Thursday, April 16, 2009

Album of the Day

Three Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, by Bela Fleck and the Flecktones (1993): For a brief period of time, Bela and crew were a three man operation, after keyboardist/harpist Howard Levy left and before wind man Jeff Coppin came aboard. This is the only studio album produced by that lineup and it's my favorite of Bela's studio albums (Live Art is in a league of its own). Pared to three players, all of them deployed an impressive array of tech toys to fill out the sound. The result never sounds forced or fake and it was all played live in the studio, according to the liner notes. Bruce Hornsby and Branford Marsalis make appearances on a couple of tracks to flesh things out.

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