Pat Metheny – Dream Box (2023) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz]

Pat Metheny – Dream Box (2023)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 56:05 minutes | 717 MB | Genre: Jazz
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Modern Recordings

20-time Grammy winner Pat Metheny returns with his most personal record to date ‘Dream Box’ in 2023. ‘Dream Box is an unusual recording for me’, says Pat. ‘A compilation of tracks recorded across a few years. While on tour this past year (2022), I discovered a forgotten folder on my drive. I often make quick recordings of things; a new tune, a new (or old) guitar, a standard tune, or just to try something out. I have a folder where I stash these things, truthfully, usually never to be heard again. The only time I listen to my own stuff is while on the road. I often say I live on output, with little or no time for input. That changes on tour, where suddenly there seems to be more free hours in the day, albeit on a bus or in some far-flung hotel room. Occasionally, those moments offer a chance to rummage around in the files to see if anything interesting may lie there. This past year was a particularly busy travel year for me, with about 160 performances worldwide. In the course of all that travel, I found myself returning to that discovered folder again and again. From those listening sessions, I was surprised to find this program emerging as a coherent whole. I found that I had unintentionally gotten to a destination I had not planned for, and I am excited to share what I found there. These nine tracks were my favorites and added up to something unique for me. I never played anything more than once. These are really moments in time, and in fact, I have almost no memory of having recorded most of them. They just kind of showed up’.

Dream Box is Pat Metheny’s third date for BMG’s Modern Recordings, a set of nine solo tunes for electric guitar, drawn from a folder on his laptop’s hard drive. Metheny often records new ideas, covers, or standards by playing them once. During 160 days of touring in 2022, he had ample time to survey the folder’s contents. He was surprised when the music he had little memory of recording revealed these “moments in time” as an organic whole. Further, all but one original had compositional roots in the method utilized on “Unity Village” on 1976’s Bright Size Life — an initial harmonic scheme buoyed by a second offering melodic and improvisational sequences. This program contains six original compositions, two standards, and a cover. Longtime fans will find little save for guitar tone in common with earlier solo records such as 1979’s New Chautauqua or 2011’s What’s It All About. It does bear aesthetic and emotional relation to 2004’s One Quiet Night, a set of ballads recorded at home solo on an acoustic baritone guitar. One of Metheny’s aesthetic signatures is an often euphoric character in his composing and playing. While that’s absent here, emotion, vulnerability, and poignancy aren’t. The sparse chords and melodic line that introduce opener “The Waves Are Not the Ocean” are gently presented to the listener without adornment save for the dictates of its lyric harmony. The spaces between whispered chord voicings carry the listener’s heart alongside. “From the Mountains” seemingly underscores that flavor with a slightly darker yet more majestic Latin-tinged melody. “Trust Your Angels” is lilting, tender, and expository in its impressionistic use of the blues, à la mentors Jim Hall and Charlie Haden. The first four originals are followed by two elegantly wrought covers. The first is a harmonically and rhythmically re-envisioned reading of Russell Vernon Longstreth’s (aka Russ Long) obscure yacht rock classic “Never Was Love.” Metheny’s version strips away the sheen of pop artifice, revealing the sophisticated nature of its intricate blue melody. Sammy Cahn’s “I Fall in Love Too Easily” is rendered with a similar approach to the one pianist Bill Evans articulated on 1962’s Moon Beams. Metheny’s gentle use of reverb adds an additional multi-phonic voice as he hovers between single string melody, chord changes, and the mysterious innovative shapes he employs as bridges between. The other standard is Luiz Bonfa’s “Morning of the Carnival” (“Manha de Carnival”). Unlike the many jazz versions out there, Metheny’s realization closely adheres to Bonfa’s save for a subtle meld of samba and cumbia rhythms. When Metheny states the melody, he offers contrasting melodic voices on top, culminating in a warm, pointed solo. Set closer “Clouds Can’t Change the Sky” is another listener-enveloping ballad composed in sections. Its lyric statement is followed first by abstraction in tone, texture, and tempo before establishing a second melody from that investigation, resolving them both. The electric guitar ballads on Dream Box offer unvarnished introspection, uncanny musical vision, and gorgeous technique. – Thom Jurek

Tracklist:
1-1. Pat Metheny – The Waves Are Not The Ocean (05:39)
1-2. Pat Metheny – From The Mountains (08:20)
1-3. Pat Metheny – Ole & Gard (06:33)
1-4. Pat Metheny – Trust Your Angels (05:28)
1-5. Pat Metheny – Never Was Love (05:57)
1-6. Pat Metheny – I Fall In Love Too Easily (05:08)
1-7. Pat Metheny – P.C. of Belgium (05:00)
1-8. Pat Metheny – Morning Of The Carnival (06:42)
1-9. Pat Metheny – Clouds Can’t Change the Sky (07:14)

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