan, bells, shakers; Tanar Catalpinar (4): vocals; Bil Bryant (3,6,8,9): drums; Martin Obeng: conga, bongos, cowbells, apentemma, frikywa; Richard Graham: dumbec, flexitone, shakers, berimbau, cuica; Jair-Rohm Parker Wells (9): bass; Robert Musso : moon flute, electric and acoustic six and twelve string guitars, 6-string bass, electric sitar, mandolin, banjo, ukelele, treatments and other stringed instruments.

Other drum tracks courtesy of Material.

          1992 - Tokuma Communications (Japan), TKCB-30500 (CD)
          1993 - MuWorks Records (USA), MUW 1008 (CD)

REVIEWS :

Guitarist, composer, and master mixing engineer Robert Musso has issued another chapter in his evolving space-dub jam session recordings. This one features many of the usual suspects -- Bill Laswell, Bernie Worrell, Aiyb Deng, Bootsy Collins, and some others, such as the late Thomas Chapin, Jonas Hellborg, and Tanar Catalpinar. The assemblage offers a new listen to Musso's integrational conception of opposites attracting under the influence of rhythm. Here, the post-modal jazz of John Coltrane is heard as it meets the dawn of 1990s funk-dub world-fusion on "A Dream Supreme," and the shifting sands of global cowboy-ism as it voices its desolation on "Alliance." On "All Funked Up," Afro-funk meets the J.B.'s with Bootsy on grunting cheerleader vocals. And so it goes, with the only cohesive glue in the cracks being Musso's disciplined direction, excellent guitar playing, and his indomitable sense of groove no matter what the genre stipulations -- check "Tanar!" with its muezzin wailing over a wall of deep space dub. Or the Eastern-tinged modalism of "Home Growing," where it meets the terrain of euphoric jazz and rock. Recommended.

Thom Jurek (courtesy of the All Music Guide website)