Reviewed by Kerry Blewett
It’s nice to see that one of my all-time favourite drummers is still swinging, or should I say, still funking, which is for me, the genre of music that Billy Cobham has become best known for. The other two musos in this trio, Bill Bickford on guitars and Wolfgang Schmid on bass are unknown names to me. At least that was the case until I did some Internet research and discovered that they have a wealth of albums and projects under their respective belts.
This album was recorded live in Istanbul (as far as I can determine) in 1998. It is a vibrant affair and a very clear recording. The performance is incredibly slick especially considering the complexity of the playing. Whether or not there were any over-dubs before the CD was pressed is not clear but it sounds really “live” with some audience noise coming through during the songs.
I struggled for a while to think of how I was going to critique the individual songs and then finally gave up. There seems to be no sense in trying to describe the playing on each song, these guys are just awesome. What I found particularly pleasing was that the songs and arrangements do not represent simply a display of technique but are really catchy and exciting to listen to.
From my research, it appears that this is a once-off recording of Cobham playing with the other two. I was also astounded to see the quantity of projects listed on the Internet when doing a search on Billy Cobham, he has been incredibly busy over the years.
For those who are not in the know, Bill Bickford on guitar is right up there with John Petrucci and Michael Landau, I hope I’m not insulting anyone here. Wolfgang Schmid on bass also plays with a huge array of other musicians and I found his website www.wolfgangschmid.com very interesting. He is one of the more exciting bass players when it comes to the solo pieces.