Dream Box

Product Information

But surely Artificial Intelligence also has dangers? He gives a balanced answer: “I know everyone is freaking out about it but for me it is a unique set of possibilities. It will need a lot of decisions on how It gets utilised and the way it gets disseminated.” Meanwhile, Metheny has a host of tour dates lined up in the U.S. and Europe with his Side-Eye Trio. Launched in 2016 as a platform for up-and-coming players, this iteration features pianist Chris Fishman and drummer Joe Dyson. The Side-Eye tour begins in June and moves to Europe in July. Beginning in September, Metheny launches a fall tour in support of Dream Box with destinations throughout the U.S. The focus here is on electric guitar, but maybe more to the point; quiet electric guitar. It is an area of particular interest for me. A goal has always been to have a touch on the electric that might get me as close to the kind of phrase-by-phrase dynamics that can occur naturally with an acoustic instrument. In fact, using an electric in this way is quite a bit harder than what occurs naturally with an acoustic. There is one more step between the touch of the player and the listener that has to be accounted for.

Dream Box is Pat Metheny's third date for BMG's Modern Recordings, a set of nine solo tunes for electric guitar, drawn from a folder on his laptop's hard drive. Metheny often records new ideas, covers, or standards by playing them once. During 160 days of touring in 2022, he had ample time to survey the folder's contents. He was surprised when the music he had little memory of recording revealed these "moments in time" as an organic whole. Further, all but one original had compositional roots in the method utilized on "Unity Village" on 1976's Bright Size Life -- an initial harmonic scheme buoyed by a second offering melodic and improvisational sequences. This program contains six original compositions, two standards, and a cover. Longtime fans will find little save for guitar tone in common with earlier solo records such as 1979's New Chautauqua or 2011's What's It All About. It does bear aesthetic and emotional relation to 2004's One Quiet Night, a set of ballads recorded at home solo on an acoustic baritone guitar. In contrast to the introspection and insularity of the aforementioned companion pieces to this LP (as well as the raging cacophony in the contractual fulfillment that is 1994’s Zero Tolerance For Silence), there’s an overriding sense of this newly-formulated compilation as PatMetheny’s unconscious capture of the essence of people, places and things gleaned from his global jaunts.But dreams in their broadest sense make up the vibe with this set. Music exists for me in an elusive state, often at its best when discovered apart from any particular intention. Metheny has recorded some 50 albums has won 20 Grammy s in 12 different categories. It was while on one of his many tours that the guitarist began rummaging through recordings to compile Dream Box. Dream Box follows 2021’s studio album Road to the Sun and live recording Side-Eye NYC, making it the third release on Metheny’s own record label Modern Records, an imprint of BMG. The new compositions are highlights, tracing their central motifs to unexpected destinations. While some of Metheny’s best original work this century has spoken to his ambition as a composer (2005’s The Way Up), his aim here is for simple but immersive mood-setting. After an introduction of electric guitar against chiming, slightly dissonant acoustic chords, the gorgeous “Ole & Gard” swiftly finds its feet and cycles through various settings to return to a recurring bluesy refrain. “From the Mountains” is more formless but just as memorable, navigating its eight-minute runtime with a dreamy sense of focus: The effect is like watching the sun rise over an unfamiliar city, new contours filling in as the light starts to spread. For an artist whose name has become synonymous with sleek, smooth hyper-technicality—your guitar teacher’s favorite guitarist—Metheny remains underrated for his unending drive to experiment and challenge himself. While his feathery style on the fretboard remains as distinctive as his robust and permanently windswept mane, no two of his records involve quite the same approach, whether that means finding new collaborators, new instrumentation, or on releases like Dream Box, new ways to channel his creative process.

In a sequence of events Pat describes so straightforwardly on the single double-sided sheet insert within the CD, the Missouri native played each piece no more than once on an electric guitar and a baritone instrument. Meanwhile, long-time engineer and collaborator Pete Karam recorded, mixed, and mastered the six original pieces and three outside compositions in consultation with a former member of a latter-day Pat Metheny Group, bassist Steve Rodby. Metheny made one point very clearly in an interview with LJN via Zoom. Whereas he writes a lot of tunes, he always submits them to his own tough test. He needs to be persuaded that the tune is strong and robust enough for him to want to go out on stage and play it at least 150 times. And most of the tunes he writes, he says, don’t pass that personal and self-imposed test. Or as he expresses it: “The batting average for the standard that I hope to aspire to is low.”I have over 50 CDs and singles on Pandora, Spotify, iTunes, YouTube and other global music curators. He remembers having learnt and evolved his self-critical approach originally from observing and discussing Steve Swallow. Metheny remembers being surprised by some of the tunes which Swallow would reject. These days he identifies much more with that kind of self-critical rigour. Usually, the only time I get to listen to my own stuff is while on the road. I often say I live on output, with little or no time for input. That changes on tour, where suddenly there seems to be more free hours in the day, albeit on a bus or in some far-flung hotel room. Occasionally, those moments offer a chance to rummage around in the files to see if anything interesting may lie there.