Electropolis

THE A/V CLUB

A restlessly inventive, Minnesota-based post-rock jazz quartet in the spirit of Lounge Lizards and Medeski, Martin & Wood, Electropolis lives up to its name by powering up the effects pedals on pretty much everything but drums, including the usually unamplified saxophone and trumpet, and filtering its music through fields of eerie distortion. There's a noirishly cinematic quality to the effect, with a buzzingly propulsive rhythm that's full of constant surprises‹it seems perfectly appropriate that Electropolis has found great success in concert as a live soundtrack to the classic modernist sci-fi film Metropolis. Perhaps most impressively, more than half of the songs on Electropolis were spontaneously improvised, and the rest were done in a single take.

By Christopher Bahn

ITUNES CUSTOMER REVIEW

The freshest instrumental jazz/rock album I've heard in 2006. Where is jazz going? Electropolis shows us one potential future. Sample it!

By Sanjuro

UTNE READER

It's the bomb, chickadees. If jazz ran helter-skelter through the house of funky rock, Electropolis would be riding piggyback, grabbing a handful of hair. This album is a danceable, can't-wrap-your-head-aroundable fusion of chaos and order.

By Dan Wahl

PULSE

Full marks for ambition, guys. In the spirit of Bill Frisell’s work with the films of Buster Keaton, saxophonist Michael Ferrier’s Electropolis (with Michael O’Brien on bass, Steve Roehm on percussion and Kelly Rossum on trumpet) has already created spontaneous soundtracks for Fritz Lang’s “Metropolis” and “The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari,” and now they’ve released a slinky, spooky out-there disc so you can take their misshapen electronic/acoustic grooves home with you. A mix of improvised and pre-arranged compositions, Electroplis’ self-titled debut is in the vein of exploratory-yet-groovy fare like David Fiuczynski’s Screaming Headless Torsos, Medeski Martin and Wood’s classic Friday Afternoon in the Universe or the Twin Cities own Fantastic Merlins (featuring Ferrier’s wife, Jacqueline Ferrier-Ultan, on cello). Rather than relying on overdubs, Ferrier and Kelly Rossum simply plug in the normally acoustic saxophone and trumpet (respectively) to create the electrosax and electrumpet, and away they go into territory normally reserved for electric guitars and keyboards. “Dagobah” comes off like Yoda driving War’s low rider as a trumpet (I think) sweeps through a phase modulator and the sax bumps out spastic bursts through a digital delay. It’s moody, atmospheric stuff that knows when to strut and when to break ankles, the kind of thing that would be great as the soundtrack to … oh, I don’t know … a German expressionist silent movie. What? They already did that? Awesome.

EXPOSE

A quartet of bass, percussion, electrosax and electrumpet, Electropolis produces eleven tracks of interesting jazzy rock on what I believe is their debut. The amplified instruments produce some odd effects; on first hearing I was sure they had a guitarist. Fuzz, distortion, phased-type noises, and other modifications on typical jazz timbres are to be heard. There are no overdubs on this recording, however. What’s more impressive is that five of the eleven tracks are improvised, a challenge not only for the usual reasons of mutual listening and playing off each other, but because there are more and varied tones that can be used as well. There are some reminders of 70s Miles Davis here, both in the often ambient/soundscapeish nature of the compositions, and of course the trumpet sound which often approximates Miles’ sound of the period. Groovy, nimble, and succinct, Electropolis produces a fresh brand of jazz that is worthy of Innova but still approachable and direct. Fun stuff.

By Sean McFee