One of the advantages of not being in the spotlight, especially in the digital age, is the ability to shift gears as you please, create the art you feel like in the moment, and get it out to the world without corporate gatekeepers. Thus veteran jazz etc. guitarist Michael Gregory Jackson, whose career reaches back to the free jazz renaissance of the seventies and includes as much R&B and funk as skronk, didn’t have to wait to follow up last year’s brilliant Frequency Equilibrium Koan . The solo guitar extravaganza Electric Git Box draws on songs from throughout his career, from his 1976 debut Clarity, Circle, Triangle, Square to 2019’s WHENUFINDITUWILLKNOW. Jackson revisits his catalog by stripping everything down to the musical essence of what he does: the electric guitar. Eschewing loops and overdubs, he simply plays his melodies, adding fills and chordal asides where appropriate. On “Meditation in E,” “The Rainy Days” and “Prelueoionti,” he lets his accessible writing speak for itself through the medium of his bluesy playing. Jackson sums up his approach perfectly in the final cut: prodigious technique + a penchant for wistful tuneage = “The Science of Beauty.”
