EXPOSE Issue No.32
"Reviewers Roundtables"
	Jon Davis:
		Luckily ethicists have not wrapped their clutches around the topic of genetic manipulation in music, or we might find Machine and the Synergetic Nuts banned,seeing how they are the result of secret research project combining the DNA of Soft Machine,early Weather Report,and maybe Medeski Martin,and Wood(the creators are understandably secretive about their methods). This quartet plays as if the excesses that gave fusion a bad name had never happened,combining jazz and rock in a way that both hearkens back to the heady days of discovery and basks in the kind of seamless integration of technology and live playing that comes from thirty years' perspective. The focus is on interesting sounds and insistent grooves rather than stop=start precision and unison lines so fast they blur.Widely varying keyboard sounds,with lots of electric piano and organ run through effects devices,play off saxes for the leads, and the rhythms,whether in straight 4/4 or some- thing more exotic,come off as funky without ever actually being funk.Except when they swing,as on "Neutral" with its sophisticated acoustic piano and mutated walking bass line.Almost half of the tracks feature a guest guitar player,who adds another element of unpredictability to the mix. Machine should act as an effective antidote to the bad rep tagged on fusion over the last thirty years. take two and call me in the morning.
	Peter Thelen:
		Some groovin' shredding funk here,and this Japanese quartet+guests certainly knows how to dish it up with power,passion,and blazing levels or energy.This is electric fusion of the highest order,but loose and free enough to engender a sense of imminent danger on the many straight- aways and hairpin turns throughout the album's nine instrumental cuts.The core band features soprano & tenor sax,bass,drums and keyboards (primarily electric piano),but a guest guitarist is burining up the fretboard on about half the tracks, and a guest percussionist on at least a couple more.Echoes of Canterbry,Zappa,and a solid improvisational spirit accent the sound,which more than occasionally calls to mind some great Japanese bands who have gone before them(Il Berlione.Happy Family,Tipo and others),but M&SN have a lot more groove than most of the aforementioned,and drive it fast and furious through each of these group compositions.The strong zeuhl undercurrents of the band's first album have given way to a more squonky,funky jazz irreverence with just enough melodic classicism to push this a couple notches closer to the '70s sound of bands like Passport and Nucleus, although the driving bass groove still persists, tying it all together nicely.The exemplary "trout" defines in a single track everything that's great about this band,and is but one of many high points.Definitely one of the year's best releases.