(Fusion, Contemporary Jazz) Animation - Transparent Heart - 2012, WEB, FLAC (tracks), lossless

With his second release for this UK-based progressive record label, award-winning saxophonist/composer/bandleader Bob Belden nurtures and perhaps challenges a youthful cast of musicians who are graduates from his alma mater, the University of North Texas. Moving further east, however, the premise for the production, resides within Belden's impressionistic sensibilities of Manhattan.
Belden's jazz-fusion applications paint a sinister viewpoint of the Big Apple, where intermittent rays of light slice through foreboding alleyways and busy thoroughfares. Here, the ensemble melds steamy contrasts with in-your-face-like grooves amid spacey electronic keys segments, simmering horns and polychromatic montages.
Marked by a concentrated focus, the musicians pay attention to detail; hence, the animation component becomes an underlying mantra as Belden's articulate arrangements are countered by the soloists' neural approach to improvisation. In a loose sense, he urges his young ensemble beyond an institutional setting.
The title track is indicative of the album's overall presentation, although each piece stands on its own. Abetted by drummer Matt Young's crisp stick work and polyrhythmic aplomb, and Roberto Verastegui's ominous electric keys, the ensemble resonates a rite of passage, weaving through the bustling Manhattan streets, as Peter Clagett's muted trumpet aligns with Belden's warm sax parts for a foreboding sequence of choruses, atop the darting rhythmic clusters and subtly melodic movements. Angular, and impacting, the musicians render a gradually climactic foray while emitting a prismatic array of fleeting tone poems during the bridge. Here, they mingle an open-ended panorama with a capacious musical environment that segues to a simmering finale.
Belden's unflappable aura, astute technical abilities, and futuristic vision once again yield notable residuals during this fascinating encounter, designed with highly artistic qualities and augmented by the respective artists' killer chops. (Glenn Astarita)

Coming off of not one but two albums of the same live concert performing the songs of Bitches Brew, Bob Belden decided to wipe the slate clean on his exciting, hard-hitting fusion band Animation and turn inward for inspiration. “This record is not a jazz record, it’s about my life in Manhattan,” is how Belden plainly describes the new Animation album. Transparent Heart is the first studio Animation record in a decade, and for this most personal of Belden projects he entrusted young, talented musicians from the University of North Texas (Belden’s alma mater) to flesh out his suite of compositions dealing with different episodes or facets of nearly three decades living in the Big Apple.
Joining Belden, who plays sax and flute, is a whole new band: 23-year-old keyboardist Roberto Verastegui, 24-year-old bassist Jacob Smith, 29-year-old trumpeter Pete Clagett and 20-year-old drummer Matt Young. Belden tossed these young men into challenging settings. The songs are all Belden’s, but the approach to music bears a close relationship to how Miles conducted his bands, especially during his classic fusion period. Songs are really broad canvases, on which the musicians are to paint their own brushstrokes without so much forethought that the emotion gets bleached out. There exists a collective spirit in constructing the basic ambience of each song that falls in line with its theme, while individual performances reveal the nuances of the stories.
The opening “Terra Incognito” uses strident, sweaty rock rhythm bumping up against the drawn-out, droning chords of the trumpet, soprano sax and an icy synth wash. The somewhat hopeful tones make way for the uncertainty, fear and friction of “Urbanoia.” It’s here where we first encounter the knotty drum ‘n’ bass hyperkinetic rhythms also heard on “Transparent Heart,” “Seven Towers,” and “Occupy!” which, while very modern, can also be traced to the strange, innovative rhythmic patterns introduced on On The Corner. Young performs well under the spotlight and Smith’s snarling bass completes a sinister groove that the Prince of Darkness surely would have loved. (S. Victor Aaron)