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  Dennis Warren's Full Metal Revolutionary Jazz Ensemble 
  Horizon Event
  (Drimala) 

   review by Eyal Hareuveni
  2003-05-25
Dennis Warren's Full Metal Revolutionary Jazz Ensemble: Horizon Event (Drimala)

Boston-based drummer Dennis Warren presents in this disc the current incarnation of the free-psychedelic-jam collective he has led since the late 1980s with three long free-form improvisations over 75 minutes. The current version of Full Metal Revolutionary Jazz Ensemble lacks such strong personalities as saxophonists Glenn Spearman and Marco Eneidi or trumpeter Raphe Malik, all of whom played with previous versions of the ensemble. This disc also suffers from the poor sound of the live recording from two nights in 2001 and 2002 at the Skybar club in Sommerville, MA, with Warren as engineer.

The impressive name of this ensemble might be misleading. You will not find in this version of this ensemble any metallic blowouts a la Sonny Sharrock, nor any complex harmolidics riffs of Ornette Coleman's Prime-Time band or the funk outbursts of Ronald Shannon Jackson's Decoding Society. The FMRJE's improvised jams here reflect a naive nostalgia for the electric bands of Miles Davis of the late '60s and early '70s, but there is a big difference between Davis' bands and this ensemble. Warren does not exercise his leadership on the ensemble's members, the improvisations are not focused and last too long and there are too many times when the playing of the guitarist Chris Florio and alto saxophonist Andy Voelker is shadowed by the constant energetic drumming of Warren himself and Albey Balgochian's throbbing electric bass.

Frank Rubolino promise in the liner notes that this disc "is hypnotic and demanding, pulling one along into an unknown void where an unavoidable stimulus engulfs the senses and drugs the mind. Sorry, the only thing reminiscent of any hallucigenic experience here are the voice samples of LSD guru Timothy Leary (Martin Luther King Jr. is also heard). The playing of the FMRJE members is quite enthusiastic and sincere, no doubt, but we might expect more from a former student of such great players as Milford Graves and Bill Dixon.





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