This album is not only a SuperGroup effort of the best kind, but a masterclass in instrumental music. Take Funkadelic alums Bernie Worrell and Bootsy Collins, add Primus drummer Brain and sprinkle the mad genius of renegade guitar god Buckethead, and bake it in the Bill Laswell Low-End Bake Oven, and you've got a ThrashJazzFunkMetalScratch masterpiece, almost good enough for the whole family.
This album has most certainly withstood the test of time--I've owned my copy since just a few months after its release, and it has remained a mainstay of my personal rotation. There is a great sense of play and humor in juxtapositions of "Blast," a brief but numbing thrash assault, to "War Machine Dub," a slow-as-HELL bassy barrage. The jam-funk of "Animal Behavior," the only song on here with any vocals to speak of, is a centerpiece of this band's efforts and a fun tune, but these guys also give you tracks like "The Interworld and the New Innocence" just to show you that they are also master musicians who can put together a song like nobody else's business, songs that use music to move you through an experience as satisfying as any ingenius little turn of phrase or neat rhyme. Other incarnations of Praxis have included Laswell himself coming to the fore on bass, or John Zorn on alto, or Yamatsuka Eye pelting out some gutteral screams, but this version is the most flawless one, free of defect, and creating what should be (if there is truly any justice in the universe) one of the seminal albums of the late 20th century--music that does not fit easily into any one genre but actively plays with them all, mixing them together into an incredible whole that reminds us that music is a pure form, existing outside of schools of thought and mere labels, and that it is transcendent of this world into a spiritual plane. Just swing along with this one, and it will take you to new heights.
