Chicago fusionists Marbin know a good thing when they see, hear and smell it. Having played happenings in almost every zone possible (except possibly the aquatic one) and knocking them out with their tracks, it seemed the time was neigh to try and capture the live feel on wax. A live album collected from desk mixes? That sounds so decades ago. How about just setting up in a room somewhere and turning it to twelve? Twelve is after all louder than eleven.
Aggressive Hippies (great album title by the way) rocks like a room full of well, aggressive hippies hopped up on famer’s finest gramercy green and does it ever pin the lobes back. Six string situationist Dani Rabin does his best to herd all the audio elephants in the room together and comes up trumpets.
Danny Markovitch fills the saxtoon with lashings of drool inducing freakuencies that stitch together the aural tapestry while Greg Essig (skins) and John W. Lauter (low notes) do their best to hang on. Their monkey grip is impressively adhesive.
Nine moments in time make up the magic number and constant application has raised a few tempers and pulses. The tweeters are shooting out sparks of intent; the mids are anything but mild and the woofers are biting both ankles. I like mine with a little anarchy and this spice is right.
Rob Hudson
www.marbinmusic.com
