Planet Microjam

David “Fuze” Fiuczynski plays microtonal music on a fretless guitar, and if that sounds a little esoteric to you, it does to me, too, though the fact that I ain’t too hip to microtonality or micro jamming didn’t keep me from appreciating what I heard on this album. “In Western music, microtones represent all intervals in between the semitones of the 12-note-per-octave system,” Fiuczynski told Guitar Player magazine. I don’t know what that means, but he went on to explain: “You can think of microtones within Arabic or older Chinese music as being Eastern blue notes which are really beautiful, and they affect me in the same way the blues does.” Me, too, if the microtones on this album are an indicator. Experimentation notwithstanding, this music finds its grooves, and then it just percolates, steams and cooks its way through a spectrum of Middle Eastern-flavored jam tracks that might challenge listeners, but won’t leave them behind. Some jazz improvisations I hear of late seem self indulgent, so I didn’t expect to like this album as much as I did. But with legendary jazz drummer Jack DeJohnette lending his talents to four of the cuts here, and with the creative spark Fuze throws off his guitar, this is an album I intend to listen to more than once.