FMP’s release schedule doggedly continues to play catch up with the late-1990s editions of the label’s flagship festival, the Total Music Meeting. The New York ensemble Other Dimensions in Music was scheduled to play the 1999 event; when drummer Rashied Bakr couldn’t make it, the quartet was filled out for the occasion by Alan Silva, playing synthesizer and piano. The concert has now been released under the logical but evocative title Fractured Dimensions.

It is in many ways a curiously off-balance encounter. Parker, Campbell and Carter seem inclined to brood on this occasion: the four long improvisations (the first subdivided into three shorter tracks) all mine a similar vein of fragile, drifting melancholy. Much of the album’s interest lies in Silva’s unpredictable and varied responses to the prevailing mood. On synth he scribbles all over the music with hysterical everywhichway synth-strings, or launches clattering fusillades of tympani. On piano he is sometimes similarly active; just as often, though, he confines himself to doomy tolling-bell chords. The clashes of instrumental colour between Silva and the rump of Other Dimensions are intriguing and often invigorating, although the disc’s most successful episode is the start of “Acrosses Rain,” where there is a closer and subtler timbral blend – flute, muted trumpet, bowed bass, piano and jangling flashes of synth.

Like most 78-minute albums, this one has its dead spots. Despite its promising opening and some strong episodes, “Acrosses Rain”, simply runs out of gas before it reaches its end (a full 34 minutes later). Carter also robs the music of some much-needed colour by performing on trumpet for most of that track and for most of the 16-minute closer “Sonnet for Armstrong.” On “Sonnet” Silva plays with incredible fury, as if to compensate, but the piece’s coda is again too long and drawn-out.

Fractured Dimensions is an “interesting” rather than entirely successful record. That said, fans of Other Dimensions in Music or (especially) of Silva will find it a fascinating document.

Nate Dorward

Cadence, April 2004