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ACT MUSIC records

Nguyên Lê: Three Trios; (CD, 54:57) 
Act Music+Vision, ACT 9245-2, 1997
Cyberhome: http://www.actmusic.com
E-mail: info@actmusic.com

Nguyên Lê is amazing. His guitar work is unique, inspiring, technically 
challenging, fired with soul, jazzy, rocking, and drips of fusion yet goes 
even further. You will hear world music (far-Eastern/Southeast Asian) 
scales and note treatments in attack, vibrato, and bends. Lê is of 
Vietnamese heritage but knows full well the world of jazz and rock.

He can play light-hearted, crystalline-clear tones, dreamy chordal sustains, 
wielding an endless barrage of effects and suddenly flat-out scream and 
wail like a banshee as if Ninja warriors had invaded the studio. I have 
never heard anything quite like him. I was deeply impressed first listen to 
this release. This is a guitarists' guitarist kind of CD. Every jazz musician 
and fusion musician needs to hear this magic.

For references sake, I suppose you can hear echoes of Bill Frisell, Terje 
Rypdal, Steve Kahn(Blades era), Wayne Johnson, Kazumi 
Watanabe, and even Steve Tibbetts but . . . Lê is standing all alone in his 
total sound and delivery. My adored track was "La Parfum" for its simple 
elegance, beauty, and its power to transport me into bliss . . .

If you want the crunch go straight to his fiery boogie on "Straight No 
Chaser" and then sample the very fusiony "Dance of the Comet". But 
really this is CD to be experienced in totality. You will discover sounds 
and feelings you will thrill to if you love great guitar-driven jazz. Highest 
of recommendations!!!	~ John W. Patterson, EER-MUSIC.com



Tracks: 1 Three trios - SILK, 2 Three trios - SILVER, 3 Three trios - 
SAND, 4 DANCE OF THE COMET, 5 FOOW, 6 KINDERHUND, 7 
WOOF, 8 IDOMA, 9 LA PARFUM, 10 BLUE MONKEY, 11 
STRAIGHT NO CHASER 

Personnel: SILK (track 1,4,9,10): Peter Erskine drums, Marc Johnson 
acoustic bass, Nguyên Lê el. & el./acoustic guitars, gtr-synth. 
SILVER (2,6,7,11): Danny Gottlieb drums, Dieter Ilg acoustic bass, 
Nguyen Le el. guitars, gtr-synth., SAND (3,5,8): Renaud Garcia-Fons 
acoustic bass, Nguyên Lê el. & fretless guitars, gtr-synth., E-Bow, special 
guest: Mino Cinelu percussions, drums 

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Nguyên Lê: Tales from Viet-nam (1996, Worldjazz / ACT Music)

Jazz guitarist and composer Nguyen Le has played with the French National Jazz Orchestra, the WDR Big Band with composer/conductor Vince Mendoza, and with several trios he assembled himself. In Tales from Viet-nam, he set out to blend jazz fusion with traditional Vietnamese music and musicians. This project offered a cultural examination of Le's family roots, as the Paris-born child of Vietnamese parents. All but one of the nine songs on Tales from Viet-nam are written around well-known, traditional Vietnamese songs, providing a culturally ancient backdrop for Le's fusion based arrangements and orchestration. The sound of Tales from Viet-nam centers on female vocals in a scurrying, angular Oriental style. Other more traditional timbres come from the dan tranh, a kind of zither that makes a hammered string type of sound like that stereotypically associated with Oriental music, the sao flute, and sapek clappers that sound like a drum roll on a flat, wooden drum. The modern fusion sounds include a liquid, Allan Holdsworth style fusion lead guitar, acoustic and clean electric guitars, stand-up bass, trumpet and Harmon muted trumpet, and saxophone. The music of Tales from Viet-nam moves from languid, Oriental flavored expositions, through fast melodic unison lines, and into tapping R&B fusion grooves that evoke late 60s fusion like Miles Davis's "Bitches Brew." Le's arrangements blend the modern and traditional instruments in both the more traditional and the more modern sounding parts of the music, including soprano saxophone in some of the quiet Oriental sounding zither and vocal passages, and the zither matching horns and guitar in the quick fusion runs. The ancient feel of the Vietnamese folk sounds matches Le's choice of a classic 60s/70s style of fusion to blend with the traditional music. This reviewer doesn't have the background in Oriental or Vietnamese music to know whether Le has achieved his goal of melding traditional Vietnamese folk inspirations and instruments with modern fusion. Regardless of how well Tales from Viet-nam represents traditional Vietnamese music, the blending with classic fusion produces an Oriental flavored "world fusion" that is uniquely interesting and creative. Reviewed by Scott Andrews [scottandrews@his.com] More Info:
http://www.actmusic.com/nguyen_le.htm

 

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