Sludge Test, by Gutbucket. Canteloupe Music, 2006

Featuring everything from heavy metal rhythm guitar chords to Albert Ayler–like horn bursts, all hurtling forward at a breakneck pace that suddenly stops on a dime, Gutbucket’s third album, Sludge Test, initially seems like a textbook case of artistic pretense. But strangely, the longer you listen to it, the more relaxed it sounds. Moments that scream “show off” on the first or second listen start to recede into the background. Although acrobatic in their attempt to reconcile musical idioms that go together like plaid and polka dots, they build enough space—and sometimes even silliness—into their compositions to give the record staying power.

Part of this underlying levity derives, paradoxically, from Gutbucket’s willingness to give their music the imprimatur of the shtetl. The band mines the lode rediscovered by John Zorn, but with even less concern for the sanctity of tradition. At times Sludge Test sounds like the work of a punk band playing the wedding and Bar Mitzvah circuit. And those times are the record’s best. For Gutbucket, fusion ends up signaling not a desire to produce music that is sophisticated or mature, but rather music that is open to the layering of selves that makes history personal. Proficiency in playing jazz doesn’t require turning one’s back on the Deep Purple riffs of one’s adolescence. Nor does it demand the washing away of one’s ethnic heritage. Sometimes the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.