Erik Friedlander's Bonebridge Quartet

Is Bonebridge the result of the fusing of two other Friedlander projects: Broken Arm Trio and Black Ice & Propane? It is, in any case, a felicitous exercise in style, a new and successful evocation of time frozen in travel photographs. Friedlander's obsession with the iconography of Americana results in work with no complexes. Roots music runs through it like a thread, anecdotal and charmingly nostalgic, as an uncomplicated foundation for discriminating compositions. Lovely themes form the basis for fine and sober improvisation that leaves us comfortably mellowed. Stylistically, Friedlander mixes the Southern rock of the Allman Brothers with country blues, John Fahey, Appalachian old-time music and Zorn experiments. Emotion, melody and expressiveness produce beautiful passages of the purest ensemble playing marked not by a grand welter of sound, but by great musical transparency. The way the musicians take turns to ad-lib, moving between rest and action and between melody and rhythm, reflects an extremely slick combination of millisecond timing and the expression of gut feeling. Light, open, natural. An ultrafine balance predominates, particularly in the unique harmonizing of the cello and slide-guitar tandem.