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3Below — Live in Mérida
(7d Media no#, 2024, CD / DL)

by Jon Davis, Published 2025-03-18

Live in Mérida Cover art

3Below is an animated show produced by Guillermo del Toro, the third in his Tales of Arcadia series. It’s available on Netflix. Oh, wait, that may be true, but the 3Below we’re interested in here is a musical collaboration between Alonso Arreola, Trey Gunn, and Michael Manring, all of whom play bass-like instruments of extended capabilities: Arreola plays percussive electroacoustic and electric basses, Gunn has his Warr guitar (and baritone ukulele, but we’ll leave that aside for now), and Manring has his Hyperbass, which may have only four strings, but is capable of “limitless altered tunings.” For the live recording at hand, the trio is joined by Emmanuel Pina on oud, and I don’t know if he felt any sense of inadequacy surrounded by all those specialized modern instruments — probably not, as his own capabilities on the oud are considerable. Live in Mérida is, as advertised, a live set recorded in November of 2023 at the Palacio de la Música de Mérida in Mexico, and it starts out with a number of tunes that are oriented towards acoustic instruments, with Gunn on the ukulele and Arreola on his electroacoustic bass. The latter half of the set ramps up the volume with more electric material. Compositional duties are spread around the core trio, and the pieces are arranged for various combinations of the four. It may be possible at any given time to separate out who is playing what — while Gunn’s Warr parts are pretty distinctive to anyone familiar with his music, some of the more standard bass playing could be either Arreloa or Manring — but maybe it best to just sit back and enjoy some top-notch players having a blast playing at their full-on best. I suppose some listeners might be put off by displays of virtuosity, but to my ear they balance the flurries of notes and tricky rhythms with melodic sensibilities and good taste. For fans of the musicians involved, Live in Mérida is a sure winner, and anyone who wants to hear some amazing bass work should look no further.

Filed under: New releases, 2024 releases

Related artist(s): Michael Manring, Trey Gunn, Alonso Arreola / LabA, 3Below

More info
http://3below.bandcamp.com/album/live-in-m-rida

 

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