Dennis Rea: Views from Chicheng Precipice

Seattle-based guitarist Dennis Rea discloses a 360-degree U-turn, contrasting his work with the hemi-powered progressive rock and jazz fusion bands, Iron Kim Style and Moraine. Rea's Asian-derived fusion—of rock, avant-garde, Asian folk and Western classical concepts—spawns a translucent and rather kaleidoscopic genre-busting sequence of musical events.

The album opener "Three Views from Chicheng Precipice (after Bai Juyi)," establishes Rea's distinct Asian paradigms, integrated with percussion, strings, woodwinds and off-kilter metrics. He incorporates a myriad of tonal contrasts into his writing, and intersperses dashes of blues and rock into the slightly humble overtones. With textural treatments and his airy, ethereal and distortion-laced lines, the guitarist reformulates the primary melody throughout, and helps finalize the piece with fuzz-toned phrasings, in unison with the strings section. Having spent time in Asia, Rea's insightful interpretations of Asian music is broadly morphed into a nouveau—and largely, fascinating—program.