Hell's Kitchen Park

Album review

Originally released in the early '90s in the U.S.A., the Japanese P-Vine label picked this up for reissue in 1998. Of the many Loren Mazzacane Conners CDs released during the decade, this is a quintessential recording that stands out in his discography as a classic. The prolific avant-garde/blues guitarist achieved mastery with this short and subdued audio map of the N.Y.C. district which is inspired and evocative. Here the subtle guitarist works with a much cleaner and direct sound than the distorted eruptions that would surface on later recordings. The effect is a sparse and sublime meandering through a series of short melodic interludes, and while these clock in most under three minutes on the CD player, it is often hard to distinguish the transitions between tracks, as the music is built around long suspended silences. Hence Hell's Kitchen Park is one short album, but a very strong and cohesive piece when viewed as a whole. A magnificent example of the prolific guitarist's more reduced work, and this release comes highly recommended to the curious as an entry point into the expansive world of the "Martian blues" guitarist, a field all his own. Though a similar quality is touched in the solo works of Marc Ribot and Bill Frisell, Mazzacane Connors works in his own corner of the musical universe and has achieved one of the most progressive voices in solo guitar recordings of the '80s and '90s.
© Skip Jansen /TiVo