Bela Fleck & The Flecktones CD

Bela Fleck & The Flecktones: Bela Fleck (banjo); Howard Levy (harmonica); Victor Wooten (bass); Roy Wooten (percussion).
After disbanding New Grass Revival, Bela Fleck began re-creating the role of the banjo in the same way Charlie Parker redefined the role of the saxophone. But Fleck may be the least-innovative member of this quartet: Howard Levy gets chromatics from his blues harp, Victor Wooten picks banjo rolls on his bass, and Roy "Future Man" Wooten plays a Frankenstein-monster drum-machine/guitar synthesizer. For all the flash, there's little pretense; the group's astonishing musicianship keeps an "aw-shucks" accessibility that lets everybody follow the melody while they marvel. ~ Brian Mansfield
The distance between Bela Fleck's work with New Grass Revival (and even his adventurous late-1980s solo albums) and this eponymous 1990 debut with the Flecktones is difficult to measure. Fleck handpicked this assembly of super-musicians, which includes Victor Wooten on bass, Roy "Future Man" Wooten on the "drumitar" (a combination drum machine/guitar synthesizer), and Howard Levy on harmonica (and keys, Jew's harp, and other assorted noisemakers). Their music obliterates genre distinctions by bridging bluegrass, jazz, classical, rock, funk, and everything else under the sun into a totally new, banjo-centered music.
"Hurricane Camille" is hard bop routed through Appalachia, while the sinuous weave of "The Sinister Minister" repeats a progression (embellished with fantastic bass rolls by Victor Wooten) that gives the players room to stretch out. (This is true of most of the record--individual prowess is on display, even as the group remains a remarkably tight-knit, sympathetic unit.) The combination of instruments, styles, and superior musicianship is striking. In particular, the suite-like "Mars Needs Women" and "Reflections of Lucy" (which re-imagines the Beatles "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds") epitomize Fleck's new open-ended music and the promise of the increasingly innovative records to come.