Will Bernard and Motherbug

Description

Product Description

A long time Bay Area musician, guitarist/ composer Will Bernard first came to prominence through his membership in Peter Apfelbaum's Hieroglyphics Ensemble, with a host of boundary stretching groups, ranging from jazz, hip hop and world music to experimental, with many stops in between. He has performed and recorded with Jai Uttal and the Pagan Love Orchestra, Peter Apfelbaum's various band incarnations, Beth Custer, The Coup and Midnight Voices to name a few. The most successful of these was the group T.J. Kirk (with Charlie Hunter) whose second record for Warner Bros. 'If Four Was One' was nominated for a Grammy in 1997. Will released his debut CD as a leader, 'Medicine Hat', in 1998 on Verve/ Antilles.

Review

“Like Galactic, and Medeski, Martin and Wood, Will Bernard and Motherbug is a tough, contemporary jazz-funk project, but it goes way further. If anything, Bernard would have been right at home playing guitar with Jaco Pastorius because this is punk jazz if it ever existed: huge, knotty grooves, rippling, taut basslines, fat under-the-beat keyboard lines, and Bernard's guitar alternately cutting in and soaring over the mix. Bernard is one of the most rhythm-conscious soloists on the instrument. And he will, as is evidenced here over and again, milk a groove to death — until it comes out on the other side and is resurrected — somehow transmuted — into something else entirely.” –Thom Jurek, All Music Guide