Ingebrigt Håker Flaten’s Time Machine

Bass solos are all well and good, but why listen to an album's worth of unaccompanied thrums without the band dynamics that make the grooves come alive? Happily, Hong Kong Cab, Ingebrigt Håker Flaten's fourth solo bass album, is a different breed. Unconcerned with unadorned rhythm, the Norway-born/Austin-based jazz maverick uses his instruments as paintbrushes, expressing himself with slashing strokes and controlled splatter like Jackson Pollock. He bows his double bass like a butcher cutting meat on "Hotel Isabel," plucks his Rickenbacker into echo oblivion on "Time Machine," and disintegrates his gear on the title track. Even when he just plain grooves on "Guts" and "All or Nothing," Flaten stretches the boundaries of what it means to be in the pocket.