Bozzio Levin Stevens - Situation Dangerous

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Artist:	Bozzio Levin Stevens
Title:	Situation Dangerous
Label:	Magna Carta MA-9049-2
Length(s):	48 minutes
Year(s) of release:	2000
Month of review:	07/2000

Line up

Terry Bozzio - drums
Tony Levin - bass, stick
Stevie Stevens - guitar

Tracks

1)	Dangerous	6.38
2)	Endless	10.09
3)	Crash	5.08
4)	Spiral	4.36
5)	Melt	3.37
6)	Tragic	6.58
7)	Tziganne	4.26
8)	Lost	6.24

Summary

One of the weirdest things is that I do not own their first album. This is weird because Levin is my favourite bass player and Bozzio my favourite drummer (sorry Stevie). Nothing can go wrong one might think. However, I do remember now not being entirely happy with other project such as Age Of Impact and Liquid Tension.

The music

Dangerous opens enthiustically with full blown guitar work, heavy washes of percussion and a pumping bass. The bass work also becomes more fluent and melodic at times, then the music winds a bit down, but not too much. Notwithstanding the amount of sound produced by this fearless threesome, the music is melodic. After a minute or two the song winds down to slow percussion and easy bass. In this intermezzo I hear something akin to keyboards, very melodic, but no credits are given for keyboards. Then the track returns full-blown. Great tension build-up again. The fast paced follow up is maniacal and hard to describe. Levin follows up with some cello to boot and I guess Stevens rounds of the track with intense high pitched sounds. An amazing track. Endless opens in world music style, again quite melodic and a bit moody. The song sounds very acoustic here, but soon an easy electric guitar (or something) sets in and the song gets a bit of a bluesy, spacey feel. After a small bass, the music becomes a bit fiddly and then a terrific melodic guitar sets in. Reminds me of Hackett in Genesis weirdly enough. After a return to the pointed acoustic guitar Stevens returns with some dark build-up on guitar and solo's over his own rhythm guitar. The music plods on. Not as amazing as the first track, but a good compilation of what these guys can do. What do you think of a title such as Crash. Well you're right, but its not just guitar noise here and loud pounding percussion, because not only is the drumming quite off-beat, Stevens also plays some terrific melodic licks as well. There's even some racing sounds in here. Taking some gas back AFTER the crash may seem a bit stupid, but that's just what they do. There's some Greek overtones in this track in the extremely fast acoustic guitar, a part one might consider as the chorus of this instrumental. Bozzio very lightfootedly follows the acoustic guitar around. On this track also one can detect the love of flamenco shared by Stevens and Bozzio. Melt is a short acoustic continuation, a bit of a moody piece. The song then evolves into a distorted bluesy solo, the guitar speaking for itself. Intense, while weirdly enough the other instruments stay calm. Tragic opens with a rather familiar melody and sounds quite atmospheric. The guitar sound is somewhat Frippish, but the song is not, it's too melodic. Now Bozzio is allowed some room for improvisation and he does so with verve. The most accessible melody we find on this track, which becomes quite empathic at halfway. Then the track takes a turn and becomes more free of form, while at the end we return to the moody beginning. Flamenco really features on the acoustic Tziganne. This is something one hardly ever hears on a prog record (there are bands who make flamenco styled prog, mind you), but in this case it stays acoustic and this makes for good listening to what the guys are actually playing. The closer of this album is Lost. This track enjoys a nice dark build-up with the electric guitars, until we reach the plateau where the music plods on for a while. The music is rather repetitive with slight variations until a distorted guitar takes over and leads the way unto what else beautiful may come. The music becomes quite thunderous and works as a closing parenthesis to the amazing opener. Some of the sounds on this one seem to come from keyboard and one might even find in the harder modern music (like Prodigy).

In the bio often Crimson is noted as a reference, but strangely enough (I see KC in everything) I don't see it like that. Okay, there's some dark guitar stuff here and the music at times has this dark power and building tension, but especially if I compare this to current KC, then the distinction are even larger.

The production is very clear and the diverse instruments are very audible even on my limited set.

Conclusion

By far the best of the project albums (LTE, Age Of Impact,...). Not only do these musicians know their way in just about any style, at the top of the league for their respective instruments, but they combine it with a great sense and variety of composition, and, and this is most surprising, a good feel for melody to help the listener latch on and join the ride.