Review Summary: Toot toot.
Ever feel like you’ve been trapped by music? Caught in a cycle of listening to the same old thing again and again? I know I have. For a few years I was on a constant train of discovery, stopping at each station to get out and explore everything there is to find about a certain genre or a bunch of similar-sounding bands. Eventually, though, you begin to run out of stops and so you end up going back to what you know, what you feel comfortable with. Since those years of musical discovery have faded into the rear-view mirror, new experiences are becoming less and less frequent.
As I’m sure you’ve guessed by now, this is where Joan Torres’ All is Fused comes into the picture. While not anything completely, mind-blowingly new, progressive jazz fusion certainly is a genre many people are not likely to have explored in great depth. As someone who most definitely hasn’t, I must say that my first real foray into the genre is quite a good one.
Hailing from Puerto Rico, Joan Torres has been playing bass since he was 11 years old. He would later go on to study the instrument and play with a wide range of respected musicians at Berklee College, where he was awarded a scholarship. In 2011, he started his modern jazz fusion band called All is Fused. Now, many shows and a couple of albums later, the group return with their third offering,
Of the Musical.
And what a joy it is to have your first experience with an interesting new group be a song as good as “Invaded”. Evoking a strong prog-rock influence (that, to my mind, channels King Crimson), “Invaded” gets the album off to the best start possible. With a number of interesting motifs, basslines and tempo changes, the song sets a very high standard for the rest of the songs on the album. As someone who is coming from a heavily rock-influenced background, I found this song to be the easiest to enjoy; some sections even reminded me of modern experimental acts such as Kayo Dot.
The next two songs manage to further the momentum created by the opener, but without bettering it. “Demiurge” has especially prominent bass and drums, which is a good thing considering the competency of the playing, while “Explore” brings keys to the forefront. The piano does perhaps get a little
too prominent in the latter, to the point of being a bit annoying, but it’s nothing to get really turned off by.
The album takes a sharp turn as soon as the opening sounds of “Ultramarine” greet your ears. Aquatic-like ambience sends you immediately into the deepest depths of the ocean, where the band are suddenly playing at a much slower tempo. The song hardly feels like jazz anymore, with heavy ambient and even post-rock influences taking over. Overall, perhaps not quite enough really happens in the song to be the best
Of the Musical has to offer, but for the impressive change of pace it brings, it most certainly stands as one of the more memorable cuts. Immediately following this, “Constant Stream” kicks in and brings back the abrupt tempo-shifts of the opener, but borders on being annoying about halfway through. Not a bad way to pick up the pace after the drowsiness of “Ultramarine”, but among the album’s weakest efforts.
“Stream of Melancholy” then returns to the slower, more ambient-like sounds of “Ultramarine”, almost relegating “Constant Stream” an irrelevant nuisance in the middle of them. This idea is only further enhanced by the fact that “Stream of Melancholy” is perhaps the most well-structured of all the songs on the record, building up to an impressive climax over the course of its 8 and a half minutes.
The slight inconsistencies in what was a pretty flawless release up until this point begin to show with the inclusion of “Look Around”, which feels like a short filler track to break up the longer tracks. This is probably due to the fact that the final number is almost 11 minutes long and showcases almost everything All is Fused have to offer. The length and title promise an epic and “Unleashed” delivers, packed full of all the little things that make
Of the Musical the album that is. However, and it may be slightly obvious by this point, but it still doesn’t quite touch the lofty standards set by “Invaded”; no matter, second best is close enough.
To return to my initial train metaphor, this album feels like walking into the arrivals area of the next station. It is showcasing something new, although something that is not entirely unfamiliar. It treads new ground without breaking it, allowing listeners to approach it from many different angles. If you’re stuck like I’ve been, Joan Torres’s All is Fused might just be what you’re looking for. Give it a shot and find out for yourself.
