REVIEW: The Grassy Knoll, The Grassy Knoll (Nettwerk)

- Jorge Velez

This cooperative venture hailing out of the San Francisco area cites as its influences the likes of Ornette Coleman and BITCHES BREW - era Miles Davis, among others. What is really being pursued here is the kind of mix of the traditional and the hi-tech that people like Bill Laswell do so well. There's tablas, saxaphones, trumpet, samplers, all doing their thing to particularly good effect. Though it's not anything like, say, a Material album, The Grassy Knoll's often achieves the sort of perfect union that one hopes will occur ( but rarely happens ) when you mix jazz stylings with, say, "alternative" or hip hop. Tracks like "March Eighteenth" and "Conversations With Julian Dexter" feature well done free sax over the kind of rhythm track you might expect to find on a Meat Beat Manifesto record. Believe it or not, it actually comes off.

The influence of Miles Davis c. Bitches Brew/On The Corner/Jack Johnson is found mostly in the clarinet and trumpet playing on tracks like "Less Than One", where the rhythm loops away slowly as the two aforementioned instruments unwind and swing through the funky crags. The dark energy of Miles early '70's work is seriously evoked here, and if you're, like me, a fan of the sound I'm talking about, this is something to listen to.

The one problem with The Grassy Knoll is the various permutations of the played-out-to-death "Funky Drummer" drum pattern that occur throughout this and many other recordings by non-hip hop musicians who cite said music as an influence. Guys (and ladies): "Funky Drummer" DOES NOT equal hip hop! Whenever the FD, or a version, pops up more than once on any recording, I think: "laziness". For a project that deals so openly with exploration and -- ahem -- fusion, I find this to be The Grassy Knoll's only drawback. Besides that, it's well worth checking out.