FloratoneFloratoneReview

Before a sound is heard this album is a case study in how much is lost by the trend to download albums au naturel. For the story here begins with the liner artwork; sepia-tinged shots of wet branches, waxy rhododendron leaves and grainy images of what look like great-great-grandfathers in their primes sometime around the 1920s, but are actually the album’s four co-creators: drummer Matt Chamberlain, guitarist Bill Frisell and two producers, Tucker Martine and Lee Townsend…

All pretty retro stuff for one of the most hi-tech albums likely to receive attention in the jazz press, surely? After all - to recap – this is an album whose two-year production history began with a series of jam sessions between Frisell and Chamberlain, the tapes from which were passed on to Martine and Townsend, who chipped away at the raw materials to craft the spacious soundscapes heard on the record. Teo Macero’s groundbreaking work with Miles Davis not withstanding, this is a relatively unique working practice within jazz. Here though, Martine and Townsend step beyond their equal billing, and – to a certain extent – they lead. (The clue here’s in the title; Flora is the name of Martine’s studio where much of the recording was done.)

The lack of an instrumentalist leader is audible; don’t expect virtuosic riffing or soloing from Frisell here. Sure, his presence is felt, with hallmark reverb and tremolo effects as well as his innate blues feel, as on Swamped where he duets gracefully with a ghostly, electronic alter-ego. But the real detail is in the swirling electronic effects, deployed with a musical sense of timing over looped vamp sections – as if standing in for solos – or fluttering around Frisell’s horn arrangements as on the title-track.

It turns out that, for all its wizardry, this record – with its retro casing and titles like “Mississippi Rising” and “Louisiana Lowboat” – is pure old-time Americana. You might call it creaky back-porch Midwest blues for the dub generation.