Gary Willis
Actual Fiction

About a month ago, a family friend, a big jazz listener, brought me this album with a burgundy cover, saying only three words: "it's a mas***piece". Intrigued by the familiar artist's name, I delved into my research, remembering who Gary Willis really is, the former bassist of the fundamental and enduring band "Tribal Tech", the pinnacle of '80s fusion, blended with blues and the most lively and pleasant funky groove, yet not at all predictable.

Willis' style, explicitly jazz, seems to be rooted in Jaco Pastorius, whose solo structure typical of the "greatest bassist there ever was" is immediately noticeable. With his 5-string fretless Ibanez, Willis has a light and delicate fingering yet at the same time engaging and clean, delivering phrases with great rhythmic continuity.

The album shows the influence of the aforementioned Tribal Tech combined with an electronics that perhaps interferes too much with the musical structures of the tracks. The bass sound in certain pieces is heavily synthesized, to the point of losing meaning, yet it is not a boring and banal album. Willis plays almost all the instruments, except for some drum parts played by Kirk Covington (drummer for the Tribals) and David Gomez. A characteristic of this album is the absence or at least the reduced presence of the acoustic drums since everything is produced with drum machines and triggers. Willis ventures for the first time with new music production and sampling software such as Logic Pro or WaveBurner.

"Cartoon Fetish" is filled with samples and has a genuinely artificial, mathematical, and meticulous sound. The structures are strongly disintegrated, and the sound of the keyboards and bass is heavily distorted. Certainly, an unorthodox track to start an album.

Only with the fourth track "Say Never" does one reach a tranquility that breaks the frantic and mesmerizing rhythm of the album. A pad of keyboards accompanies dreamy fretless bass phrases, and one has the sensation that this piece does not belong to this album. In the phrasing, the bass is clearly Pastorius but without ever losing the penchant for indulging in notes typical of Willis, the dynamics very faintly recall Metheny. Perhaps the most pleasant and listenable track on the album.

"Eye Candy" begins with intricate odd times that help the bass develop very fast and fleeting phrases, which, thanks to the continuous stops, make the structure almost "improvised". The piece continues with an incessant and very pleasant groove, built on the dialogues between drums and bass. Fortunately, in this track, the drums are not triggered but naturally played by Covington (and you can feel the difference).

The unpredictable and long "Mean Streak" is openly fusion, never exaggerating the sampled component, but it has a sustained mood and not too complicated to assimilate.

In "Tio Loco," the bass sound is very round, with a dark timbre and jumpy phrasing with many ghost notes. A piece rich in the usual groove, but nothing truly new.

"Based on a true story" has an almost infernal atmosphere despite presenting a slow but very obsessive and penetrating rhythm, closing the album in a unique way.

Certainly, it's not a perfectly successful album, and it doesn't mark a change of course in the depths of new fusion, but it's definitely worth listening to and understanding because it still involves Gary Willis. Sometimes dissolving a group like Tribal Tech can lead to respectable session-man careers like that of Scott Henderson (collaborator with Victor Wooten, the late Joe Zawinul R.I.P., and the Chick Corea Electric Band) who has released tasteful albums heavily influenced by blues, to solo careers like that of Willis, certainly rich in celebrations and clinics and in the educational field but lacking in the contents of his productions where he satisfies himself and succumbs to the clutches of mere electronics.