Reid Anderson--The Vastness of Space

Once again, this might be considered a cheap post, but my love for this album is so strong that I couldn't resist. This comes from the Gittings recommend list, although I originally recommended it to him, he checked it out, and then in turn recommended it back to all of you. This is a beautiful representation of how Friends Recommends can help everyone. Anyway, Reid Anderson's "The Vastness of Space" is an album I mentioned once before in this blog, back when I was posting my current listening at the end of posts. Brother Eric has called me out for not doing this recently, and he is right. I stopped mainly because for a couple of weeks everytime I was posting an entry I was listening to the Quartet Offensive record. This is not because I am conceded. I just tried to listen to it as much as possible while mixing, so that we could fix any problems. Anyway, this is all beside the point.

Reid Anderson is most widely recognized as being the bass player for jazzish supergroup The Bad Plus. I really like The Bad Plus, and I really love Reid's playing in the band. But we aren't going to talk about the The Bad Plus in this post (even though their new album For All I Care with guest vocalist Wendy Lewis is fantastic). The Vastness of Space is without question, and without any hesitation one of my top-10 all-time favorite albums. It is right up there with Radiohead's "Kid A" for me. I know I am guilty of often over-stating my love for something, sometimes calling multiple things my favorites. This is not like that. The Vastness of Space is one of my absolute favorite albums in any genre of any time period. Period.

I recommended it to Mike mostly because he is a lover of rock music, but is also open to many other styles as well. We have even had a few conversations about old jazz artists like Mingus, Miles Davis, and Coltrane. He likes that music, even though he admits to his exposure being limited to the 1950's hard-bop type stuff. The Vastness of Space is an album that can't be categorized as one particular type of music (although iTunes refers to it strictly as jazz). Don't get me wrong, it is jazz, whatever that means in this day and age. It is a lineup of "jazz" musicians with Bill McHenry on tenor sax, Andrew D'Angelo on alto sax, Ben Monder on guitar, Anderson himself on bass, and Marlon Browden on drums. All of these musicians are trained in the area of jazz and improvisation, but this music goes well outside of the boundries. More importantly each musician on the album has a distinct voice, and Reid Anderson seems to be writing for the individual musicians personally like Duke Ellington used to. All of the songs have some kind of improvising within, but in a very conversational and interactive way that you don't have to be a jazz fan to appreciate. That being said, all of the drum beats are heavily rock influenced often with a backbeat, and the harmonies are very tonal and rock-like as well. I don't want to get too over-analytical of this music because that would ruin it. It is simply put great, beautiful music with a singable quality not often found in modern jazz.

I would highly recommend this album to anyone who considers themselves a fan of music, with the slightest bit of curiousity in jazz and jazz related styles. I would even consider going as far as saying (I learned this from Huff) that if you buy it and don't like it I will refund your money. I am not going to do this, but I would consider it. At the very least give a listen to the final track of the album called Silence Is The Question (for Bad Plus fans, this is also the last track of These Are Vistas, but different versions, obviously) available HERE. It is great with 5 capitol g's. GGGGGreat. Mike Gittings agrees. Maybe you should buy the album and listen to it while you make some curry dishes. You won't regret it. Well, you might regret the curry a little later on if youknowhatimsayin, but that's all. You won't regret checking out The Vastness of Space.