The Wait is Over
I have been checking and looking and waiting since Perceptual. In fact Perceptual is always in my rotation. The new CD Season of Changes has allowed Perceptual to rest (briefly). Contrary to it's title Blade and The Fellowship Band have not let up on making an audio experience visual. This groups sound makes you envision a place, a time or a person that you may or may not know. The sound is also atmosphere of intensity. When you hear them play, you feel them, you feel him. Absolutely outstanding from beginning to end and you will not put it down until his next CD (then you'll pick it back up again and again).

Taking Jazz to a different place... music for you soul!
All of Brian Blades Fellowship albums (this is the third) are excellent! The compositions are from the heart and soul of the writer's and the players bring life to them with pieces of their own hearts and souls. This is not the same old bebop variations that you hear from Wynton and his followers. This is new music, that's rather difficult to pigeonhole. It's definitely jazz, though. There is great improvising, there is a great flow within the whole group. They obviously love to play this music, and they obviously love to play together. They have a definite group sound, and the compositions are not just platforms for solos, they are complex conceptual pieces that sound simple. That's a difficult thing to pull off and they do it masterfully. Be sure and listen to it several times before you decide if you like it. It grows on you, and soon you'll be carrying it with you everywhere you go, just like I do!

Mesmerizing
This CD and his first release are well worth getting. (I did not get the second CD yet). I am unfamiliar with the BBF but recently heard a few cuts on the radio. At first you may think you are listing to Pat Methany but after awhile this group is very versitle and pleasently unpredictable. You can listen to the whole CD without being concerned about quality. Thoughts of the Jazz Crusaders and Kenny Garrett come to mind as Brian Blade allows his band great liberty in his long pieces. I say support real jazz...support the BBF!

Intoxicatingly delicious
Two albums in, I've learned to recognise Brian Blade's very unique sound and as soon as I heard the first few bars of the first track on this CD, the first we've heard from him and his Fellowship Band since 2000, a beatific smile spread over my face. Some hoping for some sort of musical radical departure may be disappointed, feeling that this is just more of the same but I'm as happy as a lark with it. As always, Kurt Rosenwinkel's guitar seduced me in from the word go and I was swept away right until the very last note of the final track.

More or less all the members of the Fellowship Band are present and correct: supporting Blade and his drums are Jon Cowherd on piano, pump organ, Moog & Wurlitzer; Rosenwinkel is on guitar of course; Myron Walden is on alto saxophone & bass clarinet; Melvin Butler on tenor saxophone and Chris Thomas is on bass. The only thing missing from the familiar mix is Dave Easley and his pedal steel guitar but it's a minor deficiency - if that's even the appropriate word to use - and goes practically unnoticed.

I have no favourite tracks this time around (though the unusually thumping, driving beat of "Most Precious One (Prodigy)" is the one song that made me look up from what I was doing while I was listening); the entire album is intoxicatingly delicious. Highly recommended, as are Blade's other two recordings, 1998's Brian Blade Fellowship and 2000's Perceptual.

Fantastic
Brian Blade's group marries the thematic approach of great pop albums with the spontaneity and improvisation of jazz. The music is well written and thoughtful. The album has been in my CD carousel since it arrived. Enough said...