Nick Millevoi: Desertion

Hailing from Philadelphia, guitarist Nick Millevoi possesses a comprehensive music vernacular and has recorded albums with the band Many Arms for John Zorn's Tzadik label amid his collaborations with renowned jazz artists and affiliations with other groups. Indeed, he's an adventure seeker and experimentalist. The guitarist employs top-flight session/solo artists, keyboardist Jamie Saft and drummer Ches Smith to round out a tightknit coalition via a program largely erected on brooding thematic currents.

Millevoi's crunching chords, off-center phrasings and Saft's silvery and sweeping organ parts are firmed up by the rhythm section's forceful grooves on several tracks. But the leader keenly sprinkles Americana treatments into various motifs and soundscapes along with subtle EFX treatments and melodic buildups. On "The Big Moment Is Always Out There Waiting," the guitarist shifts gears by performing solely on acoustic guitar. Here, Millevoi integrates texture and dynamics by strumming hard on one chord that basically implies the primary melody. Thoughts of someone sitting on their porch enjoying the solitude of the Great Plains surfaced. It's a not a laidback, dreamy piece but more of a mid-tempo tone poem that imparts another portrait of Millevoi's highly-imaginative artistic frameworks.