Medeski, Martin and Wood: The Dropper

By GRAHAM REID

(Herald rating: * * * * )

As with Haines, American trio Medeski, Martin and Wood have moved around musically over the past decade also.

Hit the random play button on most of their albums and you'd be forgiven for thinking you were hearing a different group on each track.

These days they are as likely to appear on a bill with Beck and the Foo Fighters as be at the Newport Jazz Festival or a Burt Bacharach tribute concert. They may play acoustic trio stuff sometimes, but they also have a keen, and rare, feel for free jazz.

And that's where they are at right now with The Dropper, which finds them further out on the edge with tracks that scour away at the difficult end of the improv spectrum (such as the noisy, seven-minute opener We Are Rolling).

But they also haul down a loose-limbed rhythmic component on Big Time (the title alone suggesting New Orleans funk) and a comparatively straight-ahead bossa groove on Note Bleu.

The guest list gives some clues to the musical reach: saxophonist Marshall Allen, who squirrels and squirts alto lines over the boiling bass rhythms of Felic, played with Sun Ra, and guitarist Marc Ribot has played on some of Tom Waits' more out-there albums. Co-producer is Scotty Hard, who engineered Wu-Tang Clan and PM Dawn albums.

MMW can comfortably do the acoustic jazz trio thing (check their recent Tonic), but here they use the studio as an instrument and experiment with styles from avant-funk to fusion and hip-hop. And the final track Norah 6 has a string trio playing an eerie and discordant scrape over a percussion loop - nicely disconcerting as a closer.

The Dropper isn't easy, but it certainly acts like the sonic equivalent of a colour chart and is a gritty grower.

Label: Blue Note/EMI