Guitarist Bill Frisell has always had an ear for unusual tonal colors, and they"re particularly strong on this 1984 recording, an early and enduring document of a major musician"s work. There"s a distinctive emphasis on brass and the lowest registers, with Kenny Wheeler on trumpet and flügelhorn, Bob Stewart on tuba, and Jerome Harris on electric bass; drummer Paul Motian completes the quintet. The thick, bass-heavy textures and contrasting layers of sound give the music an almost orchestral quality, while Frisell and Wheeler"s shared love of pitch bending sometimes gives the eerie sense of funhouse mirrors, a dream of sonic and temporal distortion. "Rambler" is a mirthful echo of mariachi music, "Music I Heard" is propelled by unlikely allusions to march rhythms, and "Resistor" has some of Frisell"s most animated playing on disc, his guitar synth creating a Pandora"s box of unexpected sounds and twisting, mercurial lines. --Stuart Broomer