{"id":30908,"date":"2013-07-23T09:09:08","date_gmt":"2013-07-23T14:09:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/hardrockhaven.net\/online\/?p=30908"},"modified":"2014-02-08T08:36:53","modified_gmt":"2014-02-08T13:36:53","slug":"the-aristocrats-culture-clash-cd-review","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/hardrockhaven.net\/online\/2013\/the-aristocrats-culture-clash-cd-review\/","title":{"rendered":"The Aristocrats | Culture Clash<\/em>"},"content":{"rendered":"

by Alissa Ordabai<\/span>
\n– Senior Columnist —<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\"TheJazz fusion is a difficult genre to engage in \u2013 many have tried and few have succeeded. How much of rock\u2019s swagger do you surrender to the knowingness of jazz? And how much of the jazz\u2019s expansiveness do you curtail to align with rock\u2019s laconic rules of engagement? <\/p>\n

But there is no reason why this record\u2019s mixture of self-irony, great chops, and jazz savvy shouldn\u2019t have worked. After all, Guthrie Govan is well-known not simply for his A-grade technique, but for his erudition and flexibility.<\/p>\n

The pose, however, turns out too complex on this release for the band to maintain with the nonchalant way they aim at. Toward the end of the album the sobriety of their jazz grows increasingly at odds with the intensity of their rock, and the absurdist humor becomes too predictable to continue gluing the two together. <\/p>\n

So on the final three tracks they decide to tone down the comicality and get on with the nitty-gritty of structurally merging rock and jazz. The result is an earnest, prosy and at times deliberately mechanistic exercise in craftsmanship and an attempt to extrapolate modest compositional ideas through diligent impro. Sadly, it doesn\u2019t travel anywhere others haven\u2019t visited before. With trips like these what you bring back is directly proportionate to how far you go, and here the journey becomes more of a sightseeing cruise than a discovery expedition. <\/p>\n

It\u2019s true that the hardest thing to do these days is to come up with something new, yet truthful. And you can\u2019t blame the band for dealing with this problem the way so many others have chosen do \u2013 by turning their music into a hodgepodge of genres, styles, moods, and allusions. Here, however, we find out that mixing a bunch of all-too-familiar paradigms from different genres and giving it a \u201chumorous\u201d twist doesn\u2019t always bring a novel result. <\/p>\n

Genre: Jazz Fusion<\/p>\n

Personnel:
\nGuthrie Govan \u2013 guitar
\nBryan Beller \u2013 bass
\nMarco Minnemann \u2013 drums<\/p>\n

Track Listing:
\n1. Dance of the Aristocrats
\n2. Culture Clash
\n3. Louisville Stomp
\n4. Ohhhh Noooo
\n5. Gaping Head Wound
\n6. Desert Tornado
\n7. Cocktail Umbrellas
\n8. Living the Dream
\n9. And Finally<\/p>\n

Label: Boing!<\/p>\n

Online: http:\/\/the-aristocrats-band.com<\/a><\/p>\n

Hardrock Haven rating: 7\/10<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

by Alissa Ordabai – Senior Columnist — Jazz fusion is a difficult genre to engage in \u2013 many have tried and few have succeeded. How much of rock\u2019s swagger do you surrender to the knowingness […]<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":30909,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8704],"tags":[336,5265,334],"class_list":{"0":"post-30908","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-arcrvws2013","8":"tag-cd","9":"tag-jazz-fusion","10":"tag-review"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/hardrockhaven.net\/online\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30908","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/hardrockhaven.net\/online\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/hardrockhaven.net\/online\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hardrockhaven.net\/online\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hardrockhaven.net\/online\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=30908"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/hardrockhaven.net\/online\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30908\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hardrockhaven.net\/online\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/30909"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/hardrockhaven.net\/online\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=30908"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hardrockhaven.net\/online\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=30908"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hardrockhaven.net\/online\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=30908"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}