Rob Mazurek & Exploding Star Orchestra

Perhaps it’s time for cornetist Rob Mazurek to come up with a name to describe his music. Over the past three decades he’s moved from mainstream Bop to Free Jazz to electronic Free Music to Brazilian electro Jazz synthesis to today where his Exploding Star Orchestra (ESO) seems to affiliate all those strands plus electronics and spoken word, all of which are altered and sampled via studio programming.

There’s no argument that Lightning Dreamers’ six tracks contain some fascinating and rhythmically distinctive sounds. But with the knob twisting and studio variations, patching and mixing involved to such an extent, the further question is that how much here is the result of live improvising? Lead off “Future Shaman” for example, which is almost 100% funk built up from dual synthesizer and electric licks, vibrating guitar twangs and brassy triplet splatters, gains its relentless beat from Cathlene Pineda’s synth bass, which was probably patched in from elsewhere. Additionally “Black River”, which otherwise contains notable solos made up of the cornetist’s grace notes and flutist Nicole Mitchell’s ethereal puffs, augments the playing of nine named ESO members with samples from a 12-piece ESO variant recorded at a different time and place. Whether it’s the live input or not which inflates the ambiance or not, but that track is probably the disc’s liveliest. Acoustic interjections stack up well in comparison to other fusion-funk-jazz interludes which include spoken word sentiments, sometimes electronically fragmented, concentrated electric guitar flanges, Moog timbe dislocations and buzzing and delicate electric piano ripples.

During Mazurek’s career evolution the question has gone from “is it live or Memorex” to “how much of the sound is sampled and autotuned”? Lightning Dreamers is competent enough in its own genre. But judging from his past work with the ESO and other bands, more unvarnished acoustic input could probably help Mazurek create a more impressive cross-genre session.

–Ken Waxman

Track Listing: 1. Future Shaman* 2. Dream Sleeper 3. Shape Shifter 4. Black River 5. White River

Personnel: Rob Mazurek (trumpets, launeddas, electronic treatments, voice); Nicole Mitchell (flute, voice); Craig Taborn (Wurlitzer, Moog matriarch); Angelica Sanchez (Wurlitzer, piano, Moog sub 37); Jeff Parker (guitar); Cathlene Pined (synth bass)*; Gerald Cleaver (drums); Mauricio Takara (electronic percussion, percussion); Damon Locks (voice, electronics, samplers, text) plus samples of ESO live in Paris 2-3-22