"Taming the Dragon" - Mehliana's Debut Album

After several recent tours around the U.S. and Europe, the musical duo of keyboardist Brad Mehldau and drummer Mark Guiliana, aka "Mehliana", have at long last released and album of their improvisational and inspiring music. Their debut effort is entitled, "Taming the Dragon", a collection of some of their best forays that will be familiar to fans of their live shows, as well as some material not heard or seen live. Mehliana's use of vintage synthesizers, and their incredible grasp of both jazz and modern electronica is a joy to witness live, (They performed at both SF Jazz and the Independant recently); happily, their new album captures those moments and more.

Released on the Nonesuch Record label, Taming the Dragon's origins were revealed, "Mehldau and Guiliana have been performing for several years, with Mehldau playing Fender Rhodes and synthesizers and Guiliana on drums and effects, as they are on the record. Mehliana comprises 12 original tunes—six written by the duo and six written by Mehldau—and was engineered and mixed by Greg Koller (Jon Brion, Kanye West). The vinyl edition of the album, due March 18, includes two 140-gram LPs pressed at Pallas MFG in Diepholz, Germany, and a CD of the album."

The reviews so far have been favorable: "Mehliana: Taming the Dragon is "astonishing," exclaims Jazzwise magazine, "one of the best albums of 2014." Mehliana earned four stars from the Guardian and from MusicOMH, which calls the album "wholly absorbing, as Mehldau’s playfulness and Guiliana’s taut, interwoven grooves create an inescapable tension. Pieces such as the delightful, slow building 'Hungry Ghost even seem to draw from the approaches of post rock acts such as Sigur Rós or Tortoise." The album, concludes MusicOMH reviewer Daniel Paton, offers "an intuitive, compelling dialogue between the two musicians, and between the musicians and their machines..." "Ranging from lush dreamscapes to febrile urban funk workouts," says MOJO, "the album resonates like an imaginary '80s film score..."

Having seen and heard Mehliana both live and online, I was extremely pleased to see some of my favorite pieces from those live performances appear on the album; the haunting "Elegy for Amelia Earhardt"; "London Gloaming", (Mehldau would often quote John Coltrane's "My Favorite Things" live on this tune); the rollicking "Sassyassed Sassafrass", "Just call me Nige", and "Sleeping Giant"; "Swimming", a great tune where Guiliana is in his percussive element; and perhaps my favorite, "Hungry Ghost", a beautifully eerie vamp that both grooves you and rattles your chains. Those tunes were incredible live and sound simply fantastic on this recording.

There are other interesting tunes on the album as well; "Taming the Dragon", the spoken word piece title piece, conjured memories of Adrian Belew's dialogue in King Crimson's "Thela Hun Jingeet"; and "Luxe", a pierce borne from an improvisational idea right before their performance in Luxenbourg.

I have been a huge fan of the great keyboard and drum duo's; from the world music of the late, great Joe Zawinul and Trilok Gurtu; Patrick Moraz and Bill Bruford, (who incidentally considered Guiliana one of the most refreshing drummers he'd heard in years); and Marco Benevento and Joe Russo's "Duo". Mehliana is the real deal, and "Taming the Dragon" is a worthy addition to the pantheon of those previous men.




Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Building Bill Bruford's Symmetrical Tama Kit

Image
In two of my previous blogs, I wrote about successfully restoring a Tama "Bill Bruford Signature Series Palette" snare drum , and then building a duplicate version wrapped in chrome . Although they looked and sounded great, I thought about completing this project by adding a kit to go with it. Now I suppose I could always could buy a Tama Starclassic kit, and use the snares I built, but where is the fun in that? Bruford's Signature snare drum had all black Tama lugs, just like his Tama kit with King Crimson. That particular kit was a Canary Yellow Tama with deep power toms. Bruford would reappear with a another version of that yellow kit at the 1999 Modern Drummer Festival alongside his all acoustic Earthworks band. That kit also had black lugs, and featured an 18" kick drum, 16", 13", 12" and 10" toms. That kit appeared to be a rarity, perhaps even custom-made for Bruford. I've never seen another Tama kit that matched it. If I could gather...
Read more

Building the Phil Collins Gretsch Kit - Part One

Image
Back in 2017, I managed to acquire a dozen of the revolutionary new wireless Versatriggers from Poland; Battery powered drum triggers you can mount inside a drum shell. Replace the acoustic drum head with a mesh head and you have yourself a v-drum. I first tried out the Versatrigger on an old Viking snare I'd converted previously with an internal Pintech trigger, and a Remo Silent Stroke mesh head. After connecting the Versatrigger wireless USB hub to my MacBook Air, I was able to tweak the sensitivity and trigger the drum surprisingly well. I also learned I needed to be able to access the trigger for adjustments and battery replacement, so double headed toms weren't practical. The kick and snare are easy enough to cut out a round hole in the bottom head, but the toms would have to be easy to access as well. A modest kit with concert toms would work perfectly. I didn't want to build just another small v-drum kit of virtually identical trigger pads either, so when ...
Read more

Building the Bill Bruford Signature Snare - Part One

Image
Bill Bruford's "rimshot" is one of the most unique and exquisite snare drum sounds ever heard. From his earlier days on his 14"x 5.5" Ludwig Supraphonic Super-Sensitive snare with Yes, to his brass 14" x 6.5" Tama Big Beat snare with King Crimson, Bruford's crisp rolls and sticking technique were a thing of beauty and a joy to behold.  In his later years, Bruford moved away from the metal snare drums of rock, to the jazzier sound of the all-maple 14"x 6.5" Tama Starclassic snare drum with his all-acoustic group Earthworks.  It was during that era that Tama offered the "Bill Bruford Signature Palette Series" snare drum, a customized, 6 ply Starclassic; 2 ply Maple, 2 ply Birch and 2 ply Maple. It was also outfitted with all black hardware; lugs, hoops, strainer and a custom "Black Metallic Sand Blasted" finish, with Bill Bruford's personally autographed and numbered decal. Listing for around $650, the snare quic...
Read more