Mellotron Variations :: S/T

Mellotron Variations—the new collaborative project from John Medeski, Pat Sansone, Jonathan Kirkscey, and Robby Grant—sounds like it could have scored an imaginary, chimerical Stanley Kubrick film. The quartet compositions of the great tape replay keyboard of the 1960s were originally conceived of as Mellotron duets between Memphis locals Kirkscey and Grant, before looping in the Medeski Martin & Wood and Wilco stalwarts. Doing so expanded the possibilities to an almost limitless scale, but one that rooted in a serene, and often severe, neoclassical aesthetic.