Album: Pat Metheny, Orchestrion (Nonesuch)

Reviewed,Phil Johnson
Sunday 24 January 2010 01:00 GMT
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The guitarist's latest project, which he brings to London's Barbican on 10 February, is a meisterwerk or folie de grandeur according to taste.

Using the old idea of a multi-voiced mechanical music-machine – the orchestrion of the title – Metheny commissioned various scientists and engineers to create new instrumental hybrids and wrote a solo suite to showcase them. Of course, it all sounds exactly like the Pat Metheny we already know and love/hate.

The opening is great, but if you're not a fan the spell soon wears off.

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