Liveart ,This Is Secret Music

The fluid pieces on Liveart's generous 2CD album This Is Secret Music have a gorgeous quality of being both innovatively fresh with tight modern arrangements that funkadiddle at an easy pace, and yet at the same time warmly reminiscent of that exciting instigation of the jazz-rock idiom by fusion of mainstream jazz, world musics and electric instrumentation. This Is Secret Music touches on Latin-American guitar phrasing, understated hammond fills and loose bongos in one breath whilst evoking the tentative explorations heard on such groundbreaking albums as Infinite Search, Mwandishi, Zawinul and, of course, In A Silent Way. Stronger vibrations seep from Asia, On The Corner perhaps.

Samples and synthetics build an otherworldy atmosphere that encircles broad melodies and surges, bubbling beneath delicate Hammond overcurrents - a big beautiful breaking wave of harmony carried forward by the band's superb musicianship.

Reviewers are scolded for focussing on liner notes, but it would be rude not to mention Phil DiPietro's well informed and imaginative writing; intoxicatingly elaborate like the music it describes, it makes this review reduntant. Suffice to say, This Is Secret Music is too good to keep secret.