Catler Bros .

Every so often something sneaks in under the radar undetected and no
one seems to notice that a paradigm shift has occurred... that
someone's seriously upped the collective ante.

Once upon a time, David Torn brought Eddie Van Halen to jazz guitar
with his playing on the Everyman Band records, and he did it with
style and verve. This is an accomplishment that directly parallels
Larry Coryell and John McLaughlin enriching the jazz guitar lexicon by
embracing the innovations of Jimi Hendrix, but in this case hardly
anyone seemed to notice and few would follow suit. That doesn't
diminish the accomplishment, however. Not one bit.

Jon Catler's playing on the Catler Bros. "Crash Landing" is a similar
accomplishment. Catler is the first guitarist to bring Just Intonation
to jazz guitar. And like Torn, he too ups the ante with style and verve.

Catler has been developing his very personal approach to microtonality
since he was a student at Berklee College of Music in the late 70s.
He's a member of the legendary La Monte Young's Forever Bad Blues Band
he recently had his "Evolution for Electric Guitar and Orchestra"
recorded with Grammy award winning conductor Joel Thome.

The Catler Bros. is a trio made up of (what else) brothers Jon and
Brad Catler and drummer Jonathan Kane. The music is a stripped down,
raw and punchy jazz-rock with a compositional aesthetic somewhat
reminiscent of early Ornette.

On "Crash Landing" Catler primarily plays a Schecter Strat that
utilizes a 49-tone just intonation tuning system of his own design,
and the effect of hearing this tuning is somewhat akin to suddenly
seeing alarmingly vivid colors that you never knew existed. Catler's a
gifted, classy player too, and his measured yet forceful work on
"Crash Landing" often suggests some prismatic mean of Ornette Coleman
and Jeff Beck.

Jazz guitar doesn't have to pretend that everything post-Hendrix never
happened. But it really doesn't matter either: "Crash Landing" is a
landmark recording with or without the recognition.

At 09:45 AM 12/11/2006, you wrote:
>Every so often something sneaks in under the radar undetected and no
>one seems to notice that a paradigm shift has occurred... that
>someone's seriously upped the collective ante.

I noticed. It's one of my top five favorite microtonal albums...
has been since its release in 1997. Easily the best of Catler's
stuff. A link to buy it was on my home page for upwards of 5 years.

-Carl