Electric

by Thom Jurek This trio set featuring guitarist Larry Coryell, drummer Lenny White, and bassist Victor Bailey, is issued by Chesky, purveyor of uncompressed audiophile recordings. And while the sound is wondrous, it's the performances here that take front and center. The mix of jazz, funk, and rock tunes on Electric is infectious, especially when played with such incendiary inspiration. Members of this trio wrote four of the nine tunes here. White's furied funk freak-out "Wolfsbane" opens the proceeding on a hot note, and Coryell's "BB Blues" takes the jazz-inflected blues to a new intensity. But it is the covers here that really resonate, from a skeletal and edgy reading of Miles Davis' "So What," to Wayne Shorter's signature tune "Footprints," the jazz chops and expansive improvisation are present everywhere. On James Brown's "Sex Machine" and the Page & Plant nugget "Black Dog," the pedal to the metal aesthetic really works. Elsewhere, "Born Under a Bad Sign" is dragged kicking and screaming into the 21st century without losing its blues fire. This is not a recording for those looking for Coryell's jazz technique and subtle artistry in interpreting music from the days of yore. Listeners looking for a balls-out charge of electric jazz-rock will be more than delighted by this outing.