BUCKETHEAD — The Dragons Of Eden (with Travis Dickerson and Brain) (review)

BUCKETHEAD — The Dragons Of Eden (with Travis Dickerson and Brain) album cover

Album · 2008 · Non-Metal

4/5 · 2017-10-07
siLLy puPPy

Another day, another album in the BUCKETHEAD universe. Well, at least in 2008 when this one was released he was spending more time collaborating on others’ album rather than releasing his own. Technically the chicken lover only released one album “Albino Slug” under his own name that year but with the same exact line-up as that one he released THE DRAGONS OF EDEN which in this case gave equal billing to both TRAVIS DICKERSON (keyboards) and BRAIN (drums). Not credited in the billing but contributing the cello is Cameron Stone. Keeping in line with his restless eclectic nature, the chicken lover creates something unusual in his canon by tackling the jazz-fusion category with THE DRAGONS OF EDEN which from the look of the cover made me think that this might be some sort of Traditional Chinese music type of album! So wrong i was :P BTW, the album title comes from the Carl Sagan book from 1977.

THE DRAGONS OF EDEN has a rather retro 70’s funk rock meets jazz-fusion vibe accompanied by a funk metal guitar riff and a seemingly out of place lugubrious sounding cello that haunts the otherwise jocularity of the feel good funk vibe. Add to that traces of boogie woogie and other piano tinkling along with retro mellotron sounding organ runs and we are in for a somewhat familiar but also strange wild ride! All the tracks are instantly infectious as the funky jazz nature of the tracks reels you in and lets you settle into the pace of things rather quickly. Some of the keyboard runs are straight out of the Chic Corea playbook and it all sounds like an odd mishmash of a organ dominated prog brands of the 70s with Return To Forever coming to mind, however nothing gets super complex on this one as all the tracks are very light-hearted and free flowing into jam band mode. The whole affair sounds like an organic spontaneous flow of energy during a few short rehearsals so don’t expect something highly developed.

The result of all the mixing of genre styles allows a very surreal experience for this one. I can’t think of a single jazz-fusion type of album where psychedelic early 70s organs so energetically dance around the funky rhythms and guitar passages accompanied by a prominent chamber rock type of cello sound. The four musicians leapfrog around each others’ leads so gracefully and despite the music being fairly simple to grasp becomes quite complex just by certain instruments passing the baton to the next and then backing up their fellow band members. This is one of the most pleasant and even uplifting types of jazz-fusion albums i’ve ever heard. It doesn’t have a shred of technical alienation that some types of music do and on the contrary has a very warm inviting feel mostly due to the fuzzy warm organ parts that make me feel like there are fresh cupcakes at Grandma’s house! If you told me this was some unknown artist from the early 70s, i’d totally believe it but this album came out in 2008. Great retro job guys! This is a great one at sounding retro but totally original simultaneously.