Author: Aleš Podbrežnik
Artist: Phillips, Simon
Label: Phantom Recordings
Release: 2013
Rating: 5/5
»Protocol II« is one of the finest jazz rock fusion records to come out in recent years. Its cornerstone was laid way back in 1988, when the album »Protocol« was released. And the mastermind behind it is none other than Simon Phillips, who is (putting it mildly) one of the best drummers in the galaxy. This brilliant musician and unsuspected drum wizard, a role model and source of inspiration for plenty of young drummers, has played just about everything there is to play in his career. With »Protocol II« he now has his seventh solo studio effort up his sleeve, and it reveals that the latest one opens up the most creative room yet for blending »hard-sounding« elements with jazz. So of all seven albums, the latest, »Protocol II«, sounds the most »rock«. Of course, at its core it’s still a jazz album first and foremost, and only then can we talk about rock influences. Even though Andy Timmons artistically »outgrew« Danger Danger long ago and left them behind, rock music still runs through his veins, as hinted by some of the guitar phrases that release a generous dose of distorted decibels into the air.
Phillips had been carrying the idea and the drive to make a new solo studio album in his head for quite a while. His tour called PSP (Phillips – Saisse – Paladino) in 2009 and 2010 was a hint, with the trio showing off unsuspected mastery across the vast expanses of the jazz fusion universe. After the latest tours with Toto in the summer of 2012, January 2013 rolled around, and with it the famous NAMM show, the trade fair for musical instruments and music industry products, where old comrades Simon Phillips and Andy Timmons run into each other. As a result, Timmons extends his stay in California to try out the new MP3 demo ideas Simon Phillips presented to him. Timmons had already worked with Phillips on the albums »Another Lifetime« (1998) and the live »Out of the Blue« (1999). As part of the tour promoting the album Antorher Lifetime«, Phillips and Timmons in the lineup also visited the Slovenian capital in May 1998, for Phillips’ first-ever show in Slovenia. The ideas drew Timmons into the collaboration, and Phillips quickly filled out the crew with two seasoned musicians: keyboardist Steve Weingart (Steve Lukather Band) and bassist Ernest Tibbs. The latter also plays bass for Steven Seagal in his blues band, which will be performing in Ljubljana on 23.06.2014. The Protocol II project was born, and the band recorded this album as early as February 2013!
The album was recorded the way you’d play a live show, in the studio. Usually in the first take. Simple as that. There’s really no point wasting words on the fact that all four musicians have so damn much mileage and experience, and are armed to the teeth with outstanding knowledge, layered musical understanding and razor-sharp creative reactivity (responsiveness), that they can play with their eyes closed, practically in their sleep, and without a single mistake. On top of that, they’ve moved in similar musical circles throughout their careers and share a similar musical outlook, which means the crew quickly developed real creative chemistry once they warmed up to the right working temperature in the studio.
»Protocol II« is the child of an extraordinary fusion of full-blooded improvisation elements, which naturally stand out on the album and grab most of the attention, but they’re wrapped throughout in connecting veils of motifs in which the guys develop an accessible melody. It’s 57 minutes of unpredictable twists and turns, where the jolting motivic swerves within a strict jazz framework never stop thrilling. Everything is played with the brilliance of sensual fine mechanics, with clean, organically tuned sounds and soulful control over every move, and the tightrope walk between the brilliance of a genius sense for lucid improvisation and melodic accessibility never lets up! The quartet captured an extraordinary, fully tangible moment of free-spirited, adventurous and unbridled musical imagination, where there are no creative barriers in their musical worlds, and they managed to pour it onto the studio tapes (the recording) with superior skill, as one endlessly fascinating musical conglomerate.
The eight tracks keep steering through constant switches between often unusual rhythmic signatures, while the musicians, with the breadth of their own musical understanding and most of their playing, glide with feather-light ease across motifs and rhythmic textures that are often hard to reconcile. The quartet never loses the common thread or the playful charge for even a moment, and the four of them are in absolutely perfect tune with each other.
All the complexity this record embodies is masterfully calibrated with the prominent note of lucidity in the brilliant solo bits, unleashed at just the right moments by subtler, melodically captivating motivic passages, where the quartet very effectively conjures up an element of mystique too (First Orbit). In the melos it’s not hard to detect »close encounters of the third kind«, that is, the famous bond with Toto (Phillips, Weingart), which the track Moments Of Fortune shows off especially vividly on this album, with its particularly refined musicality.
All the tracks are set up to give the solo escapades of all four musicians optimal room to unfold. Most often the quartet does this by picking a motif in which one of the members takes the initiative to improvise. In the next moment the situation flips and room opens up for the next member of the quartet to take the lead with their improvisational spot. Quite often the parts of the tracks where Simon Phillips stretches out solo feel as if the other three members were warming him up »in the middle of an open rehearsal«. The closing improvisational spot in the track Enigma is especially outstanding, where Phillips literally tears the track apart with his unpredictable »octopus-like abandon«, while the motif lying on top of his drumming wizardry keeps the track compact. Phillips is really so »wired«, he has studied and tried out so much in his career, that he attempts to show off all that knowledge optimally in every single moment of this album and to implement it in the compositional structures. The master pulls this off with vehemence. Triumphantly. Even though Timmons and Weingart are stunningly captivating in the turbulent exposé of their musical worlds, which they show off through bravura solo excursions, it’s clear that Simon Phillips still takes the lead, at least slightly if not noticeably, across the album, which is somehow only natural, since he’s the visionary and father of the Protocol II project.
The album »Protocol II« is a document of a magnificent exposé of »jazz rock fusion« culture, embodied by a unique crew of top-notch musicians. A one-of-a-kind, unique gem that, with the passion of constant exploration, through superbly defined, complex technical passages and the unbridled lucidity of a free spirit, never stops thrilling.
Line-up
Simon Phillips – drums
Andy Timmons – guitar
Steve Weingart – keyboards
Ernest Tibbs – bass guitar
Production
Simon Phillips
Track list
1. Wildfire (7:24)
2. Soothsayer (8:56)
3. Gemini (7:51)
4. Moments Of Fortune (8:11)
5. Upside In Downside Up (6:56)
6. First Orbit (6:34)
7. Octopia (3:41)
8. Enigma (9:17)
