*2023 stock* Machine Mass started out in 2011 as an idiosyncratic MoonJune power duo made of longtime collaborators American drummer Tony Bianco (Elton Dean, Paul Dunmall, Evan Parker) and Belgian guitarist Michel Delville (The Wrong Object, Vegir). Hailed as a « feisty and rebel rousing exhibition that contains a surfeit of diametric contrasts and smoldering exchange » (All About Jazz), it has since then morphed into various forms and ventures involving guests such as Dave Liebman (Inti, 2014) and Univers Zero and Wrong Object keyboardist Antoine Guenet (Machine Mass Plays Hendrix ; 2017).
Intrusion, Machine Mass’s fourth official album in a decade of existence, is a full-blown sextet extravaganza comprising eight live-in-the-studio tracks (six originals and two covers) featuring Wrong Object bassist Damien Campion alongside two seminal members of the Belgian and international jazz scene: Laurent Blondiau (Mâäk's Spirit, Andy Emler MegaOctet, Octurn) and Manuel Hermia (Slang, Orchestra Nazionale della Luna, Hermia-Ceccaldi-Darrifourcq Trio).
Three years after the psychedelic fireworks of their acclaimed Jimi Hendrix tribute (which Brazilian producer Arnaldo de Souteiro described as « probably the best tribute to Hendrix since the legendary 1974 Gil Evans album ») Machine Mass’s Intrusion offers a set of steaming acoustic jazz laced with moderate yet significant amounts of electric and electronic guitar sounds. The album builds as much on modern-day jazz structures and rhythms as it harks back to the relentless ostinati and horizontal intricacies of modal jazz (the CD opens with John Coltrane’s « Africa » and closes with Joe Zawinul’s « In a Silent Way »).
