The Third Ear Band - Magic Music (1998)

If it accomplished anything, that much-vilified genre known as progressive rock ("prog" to its coterie) not only helped to broaden rock's inherently limited vocabulary, it also brought about a healthy surfeit of musicians who wanted to experiment, cross-breed, and hybridize. The music by Third Ear Band often begs for an extra audiometric appendage, but anyone with two ears and a wide palette can enjoy the group's pan-cultural sounds quite well, thank you. Although MAGIC MUSIC is not quite "prog" in the literal sense of the word (sometimes not even "rock"), percussionist Glen Sweeney and cohorts do succeed in bridging the formidable gap between rock and Indian raga. The 12-minute "Sun Ra Raga" finds Third Ear Band also nipping at the nectar of jazz, recast through Middle Eastern veils and set to pungent grooves. Imagine Terry Riley jamming with Zakir Hussain as they debate the merits of time signatures and time-keeping--MAGIC MUSIC would be the dog-eared report from that summit meeting.