Mexico

This is the kind of musical material that most be brought to Mexico to be heard.  It is an ambitious project from Richard Addison, Canadian bass player extraordinaire, who along with old time friend Michel St- Père, excellent guitar player, producer and headmaster of Unicorn Records, have finally crystallized a recording that had been in the oven for nearly 10 years (but you know what they say: best wines usually take longer to age). This is the kind of music for jazz prog (and close fusions) lovers. It is rich with complex instrumentations and arrangements from which you can highlight the great horn section, the monstrous guitars, the singing violin, great drumming skills and of course, the frenetic and superb bass playing from Addison.

Although most of the songs are very energetic with furious rhythm sections. There are also some slow rhythm songs, which allows the listener to breath. The horn section sometimes reminds us the kind of Zappa arrangements from the time he was more into jazz (distant and maybe unconscious influence, this doesn't sound like Zappa), the guitar playing from St-Père is the kind played by prog heroes as Alan Holdsworth (free, experimental, educated and precise) and the bass playing skills of Addison are undoubtedly at the level of bass Gods such as Jaco Pastorius.

A great and very enjoyable record, instrumental and very accessible for the prog fans that wish to enter the complex world of jazz prog. It might be that the jazz fanatics may find some weak points; After All, if something I've learned in these years is that there will always be some exquisite fan who says "Ah, this is nice but I've heard better etc." but I humbly consider Mood Swings from Addison Project as an exquisite Canadian musical plate. 

I strongly recommend you to pay a visit to www.unicornrecords.com where you can find fantastic mp3 downloads from this promising band, along with other very interesting projects, like Spaced Out, which I reviewed some weeks ago.

Carlos Malvido / La Corte Final  (September 2003)

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