Friday, December 9, 2011

Mats Morgan live

The Mats Morgan band pursues a virtuoso kind of jazz rock fusion, playing with fugue-state complexity across in multiple, difficult time signatures. The band is anchored by its two founders, Mats Oberg on synthesizers and keyboards, and Morgan Agren on drums, both hyper-skilled but with a playful edge...it sounds like fun rather than a math problem. Both founders toured briefly with Zappa, towards the end of his career and near the beginning of theirs, and that's not a bad reference when you consider how cerebral and complex this music is. For this live recording, made in Stockholm's Fasching Club in 1999, they were supported by Morgan's brother Jimmy on guitar, Tommy Thordsson on bass, and Eric Carlsson and Robert Elovsson on additional keyboards -- that's right, three keyboard players.

The record, called Mats/Morgan Band Live, is out now on the reliably proggy Cuneiform label.

I reviewed a couple of Mats/Morgan CDs a few years ago for PopMatters. If you want, you can read about it here.

You kind of have to see it to get it, though.

No comments: