Gordian Knot CD - Import

Star-studded projects often add up to very little, but Gordian Knot's eponymous debut turns out to be one of the best progressive rock albums released in the last years of the second millennium. And that's thanks to the fact that Sean Malone held on to the reins, guiding the project to its goal of finely crafted guitar-driven instrumental songs. Malone has a prog metal background, so do most of his guests (Cynic drummer Sean Reinert, King Crimson guitarist Trey Gunn, Dream Theater bassist John Myung, along with Ron Jarzombek and Glenn Snelwar). And yet the album only has a couple of tracks that can be qualified as "metal" ("Rivers Dancing," "Singularity"). Everything else falls into the guitar craft of the likes of David Torn and Robert Fripp. "Galois" opens the set with a seductive soundscape. "Code/Anticode" is the album's main showcase, an intelligent prog rocker with a solid rhythm section and a catchy modal melody. "Reflections" manages to make a menacing metal verse and a classical guitar chorus walk hand in hand like two lovers. "Srikara Tal" and "Redemption's Way" work as a soloing frame over a slightly North African percussion backdrop. They feel a bit overstretched, but the guitar work adorning them is worth the extended durations. The album ends with "Grace," a delicate ballad played on the Chapman stick that dissolves into soundscapes to take listeners back to where they started. If it weren't for a couple of overlong or self-indulgent tracks, this album would be a masterpiece. As it is, it still deserves the attention of any guitar fan. ~ François Couture

Gordian Knot was a short-lived band from southern California, by way of Mississippi. They released only one album, a terrific soft rock/harmony pop effort produced by Clark Burroughs of the Hi-Los. Original pressings are considered highly collectible and valuable. The group formed at the University of Mississippi and was led by ex-Mississippi all-American quarterback/guitarist/lead vocalist Jim Weatherly, a native of Pontotoc, MI. The group caught their biggest break after they appeared at a party thrown by Nancy Sinatra, who apparently liked them so much that she asked them to accompany her on a USO trip to Vietnam. According to their liner notes, they were "one of the few groups since the Beatles to possess genuine charm...not a phony showbiz glucose charm, but the real thing." The bulk of the songs for their album were written by Weatherly, and have a edgier, husky country-rock vibe compared with those written by Leland Russell, whose beautiful tunes are comparatively similar to the Association (Burroughs, it should be pointed out, was also a vocal arranger on the Association's Insight Out and Waterbeds in Trinidad! albums). "One Way Street" is the band's lone obligatory jug band entry. The band also appeared as themselves in a 1968 MGM teensploitation flick called Young Runaways, performing an original entitled "Ophelia's Dream." A few years after the release of this album, Weatherly moved to Nashville and became a country singer/songwriter, penning a handful of hits. Weatherly's biggest success as a songsmith came in 1973, however, when he wrote five of the nine songs on Gladys Knight & the Pips' Top Ten album Imagination, including the soulful "Best Thing That Ever Happened to Me" and "Midnight Train to Georgia" ("Midnight Plane to Houston" was the original title), a pop and R&B number one smash in September 1973. It scored two Grammy awards the following year. Weatherly recorded several albums for Buddahin the mid-'70s, and a few on ABC and Elektra. He has since co-written with younger country acts and provided Vince Gill, Bryan White, and others with hit songs. ~ Bryan Thomas

Originally from Mississippi, the Gordian Knot emerged in Los Angeles in 1967. They recorded this fascinating hybrid of Association-esque Soft Pop/Soft Psych/Country Rock with LA's finest studio musicians and the Hi-Lo's own Clark Burroughs in the producers chair. The result is the