These Are the Vistas, The Bad Plus, 2003, :52
★ ★ ★ ☆ ☆
Drums, bass, piano. That's all this jazz trio needs to make a lot of noise. They describe themselves as democratic, but to me the piano seems the driving force, the skeleton of the sound, and the drum the muscle. A hip modern jazz band that blends rock and theater into free-form, very tight-knit jazz. On this album, they do shambling reconstructions of "Smells Like Teen Spirit" and "Heart of Glass" (piano keeping it grounded, the rhythm going wild). Favorite tracks: "Smells Like Teen Sprit," "Flim" (an Aphex Twin song, apparently).
