Canadian electric violinist Hugh Marsh fuses many elements of his influences and interests into a virtual tornado of music. Horn charts and acoustic piano meet Afro-Cuban percussion, jazz-funk, electronic techno sounds, Sun Ra space phrases, soulful RB, poetry, and urban or lunar landscapes, with Marsh's violin plopped spiritually in the midst. There's so much unabashed music layered on top of layer, only listening on headphones can do it justice. Inside the dense shrouds and whirling dervishes, there's common sense, order and purpose -- rarely does anything sound random. Things kick off with a busy, funky, rap strewn, rather macabre take on Sun Ra's Rocket #9 followed by The Crossing, a trip to Havana via Yoruba chants aboard a techno flotilla fueled by ancestral poetry, with the route provided by the spacy, soaring violin of Marsh. Sugarcane's Gone is a tribute to the late violinist Don Sugarcane Harris; James Blood Ulmer's phone message announcing the death of Sugarcane triggers more chanting, grieving distended distortion, and a perky three-horn chart. Marsh's plucked violin aside ring modulated sound assimilates the popping electric bass guitar sound of Jaco Pastorius on an electronique tropicale tinged Mowgli: Balloon Song, while a "cover" of Sly Stone's Let Me Have It All romps and stomps in deep outer space funk fashion à la Parliament/Funkadelic heading to the Crab Nebula. There are two lunar soundscapes titled Violinvocation, and a techno-trance urban landscape piece Om. The side personnel are excellent, including bassist Roberto Occhipinti, drummer Dafnis Prieto, percussionist Pedro Martinez, and especially pianist Andy Milne. Where Harris, Jean-Luc Ponty, Jerry Goodman, and peer Christian Howes have tread the path Marsh follows, he's outward bound for another galaxy on this experimental, heady, progressive, exceptional recording, wild-assed in a good way, and a premier project for the new millennium. ~ Michael G. Nastos, Rovi

1		Rocket # 9
2		The Crossing
3		Let Me Have It All
4		Violinvocation # 2
5		Mowgli: Balloon Song
6		Om
7		Sugarcane's Gone
8		Violinvocation # 1

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