Android Trio's "Other Worlds"

This great record arrived when I was in the midst of a King Crimson binge, contemplating the ways in which a band that quite frankly scared the bejeezus out of me when I was young could have evolved, in its founder's maturity, into a sterling repertory unit. Being of A Certain Age myself, I realize that there's no dishonor in that. In fact, the couple of shows I witnessed by the Grandmothers of Invention a few years ago were more enjoyable than most of the actual Zappa shows I attended back in the '70s because the Grandmothers were playing a hipper setlist, focusing on challenging material rather than crowd pleasing dreck. The second time I saw the Grandmothers, the guitar slot was occupied by a gangly, earnest redhead called Max Kutner, whose playing was noteworthy for its refusal to ape Zappa's tone and feel. "Hmm," I thought, "an individuated musical intelligence," and filed the information away.

Last year, when pandemic isolation gave me time to concentrate on guitar practice to an extent I hadn't in decades, I started investigating the music of Captain Beefheart as playing forms rather than sonic bath, and first encountered the YouTube presence of Eric Klerks, who'd played guitar in Beefheart's reformed Magic Band from 2009 to 2017. (He's heard here on bass, and holds the distinction of having served as the great Charlie Haden's personal assistant after taking his classes at Cal Arts.) While I never got to enjoy the 21st century Magic Band in person, I  discovered that there's extensive video documentation of that outfit from their European tours. Eric proved to be a worthy role model in approaching what he refers to as "the high desert avant-garde," an exuberant and skillful performer who finds the joy in whatever he's playing. By 2015, he'd been joined in the Magic Band by Kutner and Andrew Niven, a drummer whose jazz fluency sometimes seemed stifled by the constraints of faithfully rendering Beefheart's tunes. The three formed Android Trio after playing a one off gig together while the Magic Band was touring Australia in 2014. Their debut CD, Road Songs, was released in 2017.

Last year, the trio reconvened remotely from their respective Covid shelters to record 12 new songs with help from heavy friends, including co-producer Mike Keneally. Keneally's well-known to Zappaphiles as the essential utility muso in FZ's 1988 touring band, key members of which recently opened for King Crimson on tour under the rubric "The Zappa Band." He's also served as "stunt guitarist's stunt guitarist" in the bands of Joe Satriani and Steve Vai, and was one of the musicians behind the curtain in the touring version of the band Dethklok from TV's Metalocalypse. With those credentials, it's easy to forget that Keneally was a keyboard player first, and that's mostly what he does here, with the exception of a whammy bar-warped solo on Niven's Zappa-esque "Fanfare." (Unlike Frank, Keneally solos over changes. If you haven't seen the insane video of him playing FZ's "Inca Roads" SOLO ACOUSTIC, you owe it to yourself. Speaking of which, Android Trio's own YouTube channel contains lockdown vids of tunes by Beefheart, Chick Corea, Stevie Wonder, and Genesis that will give the uninitiated an idea of what they're about in terms of influences and approach.)

In exploring Other Worlds -- for that's the name Android Trio's bestowed on their sophomore outing -- I'll take a page from Art Forum scribe Sasha Frere-Jones' recent King Crimson piece. I've long been an advocate for the musical stream that starts with Velvet Underground-MC5-Stooges-Dolls, but you can't eat the same food every day, and back in my formative years, before punk had reinvented everything else in its own image, I spent a lot of time listening to/enjoying/trying to comprehend progressive rock through my terrible autodidact's ears. I caught Yes on the Relayer tour; a guy tried to sell me heroin in the parking lot. I wore out a cassette of Genesis' Seconds Out in my first car. I saw Gentle Giant with a friend who was really a giant, and was mightily impressed by their counterpoint and mid-song instrument swapping. I didn't get to see King Crimson until 2017, but I did catch UK after seeing Holdsworth in the Tony Williams Lifetime.

With those experiences providing a backdrop, I found a lot to like on Other Worlds. Niven, Kutner, Klerks and friends make a music that's rhythmically complex, harmonically dense, and texturally varied. On "Extra Terrestrial Folk Dance," which features both Keneally and Jonathan Sindelman (another 2017 Magic Band alumnus, with connections to Yes drummer Alan White and the late Keith Emerson) on keys, one is tempted to emulate King Crimson producer Rhett Davies, who at one point during the recording of Discipline resorted to listening to every instrument solo to determine who was playing what. 

The guitarist's "Miscellany B" is a fully developed version of a piece he released digitally in a sparser, acoustic form. Niven's synths and sequencers give the music depth and dimension, particularly on Kutner's "Secular Athletes" (which veers into dance music) and Klerks' "Take Me" (his sole composition here). Working remotely gave the string players ample opportunity to tweak tones, and there are some gorgeous ones here -- dig Kutner on "Cryptosaur," for instance, and Klerks throughout. Kutner's solos always sound well thought out, even when he's playing with abandon. The closing section of "Water Song" sounds valedictory, but it gives way to the sprightly, Prince-like funk of "Quark," on which Klerks cuts loose with an elastic solo.

Finally, it is fitting and proper that Other Worlds was released on Cuneiform, the estimable Maryland-based indie that serves as home to the likes of Doctor Nerve, Fred Frith, Heldon/Richard Pinhas, Henry Kaiser, Thinking Plague, and Univers Zero. A more apropos imprint for Android Trio would be hard to imagine. And what a thrill it is to hear something new in 2021 that I like and doesn't just remind me of something I've heard before.