Miroslav Vitous - Universal Syncopations II

2007 release

The enduring fascination with music is the wow factor. It usually comes when you least expect it. You're hungover, dog-tired, nursing a cold, at an unpromising gig, and suddenly the music renders you gobsmacked. Of course, there's plenty of stuff that's enjoyable, stimulating, exciting or sufficiently angst-ridden to prod you out of your comfort zone, but that's not wow. Universal Syncopations II is wow.

Despite the unpromising title - see what I mean by arriving when you least expect it? - it's not like anything you've heard before. OK, there are allusions to this, that and the other throughout the album, but on close examination these turn out to be reference points from Vitous's extremely distinguished past.

A classical bass virtuoso from the former Czechoslovakia who took up jazz, he slipped under the Iron Curtain to the States, played with Miles Davis, founded Weather Report (among the most remarkable bands of the past 40 years) and returned to Europe, where he recorded a slew of classic ECM albums. So you get the whole kit and caboodle - classical, jazz, orchestral colours a la Weather Report, enigmatic rhythms - used as jumping-off points into the future. The crowd sample that opens the album morphs into a rush of musical ideas, with choirs, splashes of strings, and Randy Brecker's trumpet and Bob Mintzer's sax taking it in turns to come to the fore. On tracks such as 'Prayer' and 'Solar Giant', shards of stinging melody mutate into fully formed songs before engaging in dialogue with Vitous's bass and sax.

Rhapsodic and inventive, Universal Syncopations II suggests that Vitous might have stumbled on a new form of music. Either way, you can't help but keep returning to this strange, hypnotic and uplifting hybrid.

Stuart Nicholson
https://www.theguardian.com/music/2007/jul/15/popandrock11