all of these albums are great, but "The Awakening" takes the cake with lots of hard, ambitious playing and heavy, pumping rhythmns. i love mickey roker's playing on this album, i don't think i've ever heard him play any harder. mike plays his rhodes through different effects but he's more or less in the background orchestrating things while curtis fuller, james moody, dizzy gullespie, virgil jones, mickey roker, and another gillespie sideman guitarist al gafa (playing lots of wah-wah) bring his complex, darkly funky compositions to life.
[fishmongerfunk]