Searching The Continuum (Heartcore Records)

Kurt Rosenwinkel Bandit 65

Released October 2019

DownBeat Five-Star Review

YouTube:

https://music.youtube.com/playlist?list=OLAK5uy_nXunKqyAavDlewWfNbzrBXEy-HsOydoB8

Spotify:

https://open.spotify.com/album/1GTsPTYq3ZI3k2i3gFgNjO?si=Z37j62okTfWbfWkQlBPX0g&dl_branch=1

About:

Since its inception in 2014, Bandit65 has toured the USA, Europe and Japan; the trio’s latest record i​s an amalgam of musical highlights culled from these three years of intense live performance. The album showcases the trio at its most enlightened, sophisticated and adventurous state, with each master-player using the full spectrum of his sonic palette to effortlessly blend into a seamless stream of musical consciousness.

Embracing each concert as a unique moment unto itself, Rosenwinkel, Janusonis and Motzer opt to forego premeditated performance practice. For Bandit65, every show starts as a blank slate from which compositions arise and develop with free and spontaneous flow. The seven tracks on ​Searching the Continuum are journeys that unfold and spiral to otherworldly heights, evoking deep emotional resonances and abstract-yet-palpable moods. Rosenwinkel, Janusonis, and Motzer exhibit a rare and uncanny interconnectedness as Bandit 65. In releasing Searching the Continuum these maestros have given the world an album of ethereal beauty, sonic vistas that are truly a wonder to behold. Heartcore Records Founder and CEO Kurt Rosenwinkel first heard Janusonis and Motzer play together in 2008. “​That’s when I had the idea to play with them,” he fondly remembers. “​Finally, we had a jam session in Philadelphia and Bandit65 was born. We discovered that the music was creating itself as the three of us improvised and it seemed like it was coming out fully formed. So that’s what we always do, we just listen, and explore, improvising together and find deep worlds of music.”

Track Listing:

1. Inori (Stockholm) 10:50

2. Sagrada (Madrid) 9:23

3. Bloomer (Philadelphia) 6:01

4. Interstellar Suite (Vienna) 19:11

5. At the Gates (Berlin) 8:32

6. In Time (Los Angeles) 7:40

7. Magical (Philadelphia) 7:59

Personnel:

Kurt Rosenwinkel: guitar, electronics, vocals

Tim Motzer: guitar, electronics

Gintas Janusonis: drums, percussion, electronics

Recorded live in Philadelphia, Los Angeles, Berlin, Vienna, Madrid, and Stockholm with deep gratitude to all the engineers who recorded us along the way.

Mixed by Paul Stacey, London

Mastered by Eric Bogacz, Philadelphia

Design: Jason Waggaman

Painting: Tim Motzer

Photography by Avraham Bank

Produced by Bandit65

Review:

Because jazz remains a mostly acoustic music, the striking thing about guitarist Kurt Rosenwinkel’s new trio, Bandit 65, is how overwhelmingly electronic its sound is. Not only do Rosenwinkel and fellow guitarist Tim Motzer employ a wide array of tone-altering technology to expand their instrumental palette to near orchestral range, but along with drummer Gintas Janusonis, all three members are credited with “electronics,” a catch-all term that embraces all sorts of computer-based synthesis and sound-sculpting.

And fair enough, because large swatches of the album are given over to rich, coloristic soundscapes. “Sagrada (Madrid)” opens with a series of organ-like chords that are shadowed by all sorts of electronica, from rasping square waves to burbling arpeggios to tinkling ice crystals. The range of tones and textures are so deep and beguiling that it’s easy to get lost in the sheer lushness of the sound. Doing so, however, would be a bit like missing the forest for the trees, because the real genius of Searching The Continuum is that each of these tracks were spontaneously conceived of and recorded live.

Rosenwinkel and company aren’t simply composing on the spot, but orchestrating in real time. Listened to from that perspective, it’s hard to express how amazing this music is, as each track offers a cohesive logic that works both on a melodic/harmonic axis, as well as a timbral/orchestral one. Even if you adjust for the assumption that each track represents the best performance from disparate concerts, the overall achievement remains jaw-dropping, as if jazz improvisation just moved from two dimensions to three.

J.D. Considine (DownBeat)