Rob Diener & Anomaly – Some Assembly Required

 

Sound: B     Music: B-

 

 

Some Assembly Required (2006) is the appropriately named new Jazz CD by Rob Diener and Anomaly.  It is another of a subcycle of releases in the genre that mixes jamming band playing with post-modern features like scratching and sampling.  This does not always work in general and here in particular, gets in the way of some good musicianship.  It is the call of the artist, of course, but it is still unusual and does not go as far as a Herbie Hancock might have.  The tracks here include:

 

1)     A Musical Salute To Iceland

2)     Pop – Bop

3)     Bye Bye Blackbird

4)     Ode To Husaqvarna

5)     Scooter & Stretch

6)     From The Heart

7)     Mikey’s House

8)     The Three Brothers (From A Dysfunctional Family)

 

 

Even a classic like Bye Bye Blackbird gets the post-modern treatment; a song so old, it is still part of a hilarious, ongoing joke in an old Sylvester & Tweety animated short.  As much as I did not like the rearrangement, I give them credit for not botching it altogether from that new school of hack music making we could call “its so old, so who cares what we do with it because it serves no purpose otherwise and is disposable” idiots who think they are musicians or the next Mozart.  This CD is at least better than that.

 

It set is still a decent recording, presented here in the CD standard 16bit/44.1kHz PCM CD 2.0 Stereo sound with clarity for the most part, though more of it than expected sounded restrained in the mid-range.  Otherwise, you’ll like it if you can tolerate the bells and whistles.  Go to www.radtrumpet.com for more details.

 

 

-   Nicholas Sheffo