MUSIC REVIEW BY Adam Greenburg, All Music Guide
Free jazz, acid jazz. The debut album from Flatland, a trio of electric jazzers from the West Coast, is laden with thick electric guitar riffs and solos worthy of John McLaughlin, a thumping bass groove, and frenzied drumming throughout. It's a very busy album. As with other works by the trio, there are elements of free jazz and acid jazz as one would expect (including a couple of Don Cherry compositions here), as well as elements from fusion a la Mahavishnu Orchestra (though less here than in Origin of Species) and of the Zawinul days of the Miles Davis band. Electricity is made ethereal through the use of effects, alternating with groove-heavy sections. Origin of Species may be a more accessible album for new recruits, but Satellite is a fine pick as well.
