Attack from above
Pharoah S. Wail | Inner Space | 11/02/2002
(4 out of 5 stars)
"With Destroy All Nels Cline, Nels and friends continue to create some of the best electric music happening right now.
Based both in great composition and outrageous improvisation, Destroy gives us everything from blazingly gorgeous rock guitar (Nels' solo on Chi Cagoan) to alien robots chattering with each other as they hover overhead collecting data (beginning of Martyr).
If you already own one of Nels' other great cds, The Inkling, you also get the pleasure of hearing and comparing/contrasting the Destroy version of Spider Wisdom with the Inkling version. I prefer the Inkling version because Zeena (electric harp) is incredible on that version, but there's certainly nothing wrong or uninteresting about this version.
If for no other reason, buy this cd just so you can hear the incredible final quarter of After Armenia. Whether we're talking Chest, Interstellar Space Revisited, The Inkling or whatever else, After Armenia is one of my favorite Nels moments on record."
Easy difficult listening from an out-jazz master
Aaron Burgess | Round Rock, TX, USA | 08/09/2006
(4 out of 5 stars)
"Guitarist Nels Cline's two group albums leading up to this release were jaw-dropping forays into some of the most difficult modern sounds imaginable: "Interstellar Space Revisited" was just that, a love letter to John Coltrane and Rashied Ali's legendary duets album performed on guitar and drums, while "The Inkling" merged Cline's mercurial out-jazz playing with spacious minimalist and modern-classical arrangements. The logical follow-up, then, is "Destroy all Nels Cline," in which the guitarist and guests -- including electric harpist Zeena Parkins, Guitarist/Scarnella member Carla Bozulich, and Nels' brother, drummer Alex Cline -- squeeze progressive-rock mega-structures, minimalist counterpoint workouts and free-jazz firestorms into a 76-minute blast through genre borders. As with "The Inkling," most of the tracks here take their sweet time to develop (this ain't casual listening); but the band members' playing is so detailed, so passionate and so damned interesting, you'll think they're cooking even when they're cooling down."
States of being
Aaron Burgess | 05/01/2001
(5 out of 5 stars)
"this is music for your soul. it is not just post-rock, non-linear, art rock or whatever, it is the world, no wait it is the song of the world--golden, glorious, foreboding, mournful, radiant--everything you can dream and feel and know and think all somehow are here without any pretension, overstatement or melodrama. i am not an instrumental musakgeek but this one got me. i'm sure if i mostly listen to sara evans and love this others will too."