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Bruce Hornsby: Absolute Zero

 A l b u m   D e t a i l s


Label: Zappo Productions
Released: 2019.04.12
Time:
 42:20
Category: Pop/Rock, Contemporary Pop/Rock
Producer(s): Bruce Hornsby, Brad Cook, Justin Vernon, Tony Berg
Rating:
Media type: CD
Web address: www.brucehornsby.com
Appears with:
Purchase date: 2020
Price in €: 1,00





 S o n g s ,   T r a c k s


[1] Absolute Zero (B.Hornsby) - 3:11
[2] Fractals (B.Hornsby) - 2:33
[3] Cast-Off (B.Hornsby/J.Vernon) - 5:16
[4] Meds (B.Hornsby) - 6:34
[5] Never In This House (B.Hornsby/Ch.Denatted) - 3:33
[6] Voyager One (B.Hornsby/Ch.Denatted) - 3:39
[7] Echolocation (B.Hornsby) - 4:19
[8] The Blinding Light Of Dreams (B.Hornsby/Ch.Denatted) - 4:14
[9] White Noise (B.Hornsby) - 3:27
[10] Take You There [Misty] (B.Hornsby/R.Hunter) - 5:11

 A r t i s t s ,   P e r s o n n e l


Bruce Hornsby - Vocals, Piano on [1-6,8,10], Bass on [4,6], Drums on [1], Dulcimer on [7], Organ on [10], Violin on [2,7], Percussion on [2,7], Orchestration on [1], Sampler (John Cage Prepared Piano) on [4,9,10], Mixing on [1-8], Producer

JT Thomas - Organ on [4,10]
Sean Carey - Keyboards on [3], Vocals on [3]
Chris Messina - Loops on [3]
Blake Mills - Guitar on [4]
Gibb Droll - Guitar on [4,7]
Jeremy Ylvisaker - Guitar on [3]
Gibb Droll - Pedal Steel Guitar on [4]
Chris Croce - Bass on [5,8]
J.V. Collier - Bass on [2,4,6,10]
Christopher White - Double Bass on [9]
Chad Wright - Drums on [2,4,6]
JT Bates - Drums on [3,6]
Jack DeJohnette - Drums on [1]
Sonny Emory - Drums on [6,8,10]
Michael Lewis - Saxophone on [3]

The Staves - Backing Vocals on [5,10]
Camilla Staveley-Taylor - Backing Vocals on [5,10]
Emily Staveley-Taylor - Backing Vocals on [5,10]
Jessica Staveley-Taylor - Backing Vocals on [5,10]

Members Of The Virginia Symphony Plus One - Ensemble on [9]
YMusic - Ensemble on [5,6,8,10]
The Orchestra Of St Hank's – Frost School/IL. Of Miami - Orchestra on [8,10]
Scott Flavin - Orchestra Conductor on [8,10]
Peter Rotter - String Orchestra Conductor on [1]
Bruce Coughlin - Orchestration on [8,10]
Howard Drossin - Orchestration on [1]
Rob Moose - Orchestration on [4,5,6,8,10]
Alex Sopp - Flute on [5,6,8,10]
Elizabeth Richards - Cello on [9]
Gabriel Cabezas - Cello on [5,6,8,10]
Hideaki Aomori - Clarinet on [5,6,8,10]
CJ Camarieri - Trumpet on [5,6,8,10]
Matt Umlauf - Viola on [9]
Nadia Sirota - Viola on [5,6,8,10]
Rob Moose - Violin on [4-6,8,10], Viola and Violin/Viola Arrangements on [4]
Bobby Hornsby - Violin on [7]
Elizabeth Vonderheide - Violin on [9]
John Mailander - Violin on [5,9]
Jonathan Richards - Violin on [9]

Brad Cook - Producer on [3]
Justin Vernon - Producer on [3], Vocals on [3], Backing Vocals on [4], Mixing on [1]
Tony Berg - Producer on [3,4], Associate Producer
Chris Messina - Engineer
David Boucher - Engineer, Mixing on [1,9,10]
Pat Dillett - Engineer
Wayne Pooley - Engineer, Mixing on [1-9]
Chip Denatted - Design
Huntley Miller - Mastering
Kevin Monty - Management
Marc Allan - Management
Kathy Hornsby - Photography
Terry Greene - Piano Technician

 C o m m e n t s ,   N o t e s


2019 CD Zappo Productions - ZAPPO 001
LP 2019 Zappo Productions - ZAPPO 0011



The Noisemakers, Bruce Hornsby's regular backing band since 2002, aren't credited on 2019's Absolute Zero, which should be an indication that the album is a bit of a departure from the other records he's made during the 21st century. While the Noisemakers haven't avoided adventure, Absolute Zero feels as if it was made without any regard to boundaries, either in terms of style or approach. Such fearlessness is evident from the outset, when the record kicks off with a dexterous rhythm suitable for a vintage post-bop session, but it's too reductive to call Absolute Zero an odyssey into straight jazz. That much is clear by "Cast Off," where Hornsby acolyte Justin Vernon lends not just harmonies but a digital cut & paste aesthetic that feels bracingly modern. Jazz and electronica aren't the only styles on Absolute Zero, though. Hornsby doesn't neglect folky Americana ("Echolocation") or melodic ballads ("Never in This House"), two of his trademarks since the Range, but the startling thing about Absolute Zero isn't that he's chosen to venture to the outer limits of his tastes, but that he's found the common ground between roots music, jazz, avant-garde, pop, and experimentation. It's this blend - which is seamless, but quite dense, demanding the listener's attention - that makes Absolute Zero seem to have depths that aren't easily fathomed.

Stephen Thomas Erlewine - All Music Guide



Jazz fusion, chamber pop, modern classical—if your awareness of Hornsby stops at the lite-FM radio dial, prepare to be disoriented.

Sometime in the last decade, Bruce Hornsby nearly became hip. Give the credit (or blame) to Justin Vernon: After the man behind Bon Iver cited Hornsby as a formative influence, the pianist wound up playing the Eaux Claires Music & Arts Festival in 2016, mingling with The National, Phosphorescent, Jenny Lewis, and Will Oldham. Today, you can hear Hornsby’s influence in the work of wildly popular rock bands like The War on Drugs. For anyone who only associated the pianist with ‘80s heartland rock hits like “The Way It Is,” “Mandolin Rain,” and “The Valley Road,” his indie-rock renaissance might have seemed a little surreal.

Truth be told, Hornsby abandoned Adult Contemporary Rock almost the minute he hit the charts. In 1990—the last year he was a presence on Album Rock radio—he replaced the deceased Brent Mydland in the Grateful Dead, revealing both his jam-band roots and his extensive classically trained chops. Those elements won over a dedicated audience that sustained Hornsby through fallow years, allowing him to experiment with everything from bluegrass to jazz, usually with the support of his band the Noisemakers.

Although a few members of the Noisemakers play on this record, Absolute Zero is officially his first solo album since Spirit Trail, released way back in 1998. Hornsby seizes the opportunity for reinvention, packing Absolute Zero with everything from chamber pop to jazz fusion and modern classical. All of his myriad musical interests are explored here, usually with the assistance of collaborators. Vernon co-writes “Cast-Off”; Jerry Garcia’s old lyricist Robert Hunter pens lyrics for “Take You There (Misty).” Fusion legend Jack DeJohnette lends some asymmetrical rhythms to several tracks. The result is destined to confound anyone whose awareness of Hornsby stops at the lite-FM radio dial.

The DNA of these songs came from a series of discarded and reworked cues Hornsby wrote for the Netflix serialization of Spike Lee’s 1986 feature She’s Gotta Have It. It’s not the only evidence of Hornsby’s resourcefulness: For the album's title track, he repurposed a DeJohnette rhythm track recorded back in 2007 for Camp Meeting, a trio album between the drummer, pianist and bassist Christian McBride. “Echolocation” is dressed with spooky Appalachian stringed instruments and rumbles by on a backwoods thump, while “Never In This House” is the kind of stately ballad that could’ve graced any one of his records since 1986.

This elusiveness, a sly synthesis of past and present as well as acoustic and synthetic instruments, is the key to Hornsby’s music and why it endures. Listen closely to his big hits with The Range, and it’s clear that the rhythms are all electronic; even “Mandolin Rain,” whose very title conveys acoustic purity, rolls along to the crisp snap of a drum machine. From the outset of his career, Hornsby embraced modernity, which means the real difference with Absolute Zero is that he’s no longer exclusively interested in writing pop songs.

Melody remains essential to his music, but it’s threaded within dazzling cloistered chords and majestically eerie string arrangements. The lyrics are fractured and elliptical in a way that recalls Van Dyke Parks, borrowing imagery from science fiction and the natural world to evoke emotional disconnect. It is heady material, and in other hands it might seem overwrought or awkward. But Hornsby plays with elegance, at ease with both his traces of hipness and essential squareness. It's a confidence that arrives with both comfort and age and it's what unifies all the disparate elements of Absolute Zero, shaping the album into a testament to the full range of Hornsby’s gifts.

Stephen Thomas Erlewine - Pitchfork



Absolute Zero is Bruce Hornsby's fourth studio album as a soloist; his discography is eleven total studio albums, including his recordings as Bruce Hornsby and the Range and Bruce Hornsby and the Noisemakers. The album was produced by Bruce Hornsby; Justin Vernon (Bon Iver) and Brad Cook co-produced "Cast Off" and Bruce Hornsby and Tony Berg, co-produced Meds . Featured guest artists - yMusic, Jack Dejohnette, Blake Mills, Justin Vernon, The Staves, Sean Carey (Bon Iver), Henry Mancini Institute Orchestra - University of Miami (or the Orchestra of St. Hank s as Bruce calls them), among others including Bruce s band The Noisemakers.

Amazon.com



One way for a songwriter to invigorate a long career is to keep breaking routines, to change up methods and parameters and solve different puzzles with every album. It’s a modus operandi that has carried Bruce Hornsby from radio hits in the 1980s through bluegrass, jazz, a stint in the Grateful Dead and, lately, collaborations with a younger-generation fan, Justin Vernon of Bon Iver. “Absolute Zero,” his 21st album, is one more daring, rewarding turn in his catalog: 10 knotty, thoughtful yet rambunctious songs that juggle scientific concepts, history and human relationships.

“Absolute Zero” makes a 180-degree pendulum swing from Hornsby’s 2016 album, “Rehab Reunion.” On that record, Hornsby set aside the piano for songs built around the dulcimer, with basic folky harmonies and string-band-centered arrangements. “Absolute Zero,” in contrast, doubles down on piano virtuosity and musical intricacies: odd meters, polytonality, bustling counterpoint. In the new songs, Hornsby addresses a complex, distressing world with complex music, offering not an escape but a cleareyed recognition of 21st-century pressures and longings.

In 2019, “Absolute Zero” is decisively untrendy. Its songs are dense, literate, hand-played and largely acoustic (though a collaboration with Vernon, a forlorn lover’s plaint titled “Cast-Off,” does slip in some electronics). Rather than build productions with synthetic sounds, for half of the album Hornsby brought in yMusic, the contemporary chamber sextet that has also worked lately with Paul Simon, and its violinist and arranger Rob Moose; other songs use string orchestras. Hornsby then juxtaposed the disembodied classical ensembles with sinewy little studio bands that can kick and swing in any meter. One of the puzzles Hornsby seems to have set for himself is seeing just how many pointillistic motifs he can set in motion without getting in the way of his voice.

Ambition and exuberance merge in songs like “The Blinding Light of Dreams,” with pensive lyrics flung into complicated motion. “The Blinding Light of Dreams” reflects on the history of racism in the South, racing along on an insistent 13-note piano pattern and dodging dissonant interjections from yMusic. And “Voyager One” is a kind of multidimensional hoedown, with piano and yMusic meshing in overlapping riffs while Hornsby sings about space exploration and wonders if humanity will destroy itself before Voyager makes contact with other life-forms. “Let’s break out of our orbits, fix the world we all neglect/We share this little planet, our neighbors need respect,” he sings.

Hornsby draws on science terms to get personal. In the title song of “Absolute Zero,” he imagines being cryogenically preserved for a century, awaiting “Another chance, maybe better next time”; sparse piano and sustained woodwinds suspend his voice as the drummer Jack DeJohnette pinpoints time still passing.

In “Fractals,” Hornsby maps the infinitely replicating, mathematically generated chaos of fractals onto a romance: “Our love is a fractal/Curves and shapes irregular,” he sings. But first comes a brittle, two-handed, stop-start piano part that doesn’t quite establish a key or a beat. While he sings, percussion pecks at offbeats before settling into 4/4, while piano and pizzicato strings continue to pelt him with syncopation.

Amid all the musical antics, Hornsby doesn’t lose perspective. The grain of his voice and his folky sense of melody still hold together all of the songs’ odd machinations. And midway through the album, he touches down on the kind of cozy, empathetic song that established him in the 1980s and continue to dot his albums.

“Never in This House,” written with Chip DeMatteo, yearns for a stable family home where “all our problems disappear.” The piano is rich and hymnlike, the chamber ensemble is a supportive mini-orchestra; the music fulfills what the refrain — never in this house” — will not. It’s a brief point of repose on an album that thrives on its own restlessness.

Jon Pareles - April 10, 2019
New York Times (nytimes.com)



Ever since Bruce Hornsby hit the public consciousness with his 1986 hit single "The Way It Is," he's made plenty of music that's just as organic and warm as that song, up to and including his body of work with The Grateful Dead. But the keyboardist also has a more technical and conceptual side — and that's evident in every nook and cranny of Absolute Zero. Hornsby's new album is as melodic as his past oeuvre, most of which is from more traditional, singer-songwriter cloth, but it's also a fascinating and absorbing peek into the veteran musician's love of avant-garde classical, jazz and progressive rock.

The song titles alone are hints that Hornsby is up to something. "Voyager One," "Fractals," "Echolocation," "Absolute Zero": They're all names that could have appeared on one of the 1970s releases from the legendary jazz label ECM. And sure enough, one of ECM's staple signees in the '70s, the virtuoso jazz drummer Jack DeJohnette, makes a guest appearance on Absolute Zero's title track, a minimalist meditation on time and perception that evokes an uncanny illusion of weightlessness. "Voyager One," on the other hand, is pleasantly frantic, propelled by a tight funk-fusion groove and Hornsby's playfully spry vamping on the piano.

Hornsby has never been shy about inviting special guests to play on his albums, and in addition to Jack DeJohnette, Bon Iver's Justin Vernon makes an appearance on two of Absolute Zero's most compelling cuts. On "Cast-Off," Hornsby and Vernon are joined by Bon Iver drummer Sean Carey, and together they forge a gentle, undulating excursion through rejection and isolation — but with enough emotional distance to render the song more dreamlike than anguished, all tied together with sumptuous vocal harmonies. And on "Meds," the two welcome yMusic's Rob Moose as well as the acclaimed guitarist and composer Blake Mills. It's a heavy song, fractured and psychedelic, but with an underlying sweetness and vulnerability that counterbalances its jarring, avant-pop vibe.

One of the most moving collaborations on the album, though, is with Robert Hunter, longtime lyricist for The Grateful Dead. He contributes poetry to the track "Take You There (Misty)," which ends Absolute Zero on a note that seems, at first, to be a departure from the rest of the album's sculpted abstraction. It's not far from the sentimental, emotive songwriting of "That's The Way It Is," complete with Hornsby's Hunter-penned admission that "If your heart says yes / I won't say no." It comes across almost corny at first — that is, until Hornsby shows his true hand and conducts the song into an extended bridge of deconstructed atonality.

It's a breathtaking move, especially when he repeats "If your heart says yes / I won't say no" while dangling over a disorienting chasm of shifting time signatures and chamber-orchestra pileups. It's closer to The Lamb Lies Down On Broadway-era Genesis than anything The Grateful Dead ever did. Far from a conventional Hornsby album, Absolute Zero is the sound of an artist subverting expectations and pulling it off brilliantly. At this point in his career, Hornsby could easily coast on writing cozy songs and settling for that. Thankfully for us, he's still up for an adventure.

Jason Heller - April 8, 2019
NPR (npr.org)
 

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