Harrison, Joel / Anthony Pirog - The Great Mirage CD
SKU
AGSR 004
Joel Harison – electric and acoustic guitars, toy piano, Fender Rhodes, Tibetian bowls, mellotron
Anthony Pirog – electric and acoustic guitars, synthesizer
Stephan Crump – electric bass
Allison Miller – drums, Moog
“Pirog and Harrison tend to finish each other sentences when they play. Twenty five years separate them in age, and yet they seem to have common ancestry. Both are from Wash. D.C., both love jazz, rock, fusion, avant garde, folk, funk, and country music, and both often do all of it all at once. A previous encounter took place in the now defunct 3 guitar group The Spellcasters (Cuneiform Records 2018.) Now the two plectrists have conjured a true collaboration.
On The Great Mirage each composed and arranged music for the session, the music caterwauls between heavy and light, really loud and really soft, gorgeous, spiky, grooving and free. The record is a bit of a 21st century essay in what the guitar can do. The band’s sense of joy and adventure is palpable as they extend their range and reach deep into American guitar history and future.
The rhythm section adds a tremendous amount to the pieces. Allison Miller, herself a D.C. kid, wallops and caresses the drums with authority and finesse. Crump, who is better known for his upright playing, grooves like a modern day Jamerson, and then puts a delicate bow around a heart breaking series of modern jazz chord changes.
The session is full of pathos, Harrison’s “There’s Never Enough Time” and “I’ll See You in the Shining World.” But then moments of thunder, Pirog’s “It Slipped Through My Fingers, his arrangement of Keith Jarret’s “Mortgage on My Soul.” There’s the windswept ballad “Desert Solitaire,” and the final track where two Les Pauls light up a Neil Young-style groove penned by Harrison called “Buffalo Heart.” The CD takes its name from the first tune, The Great Mirage, a Paul Motian-inspired number which Harrison wrote in a flash after reading a book on Tibetan Dream Yoga.
For guitar fans, modern jazz lovers, and rockers alike, this release takes you on a circuitous, thrilling journey.”