Polygram Records
2000
The Enemies Of Energy
About This Album
It's amazing that it took four years for this recording to be released, but Rosenwinkel is an amazing guitarist whose ideas and concepts don't fall into easily pigeonholed or definable terms. His compositions feature complex, brightly colored melodies strung together. As an original, inventive stylist, he's closest to latter-period Pat Martino or early Pat Metheny, but as a sound sculptor, his more electrified guitar resembles John Scofield. Equal partners in this journey are tenor saxophonist Mark Turner, keyboardist Scott Kinsey, bassist Ben Street and drummer Jeff Ballard. The lone non-Rosenwinkel composition, Kinsey's "Point of View," sports lightning-quick counterpoint between the front-line instrumentalists, leading to (not Nat "King" Cole's) "Christmas Song," a dense line that sounds like Santa at 4 a.m. busily dropping off presents and going to the next home. There's a delicate mimimalist piano section at the end with guitar and sax that unfortunately fades out. Acoustic guitar and the leader's voice is used in "The Polish Song," and there are two more intricate pieces in the hypnotic and alluring "#10" and "Dream of the Old"; the former has a bright 4/4 groove supporting a sax/guitar unison voice before some truly lush sampling and electric keyboard assimilations, the latter a diffident 3/4 mood with segregated and unequal factions of melody and harmony, Turner's busy sax contrasting Rosenwinkel and Kinsey's languid statements.
Track List (try tracks 2,3,5,6,7 and 8)

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