Dutch electric guitarist Corrie van Binsbergen is a complete unknown in the United States, but she shouldn't be. A classically trained player and composer, van Binsbergen has been heavily influenced by the free jazz movement of the '60s and the life and music of Frank Zappa. This live date from 1995 is a showcase of not only her mind-blowing guitar playing skill -- think Zappa, Steve Vai, Mike Keneally, Kawabata Makoto, etc., but her two-handed grip on jazz composition and counterpoint. De Brokken (The Lumps) are a jazz-rock outfit capable of carrying out her highly idiosyncratic and ferociously precise musical vision that may owe to Zappa, but is also fiercely original in its architecture and harmonic considerations. While she may share the late American's love for marrying highbrow and low-class musics, her sensibility and approach is strictly European, and her ensemble shows this wonderful prejudice: three-piece horn section, vibes, bass, drums, guitar. On this live set, the band focuses on her jazz-rock compositions more than on classically oriented or rock music, though elements of both are embedded within. The entire gig is a monstrous revelation for any guitar fan, but there are major-league standouts. "De Teppende Schoothond" is a ten-minute ensemble piece where everybody solos briefly, but the musicians are mostly engaged in intricate melodic invention and woolly intervallic shifts where different instruments become dominant players for brief periods of time. "Research on Pigs" is a first-class guitar workout, where van Binsbergen shows off her deep blues roots and startling arpeggio power without the baggage of a ton of effects. And there is also the groove-oriented side of her playing, where funk rhythms are chunked out on guitar, bass, and drums while the horns all go at it. Finally, there is a haunting rendition of Hans Hasebos' "Betty Blue," with vocal accompaniment by trumpeter Felicity Provan. It's a pop song, with pastoral jazz undertones -- at least in this arrangement -- and van Binsbergen takes the rather surreal lyrics ("...floating down a Michael Jordan river..."), places them stone-cold center, and paints them with a large, spacy, slightly funky groove, highlighting the humor and sarcasm in them, keeping the musical integrity apart from them, and then filing the funk into a free improv melodic jazz mode before taking it out with a scintillating guitar solo of brief duration and epic proportion. Corrie en de Brokken Live! is nothing short of a revelation. Somebody, anybody, quick: Bring her and her band to America to tour! ~ Thom Jurek, Rovi

1		En Opening Is Een Gat
2		Pantoffelhelden II
3		De Teppende Schoothond
4		Research on Pigs
5		Mopje I
6		Closed Curtains
7		Betty Blue
8		Eindfinalepotpourri
9		Onderuit

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