MMW's Radiolarian set: Who you callin' a jam band?

For better or worse, Medeski, Martin and Wood have always found themselves in a strange musical place. Well, strange when it comes to categorization, that is.

The band first rose to prominence as an opening act for the jam band Phish. With that gig and the very danceable soul/funk album Shackman (Rykodisk, 1996) the trio of keyboardist John Medeski, drummer Billy Martin and bassist Chris Wood became a hippy favorite. Their odd birdlike symbol could be found on legion VWs, Volvos and any other vehicle with a bike or ski rack attached to its roof. They were lumped in with jam bands like Phish, Rusted Root (remember them?), Blues Traveller and all the other ‘90s Horde Tour regulars.

Yet despite its entre into the jam band scene, MMW never really belonged. They have always taken themselves more seriously. Yes, MMW always circle back to fundamental rhythms rooted in funk, soul and blues, but they do so with what is sometimes devious experimental abandon. Following the band’s rhythmically ambient and dancy Combustication, recorded with DJ Logic, the band released The Dropper, which is remarkably experimental and chaotic. It finds the trio really pushing the envelope of not only what kind of form can be considered music, but what sounds can be musical.

It was after The Dropper was released that I caught the band at the Electric Factory and they assaulted the amassed hippy/dance crowd with nearly 45 minutes (or at least it felt that long) of loud, formless, throbbing discord. It was thrilling stuff for anyone into experimental jazz. Every time they started to coalesce into a conventional rhythm, the band would break down into drumbeats that resembled the whole kit being tossed violently down a set of stairs while Medeski worked what on stage appears to be a mountain of keyboards and effects processors into all sorts of otherworldly chirps and electric burps. The Phish-heads were visibly disappointed, which made the show all the more enjoyable for me.

This month’s release of the Roadiolarians series box set will likely do more of the same for the casual fan looking for something he can throw on the CD player during a backyard barbecue. There are a few trademark funky jams here among the 29 studio tracks (The set will include all three Radiolarians albums, a new, live album and a documentary film about the band) but the album is primarily free-form, experimental and in some places charts new and really interesting territory for the band.

For those unfamiliar with the Radiolarians series, it consists of three full-length albums the band recorded over the course of 18 months in what was really a reverse process. They workshopped the songs on the road before documenting them in the studio. Each was released separately on the band’s new record label, Indirecto. (I doubt a conventional label would ever have let them record and release this material the way they did.)

The 29 recorded tracks on this set are an awful lot to catch up on if you find it suddenly dropped in your lap. Unlike Much of MMW’s work over the last 15 years, Radiolarians finds the band shifting gears often, mixing up their trademark funk and soul with afro-cuban, ambient and straight rock rhythms. The rock songs here are the ones that really made me stop and listen through the first few listens. “Reliquary” on the first disk, “Flat Tire” on disk two and “Undone” on disk three. Moments of “Undone,” which features Wood a distorted, electric bass (something a sound he uses more frequently here) sound a lot like the post-rock of Tortoise.

The band has a lot of fun, too. On disk three, it tackles the old spiritual "Satan Your Kingdom Must Come Down" -- a favorite of bluegrass pickers and once sung by Wilco's Jeff Tweedy on his old band Uncle Tupelo's acoustic March 16-20 1992 -- with a New Orleans piano stomp, but the melody is on a fuzzed out (again) electric bass. It has to be heard to be believed.

Unlike The Dropper, MMW is not experimenting with chaos here. And it's not trying to satisfy a particular fan group. Its approach is a wide-open sonic palette in which anything three musicians can do with their instruments is attempted. The band here is at the top of its form in an extensive collection of performances that reward multiple listens. It's not music you can dance to, and it's not the kind of music you can put on while "entartaining." And that's a good thing.