Hely - Borderland - COMPACT DISCS [CD]

When you listen to these songs, all types of feelings and sensations start to coalesce in different parts of your body. It's hard to define them because they speak to emotional gradients, contradictions, and contrasts not the type of emotions that you can easily qualify with a single word. Real relationships, beyond the reductive Incha moment in timeInch type of snapshots, are like that complex and dynamic. This is what makes this record exceptional - and not only as far as instrumental music is concerned!

Borderlands is the name of the Shawn Snow painting that graces the cover of this album. Snow's art inspired the four-part theme and variations that for the album's framework. The title also describes the artistic realm in which Jonathan Lorentz finds himself. This is InchborderlandsInch as unsafe, unfamiliar territory, where the only things more vague than the demarcations are the rules. It also represents literal geography Lorentz is a veteran of the Manhattan scene (with a Ph.D. in jazz studies from NYU), but now based in New Hampshire. Bringing bassist John Menegon and drummer David 'Scorch' Calarco together to form the Trio has allowed JL to experiment, compose and develop his exceptional talents. Jonathan Lorentz is the new face of New York club jazz, whether in the city or out in the Borderlands.

In the tradition of Weather Report and the Joe Zawinul Syndicate, two powerhouse pan-global bands that have greatly influenced generations of musicians around the world, Human Element is staking out a new corner of the musical map on it's self-titled debut. Comprised of keyboardist Scott Kinsey (Tribal Tech), electric bassist Matthew Garrison (Zawinul Syndicate, John McLaughlin's Heart of Things), percussionist-vocalist Arto Tuncboyacian (Al Di Meola's World Sinfonia, Joe Zawinul) and drummer Gary Novak (Chick Corea's Elektric Band), Human Element incorporates elements of fusion, funk and Armenian folk tunes into a potent 21st century brew that defies easy categorization. Human Element travels from intense offerings like the 5/8 title track and InchBottom of the MirrorInch to the Gnawan music influenced groover InchEssouariaInch and funky jams like InchCrazy GirlInch and InchShake It.Inch Tuncboyacian's InchHi LaoInch (featuring a cameo by guitar hero John McLaughlin) injects a Middle Eastern flavor into the proceedings while Garrison's two tracks, InchIzzyInch and Cut,Inch showcase his remarkable facility on the bass.