Uninvisible [DVD-Audio]

Down Beat - 4 out of 5 stars - "...MM&W return to [a] tight focus and rich texture...but with a distinctly ominous midnight edge. The product of a composition-through-imporvisation approach...UNINVISIBLE is darkly layered and ripe with filigree..." Alternative Press - 9 out of 10 - "...Jumping from straight bass, drum and organ-led jams...to dark, cinematic pieces...to...skittery organic illbience...MMW charge brazenly past cries of Jimmy Smith worship into territory rarely covered by artists..." CMJ - "...For being such masters of their instruments, MMW are remarkably generous players, which is exactly why they make all their guests and hosts sound that much better..." JazzTimes - "...Music you can dance to while contemplating its cosmic connectedness to the universal groove..."

Uninvisible is further than ever from conventional jazz organ. While blues and funk influences are evident throughout the album, they float on a sea of shadows. Sound sources are obscure or exotic; on "Pappy Check" innovative scratching by turntablist DJ Olive creates an impression of African percussion more than club atmospherics. Even where the instrumentation is less ambiguous, the trio steers toward a filmic noir sensibility, with Medeski leading the way in unorthodox techniques. His pitch-bend solo on "Take Me Nowhere" suggests the creak of a rusty hinge, with Wood's acoustic bass providing the anchor for his abstractions. Wood is in fact often mixed higher than Medeski, to the effect of reducing the keyboard parts to a sideline role and the album in turn to an exercise in mood more than virtuosity -- an impression enhanced by a similarly eccentric shrinkage of the power guitar part on "The Edge of Night" to a barely audible background element. The rhythm is steady and stealthy, a slow-motion oscillation between live and looped tracks, most often with a hip-hop sensibility. More important, every musician on each cut plays with a belief that overplaying only subverts the goals of collective improvisation. If any one album can be said to pick up on the surreal funk explorations of latter-day Miles Davis, Uninvisible is it. ~ Robert L. Doerschuk|