Rocket Science (Béla Fleck and the Flecktones album)

Rocket Science
Studio album by Béla Fleck and the Flecktones
Released	May 17, 2011
Genre	Jazz fusion, progressive bluegrass, post-bop
Length	64:28
Label	eOne
Producer	Béla Fleck
Béla Fleck and the Flecktones chronology

Last updated February 19, 2019

Rocket Science is a studio album by Béla Fleck and the Flecktones, released in 2011. It reached number 1 on the Billboard Jazz chart and number 36 on the Top Independent Albums chart. The song "Life in Eleven" won Best Instrumental Composition at the 54th Annual Grammy Awards.

Béla Fleck and the Flecktones is an American band that combines jazz and bluegrass music. The band's name is a play on 1960s rock band Dick Dale and the Del-Tones.

Billboard is an American entertainment media brand owned by the Billboard-Hollywood Reporter Media Group, a division of Eldridge Industries. It publishes pieces involving news, video, opinion, reviews, events, and style, and is also known for its music charts, including the Hot 100 and Billboard 200, tracking the most popular songs and albums in different genres. It also hosts events, owns a publishing firm, and operates several TV shows.

Howard Levy is an American multi-instrumentalist. He was a founding member of Béla Fleck and the Flecktones, with whom he won a 1997 Grammy Award for Best Pop Instrumental Performance for the song "The Sinister Minister". He also won a Grammy for Best Instrumental Composition in 2012 for "Life in Eleven", a song written with Béla Fleck for the Flecktones' album Rocket Science (2011). He has worked with Arab-fusion musician Rabih Abou-Khalil, Latin jazz saxophonist Paquito D'Rivera, Donald Fagen, and Paul Simon.

Reception

Professional ratings
Review scores
Source	Rating
Allmusic	^[1]

In his Allmusic review, music critic Thom Jurek praised the album, calling the Flecktones re-energized. He wrote "With Levy on harmonica and piano, it's as if he never left. Rather than try to re-create the band's old sound, the Flecktones push ever further into their own seamless, unclassifiable meld of jazz, progressive bluegrass, rock, classical, funk, and world music traditions on this delightful—and at times mind-blowing—record."^[1]

Track listing

All songs by Béla Fleck unless otherwise noted.

"Gravity Lane" - 5:58
"Prickly Pear" - 3:49
"Joyful Spring" (Howard Levy) - 2:39
"Life In Eleven" (H. Levy/B. Fleck) - 5:25
"Falling Forward" - 5:08
"Storm Warning" - 7:57
"Like Water" (Victor Wooten/B. Fleck) - 4:42
"Earthling Parade" - 7:58
"The Secret Drawer" (Future Man) - 2:12
"Sweet Pomegranates" (H. Levy) - 5:55
"Falani" - 6:50
"Bottle Rocket" - 5:53

Personnel

Béla Fleck – 5-string banjo (tracks 1, 3-8, 10-12), Goldtone 10-string Prototype (track 8), Deering Crossfire electric banjo (tracks 2, 6)
Future Man – drumitar, acoustic drums, percussion
Howard Levy – diatonic harmonica (tracks 1, 2, 4-8, 11, 12), bass harmonica (track 8), synth (track 2), piano (tracks 1-7, 10, 12)
Victor Wooten – Fodera 4-string bass, Fodera 5-string NYC bass, Compito 5-string fretless bass (track 5, 8, 11)

The banjo is a four-, five-, or six-stringed instrument with a thin membrane stretched over a frame or cavity as a resonator, called the head, which is typically circular. The membrane is typically made of plastic, although animal skin is still occasionally used. Early forms of the instrument were fashioned by Africans in the United States, adapted from African instruments of similar design. The banjo is frequently associated with folk, Irish traditional, and country music. Historically, the banjo occupied a central place in African-American traditional music and the folk culture of rural whites before entering the mainstream via the minstrel shows of the 19th century. The banjo, along with the fiddle, is a mainstay of American old-time music. It is also very frequently used in traditional ("trad") jazz.

Roy Wilfred Wooten, also known as "RoyEl", best known by his stage name Future Man, is an inventor, musician, and composer. He is also known as Futche to his fans. He is a percussionist and member of the jazz quartet Béla Fleck and the Flecktones, along with banjoist Béla Fleck, harmonicist Howard Levy, and Roy's brother, electric bass virtuoso Victor Wooten.

A sound effect is an artificially created or enhanced sound, or sound process used to emphasize artistic or other content of films, television shows, live performance, animation, video games, music, or other media. These are normally created with foley. In motion picture and television production, a sound effect is a sound recorded and presented to make a specific storytelling or creative point without the use of dialogue or music. The term often refers to a process applied to a recording, without necessarily referring to the recording itself. In professional motion picture and television production, dialogue, music, and sound effects recordings are treated as separate elements. Dialogue and music recordings are never referred to as sound effects, even though the processes applied to such as reverberation or flanging effects, often are called "sound effects".

Production notes:

Béla Fleck – producer
Kevin Dailey – engineer
Richard Battaglia – engineer
Richard Dodd – mastering
Jeremy Cowart – photography
Sean Marlowe – art direction, design
Paul Grosso – cover art, creative director

Kevin Dailey is a Grammy Award winning engineer, producer, composer, and multi-instrumentalist based in Nashville, Tennessee. As an engineer, producer, or mixer, he has worked with Béla Fleck and the Flecktones, Mikky Ekko, Rome Fortune, MYZICA, Skyway Man, SHEL, and Abigail Washburn. He is a member of the band Civil Twilight. Most recently, he composed the score for Travis Rice's recent film, Depth Perception.

Related Research Articles

Victor Lemonte Wooten is an American bass guitarist, record producer, educator, and recipient of five Grammy Awards. He has been the bassist for Béla Fleck and the Flecktones since the group's formation in 1988 and a member of the band SMV with two other bassists, Stanley Clarke and Marcus Miller. Since 2017 he has played bass for the metal band Nitro.

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Béla Fleck and the Flecktones is the first album by the band of the same name, released in 1990. It reached number 17 on the Billboard Top Contemporary Jazz Albums chart. At the Grammy Awards of 1997, a live version of "The Sinister Minister", a track from the album, won the Best Pop Instrumental Performance award.

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<i>Jingle All the Way</i> (Béla Fleck and the Flecktones album) album by Béla Fleck and the Flecktones

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References

1 2 Jurek, Thom. "Rocket Science > Review". Allmusic . Retrieved August 3, 2011.

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[AM-1] 1 2 Jurek, Thom. "Rocket Science > Review". Allmusic . Retrieved August 3, 2011.

v t e Béla Fleck and the Flecktones
Béla Fleck Howard Levy Future Man Victor Wooten Jeff Coffin
Discography	Béla Fleck and the Flecktones Flight of the Cosmic Hippo UFO Tofu Three Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest Live Art Left of Cool Greatest Hits of the 20th Century Outbound Live at the Quick Little Worlds The Hidden Land Jingle All the Way Rocket Science