Product Description

When does a jazz record stop being a jazz record? When it replaces the ding-ding-de-ding of the trap player's ride cymbal with a calabash and shaker player? When it forgoes a walking bass for a plucking oud? If you answer yes to any of these and still love a jazzman's take on whatever is left over after these adjustments are made, meet THE INTERCONTINENTALS.
Guitarist Bill Frisell and company, of course, are not all that concerned with labels because if they were, they would have made a recording with far fewer influences. Think of this as a world-music album with a strong blues inflectionand an ensemble led by one of jazz's most accomplished 21st-century individualists. Though the group sound does not have the peaks and valleys that a more conventional jazz album features (no hot solos or hushed ballads), we are treated tosome deeply hypnotic grooves, many of which contain haunting, simple melodies that sound as old as the hills. Music fans of many stripes can be thankful for Frisell's fearless andsmart eclecticism.

Track Listing

1. Boubacar
2. Good Old People
3. For Christos
4. Baba Drame
5. Listen
6. Anywhere Road
7. Procissnao
8. The Young Monk
9. We Are Everywhere
10. Yala, Perritos
11. Magic
12. Eli
13. Remember

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #10740 in Music
• Released on: 2003-04-14
• Number of discs: 1

Amazon.co.uk Review
The Intercontinentals are guitarist Frisell's latest band, a polyglot crew who bring their own musical vocabularies along for this intimate forum. They end up with a hybrid that frequently has its constituent parts shunted sideways. Some might compare the format to that already used by Ry Cooder, but it's a refreshing new direction for the Seattle-based Bill and a welcome respite from his rustic-Americana obsession of recent years.

Frisell is still probing the possibilities of folk forms, but on this occasion his feelers are spreading much further afield. His band features Brazilian guitarist Vinicius Cantuaria, who also shares percussive duties with the Malian Sidiki Camara. Christos Govetas, also living in Seattle but with a Greek-Macedonian parentage, plays oud and bouzouki. The remaining Americans are slide and pedal steel specialist Greg Leisz and violinist Jenny Scheinman.

This project was inspired by Frisell's recent live collaborations with Malian guitarists Boubacar Traore and Djelimady Tounkara, with his own stylings taking over their roles in the pan-global dialogue. All the tunes have a Frisellian stamp, with indistinct lines hovering between each contributor's input. Certain territories are sometimes allowed to dominate. There's the slow Malian blues of "Boubacar", the Brazilian pop of "Procissao" and "Perritos" (with Cantuaria crooning), then "The Young Monk" and "Yala", both featuring Govetas. Frisell often uses loops to bridge these tunes, turning the album into a linked experience as it makes its seductive progressions. --Martin Longley

Customer Reviews

Frisell-ed out ?
Oh,dear . Although Bill Frisell is my all-time favourite jazz musician, there is little in this effort that merits the praise heeped upon it by the other reviewers and is, in my opinion, the weakest effort he has produced. The Bill Frisell of such classic albums as "Is that you?", "Quartet", "Ghost Town" and "Nashville" seems a long time ago.
Joined by fellow guitarists from South America, Greece and Africa, as well as fellow American Greg Leisz, Frisell's ability to craft instantly memorable tunes appeared to have deserted him in this instance. Whatever you want to call the music, there is very little jazz here and what emerges is a blur of strings from which even Bill seems unable to extrocate himself.
With the exception of "Good old people" and "Eli", the music is hardly recognisable as a Bill Frisell record - the distinctive, surreal Americana that signifies him as one of the greats of jazz composition is replaced with meandering, hybrid world music.
I hate to be critical of a musician whose recordings have given me mush pleasure since the late 1980's, but this has been an infrequent visitor to my CD player. Listeners new to Bill Frisell should seek out "Quartet", his apogee, to see what this jazz legend is capable of when at the top of him game.

Frisell the fabulous
This is a new departure for Frisell, every one of his records seems that way, but also a return to past themes and tones. The Intercontinentals are a real mix of people and instruments and the result is more World than Jazz music and a move on from the strong Country feel of late. Every artist has the right to take their music where they want to go and with Frisell every step is a fasinating mix of sheer brilliance of technique and invention. This record has all the familiar Frisell guitars and complmentary instruments. For longstanding fans of this unique musicians' work this also has hints of the past for all to enjoy. I liked the return to an underlying rhythm to the peices and although the end result is to long to listen to in one sitting it does stand being played again and again

from live concert (2002)
Last year my wife and I saw Bill Frisell at the Barbican touring with the Intercontinental Quartet.

If the concert is anything to go by I anticipate this album to be the perfect complement to the country tinged 'Willies'. It takes that inimitable Frisell sound world to the Balkans and beyond (the Oud is representative of much Middle Easter music) and across to Latin america (to Brazil and the sultry rhythms of Bossa Nova inflected through the world view of Frisell ) down to Africa with the simplest and most effective drumming of West African music.

The concert was varied and some of the doubling of Oud and Guitar was literally magical.

Don't go to Frisell to hear jaded and superficial 'Jazz meets world' type albums. It is the self-effacing Frisell working with a wider palette. As though his porch has grown and he has invited all kinds of musicians - who obviously hold him in great esteem - to jam with him.

And it worked superbly in concert. He really listens.