JAZZBO NOTES ESSENTIAL RECORDING
Rating: 
An exhilarating fusion of hiphop, postbop, and tangents of Miles Davis’ early 70s electric music, Bedrock is nonetheless an intensely focused piece of work.
The sound doesn’t shift much over the course of the record. Uri Caine mostly plays Fender Rhodes, imprinting his unmistakeable personality on an instrument that can be impersonal in lesser hands. Tim Lefebvre plays highly syncopated funk lines, often in the very low range of his instrument to give the sound an extra dark edge.
Likewise, drummer Zach Danziger plays very busy hiprock rhythms, more often than not playing doubletime. All three instruments are treated to subtle and not-so-subtle studio tweaks like distortion, phasing, and echo, giving the music a pleasingly spacey, hallucinagenic quality.
The trippy atmosphere is furthered by extensive use of vocal samples, most of which are comic in tone without venturing into full-on slapstick, as was the case on the tune Glee Club from Jim Beard’s release Advocate, a couple of years earlier. (Although Caine comes close on the cut Lobby Daze.) Caine keeps his use of vocal samples within the realm of what would be acceptable in alternative hiphop circles, which helps to keep the music focused within the jazz/hiphop hybrid.
Perhaps Caine’s main inspiration was the groundbreaking 1994 release Bluescreen by jazz trumpeter Jon Hassel, the first jazz recording that I know of to make extensive use of vocal samples on a jazz record. In any case, his use of samples is completely successful.
Purely on a technical basis, the playing on Bedrock is spectacular. Caine’s muscular improvisations don’t depart much from the harmonic innovations of Herbie Hancock and Chick Corea, but they are as knotty, elegant, and free from cliche as you could possibly want. Where he innovates is in his use of rhythm. For example, on the cut Humphrey Pass My Way, Caine rhythmically bangs out tone clusters off the beat in 16th note increments. In a witty touch, he brings in a vocal karate sample to echo the rhythms.
Tim Lefebvre and Zach Danziger mostly function to give the music a hip hop edge and they do a bangup job. The grooves they create kick like a mule. However, when they are required to get spacey and let the rhythms float uncertainly, they are definitely up to the task.
If you ever get the chance to see these guys live, don’t miss it. They’re monsters.