What The Press Is Saying About Mylab

CD: Mylab Terminus Records (2004)

TOP 10 JAZZ CDs of 2004
The keyboardist Wayne Horvitz and the percussionist Tucker Martine join a host of musician friends and stir up a mess of sounds.  You can occasionally make out the individual contributions of such stellar guests as Bill Frisell, Bobby Previte, and Robin Holcomb, but isolating parts from the whole misses the point.  It may not all be jazz, but it is all strangely absorbing.
The New Yorker, January 10, 2005

It's easy to tell how the pieces on Mylab (Terminus) began: as vamps and loops for jamming in the studio.  Yet it's impossible to guess where they’ll end up.   Mylab's core duo, the keyboardist Wayne Horvitz and the drummer Tucker Martine, refuse to settle into their own grooves; they add unlikely overdubs, dissolve the track's foundations and flesh out musical connotations from country fiddle to big-band saxophones.  Every free association yields a new treat.
Jon Pareles, New York Times 4/4/04

This is a brilliantly conceived and superbly produced debut album that indicates Martine and Horvitz’s musical future will be a major thrill.
PVV, Billboard Magazine 2/7/04

Talk about a sonic experiment gone horribly right, check out this supernatural melding of genres from Mylab.  All I know is that their debut album is the most imaginative collage of groove, melody, harmony, and texture I’ve heard in a long time.
Jude Gold, Guitar Player 2/04

... a dazzling sonic playground full of some wild rides.  Mylab stretches the art of sound collage into new frontiers.
Ned Wharton, NPR Weekend Edition Editor’s Picks 2/04

Eclectic studio mix-ins are commonplace now, so it’s the material not the concept that makes or breaks the disc.  This one stand above most - all over the map, with gloriously perverse genre mixes, sophisticated emotional overlays and a sense of humor.  If Brian Eno’s Fourth World concept had been as global as it professed, it might have produced something like this.
John Corbett, Down Beat 3/04

A grooving and experimental jazz romp with heavy doses of world and electronic music styles.  They have enlisted all-star group of friends, including Bill Frisell, Danny Barnes, Robin Holcomb and many, many more to assemble this glorious pastiche of extended grooves and rambling melodies.
Clay Steakley, Performing Songwriter 2/04

This is sonic alchemy of the highest order. Well done.
Sean Westergaard, All Music Guide

Mylab venture down seldom-trod paths of musical adventurousness.
Dave Segal, Jazz Times 2/04

Mylab offers 12 jazz-influenced tracks that are unusual, smart but not over-produced, and, well, a bit hard to describe.  You can bet you haven’t heard anything like this before.
Elaine McArdle, Amplifier 2/04

It’s both a logical extension of Horvitz and Martine’s previous work and an intriguing sidestep.
Michaelangelo Matos, Seattle Weekly 2/11/04

The result is a fascinating hybrid of avant-jazz, free fun, and electronic manipulation that never settles for a single sound but slips easily and successfully between genres.
Brian Baker, Paste Magazine 2/7/04

My big pick for next week is Seattle’s Mylab and their self-titled debut, a fantastic landscape of haunted pop-instrumentals from the duo of pianist Wayne Horvitz and producer Tucker Martine.  Like Morphine meets the Latin Playboys side-project of Los Lobos, this Terminus Records release is mastercraft sound architecture and worth searching out.
Positively Yeah Yeah Yeah (Ohio)

This back from the future roots music is fundamentally folk music merging the studio with the field recordings.  Placing the fiddle, the dobro, and the banjo alongside these clever studio creations is the genius of this recording.
Mark Corroto, All About Jazz.com 3/04

Filling a niche nobody (but them) knew existed, Tucker Martine and Wayne Horvitz have made a trippy instrumental album conversant with rock, jazz, bluegrass and the intangible music known as "ambient".  Sounds messy, right?  It is, but in a wonderful kind of way.  They’ve done a remarkable job pulling together disparate genres, creating a sound collage that makes sense.
Nick Marino, Atlanta Journal Constitution 2/17/04

They’ve concocted a thouroughly mind-bending, genre-obliterating disc just about equally emphasizing groove, melody, and pure sound.  But Mylab does not sound like a de-constructionist take on old-time music (a la Moby)... it is extremely intoxicating.
Eric Snider, Tampa Weekly Planet 2/04