I meant to write about this pair of new albums from electric bass master Victor Wooten a couple of months ago. This past week, I failed to go see him perform live in Seattle, and I'm disappointed about that. Procrastination mixed with being too busy. In the end, I didn't really want to leave the family for the evening when this overseas trip got added to the mix.
Anyway, Victor concurrently released a pair of albums in September 2012. They form a really interesting concept, by releasing much of the same music in two forms on complementary albums.
Sword and Stone is a mostly instrumental release. Its complement is Words and Tones, which presents mostly the same songs with vocals. Victor points out in interviews that the two titles are formed from the same letters, rearranged.
As an aside, I hadn't seen any mention of this, but when writing this article I realized that Victor is known for playing a Yin/Yang style bass (such as shown at right), and that this pair of albums really does represent the Yin and Yang of instrumental and vocal performance. Very cool.
At the time of the release, I wasn't willing to pay for two albums at once from the same artist. I test listened to the tracks of both, and ended up instead buying half of each album. For the most part I bought the same songs in both instrumental and vocal forms.
My music friends know me as the guy who really doesn't listen to vocals. I'm pretty satisfied with instrumental music, but I have to admit that it gets a bit boring, and vocals add something significant to the experience. I still don't necessarily listen to the meaning of the words, though.
After listening to both sets of music, my conclusion is that I quite like both. Frankly the singers on some of the Words and Tones album are barely good enough, but I found they grew on me. After all, most of the great 70s rock that I loved was sung by less than perfect voices.
Anyway, Victor's playing is excellent, as always, and the music is pretty great. My one peeve is that there is an extended bass solo in the middle of one of the best tracks on the album Keep It Low. In my view it's the sort of thing you can get away with live, but it detracts from the studio album.
Check it out. Feel the groove...