Pieces of the Sun
LikeJohn Paul JonesandJeff Beck, Tony Levin is a musician's musician whose collaborations sparkle (in Levin's case with such eclectics asPeter Gabriel,King Crimson, andLou Reed), but it's his solo stuff that really sails off the chart. And like the aforementioned players, Levin is anything but an oldies machine; he uses each new recording as a way of further juxtaposing his primary instruments (bass and Chapman stick) against the weirdest, most challenging stuff he can score. Consequently,Pieces of the Sunis, predictably, wholly unpredictable, with Levin and his 2001 touring band lighting into a set of headphone-melting instrumentals best described as pulsing prog-rock built on the kind of awesome playing that, in a concert setting, attracts packs of drooling amateurs to the stage to watch the musician's hands. "Dog One"--an unreleased recording with Gabriel--appears rerecorded here as a jittery, piano-and-guitar speckled opus with muffled call-and-response vocals, while the percussive "Tequila" shines the spotlight on a mournful tenor sax before turning things over to ambient synth and lazy electric guitar. With the exception of the languid and loose closing track, "Silhouette," everything onPieces of the Sunfeels urgent, with Levin once again acquitting himself and his generation of charges of stagnation.--Kim Hughes