Bela Fleck Outbound CD

Japanese Version Featuring A Bonus Track.

Bela Fleck & The Flecktones: Bela Fleck (synthesizer, National & paradise guitars, banjo, electric sitar); Future Man (vocals, drums, zendrum, synth-axe drumitar, cajon, cymbals, tambourine, samples); Jeff Coffin (soprano, alto & tenor saxophones, alto flute, clarinet); Victor Lemonte Wooten (4-string, 5-string fretless & tenor basses).
Additional personnel: Rita Sahai, Jon Anderson, Shawn Colvin, Ondar (vocals); Paul Hanson (soprano & tenor saxophone, bassoon); Paul McCandless (soprano saxophone, oboe, English horn, penny whistle); Mark Feldman (violin); John Medeski (Hammond B-3 organ); Adrian Belew (electric guitar); Edgar Meyer (acoustic bass); Sandip Burman (tablas); Andy Narell (steel pans).
Love Sponge String Quartet: David Davidson, David Angell (violin); Kristin Wilkinson (viola); John Catchings (cello).
Engineers include: Richard Battaglia, Robert Battaglia, Bela Fleck.
OUTBOUND won the 2001 Grammy Award for Best Contemporary Jazz Album. "Zona Mona" was nominated for the 2001 Grammy Award for Best Pop Instrumental Performance.
Japanese edition includes a bonus track.
After a decade with Warner Bros., Béla Fleck jumped to Sony's Columbia Records, signing a five-record deal that called for two releases on Sony Classical, a solo album, and two discs with his band the Flecktones of which Outbound is the first. It is a typically eclectic effort. For example, the Fleck original "Shuba Yatra" (its title, he explains in the press materials, "is an Indian term that means taking a journey with a safe return") features a tabla player and Fleck on a "sitar banjo," an electrified instrument with a banjo head and a sitar bridge. Such instruments give the tune something of an Indian flavor, except that much of it is borrowed from traditional Irish music with a touch of South African rhythm. Such odd juxtapositions of instrumentation and style are typical not only from track to track but also within tracks. Fleck and his bandmates seem to view all styles of music as readily and randomly interchangeable, but sometimes, as with a colorblind person picking out clothes, the results clash or otherwise disturb, and the rest of the time they come off as flashy and insubstantial. Fleck really offers no defense to the charge of being a musical dilettante, he simply celebrates the surface pleasures of different varieties of music, offering an overlapping series of appetizers. A fan of any particular style is liable to feel that it has been trivialized, but Fleck doesn't mean any harm. His music represents the pursuit of facileness as a musical goal, one that he and his band achieve with alacrity. ~ William Ruhlmann
With OUTBOUND, Bela Fleck and his Flecktones blend their eclectic mix of high-energy bluegrass and jazz with instrumentalists and vocalists from a wide range of styles. Among these are B3 master John Medeski, eclectic guitarist Adrian Belew, and pop vocalists Shawn Colvin and Yes' Jon Anderson. As you may expect, this makes for some of the most unique aural adventures to come down the pike in a long while.
With a nod to Oliver Nelson's BLUES & THE ABSTRACT TRUTH arrangement, Fleck offers a contemporary take on Aaron Copland's "Hoedown." He then launches into the intriguing "A Moment So Close," which mixes urban funk, Middle Eastern flavors, and contemporary pop vocals. If that's not enough to strip your gears, Adrian Belew's space-age guitar textures and Shawn Colvin's wordless vocal introduction into the otherwise rolling groove of "Hall of Mirrors" are likely to make you sit up and take immediate notice. More evidence of Fleck's stylistic wizardry is the exciting "Ainum," a piece that, while at first appearing as merely a pop vocal, incorporates everything from bluegrass and jazz to Indian drumming and funk. Other mesmerizing musical escapades include the lilting "Lover's Leap," the fusion-esque title track, and the impenetrable "Scratch & Sniff."

Entertainment Weekly (7/28/00, p.183) - "...Favoring strings and horns, the king of bluegrass-bop fuses cultures on this ambitious album....Wizardry abounds..." - Rating: B+
JazzTimes (11/00, pp.66-7) - "...An interesting and rewarding trip....capturing swamp tones, classical romance, electric rock, bebop and everything in-between....fascinating..."