WD-41+2: Temi Per Cinema (2010)

Glenn Astarita

Senior Contributor since 1997

Longtime contributor to AAJ and Downbeat, Jazz Review, EjazzNews, Radio DirectX.

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Published: December 14, 2010

Temi Per Cinema is the follow-up to guitarist Willie Oteri and trumpeter Dave Laczko's self-produced WD-41 (2009), with the addition of lap steel dulcimer and beat jockey artist Dino J.A. Deane and drummer Scott Amendola. Collectively, the musicians have been at the forefront of new music-making, amid variable flavors and shades, bordering on the avant-garde, jazz-rock, electronica and other intertwining genres. Here, the WD-41+2 unit expands upon applications and concepts, first evidenced on the 2009 effort.

At times, Oteri and Laczko summon up notions of trumpeter Jon Hassell's legacy, via dark horns, sweeping electronics and atmospheric textures. But the differentiator here pertains to the musicians' portrayal of a portentous storyline, which could serve as the soundtrack to an avant, sci-fi video game. Featuring Oteri's detailed phrasings, budding undercurrents and Hendrix-like blasts, to coincide with Laczko's harrowing lines, the program offers a foreboding outlook composed of oscillating ventures into a vast neural network.

The band spawns a whirlwind abyss of fractured themes and scowling accents. On "AA-5," Laczko's stilted notes lead the charge atop a slowly climactic series of events, contrasted by loops, and the guitarist's deft single note attack, while Deane and Amendola execute unearthly underpinnings, often laying out a broad spectrum of ethereal treatments.

Each track bleeds into the next, mainly from a contextual standpoint. It's a program steeped within a deviant, ambient-electronica factor. Oteri and associates research diametrically-opposed angles and a swirling architecture, extending similar frameworks, rendered by others, into a herculean endeavor, offset by a take-no-prisoners approach. They accelerate the roads previously traversed into a frenetic cosmic experience on Temi Per Cinema.

Track Listing: U-5; Bb-2; Q-1; W-1a; W-5; W-1a; t-6; Aa-5; Q-2; Aa-4.

Personnel: Willie Oteri: guitars, live loops; Dave Laczko: trumpet, effects; Dino J.A. Deane: lap steel dulcimer, beat jockey; Scott Amendola: drums, percussion.

Record Label: Self Produced