Not to downplay any of the other qualities that make the remarkable sophomore disc from the Brian Blade Fellowship a minor masterpiece, but here's a truth that's made self-evident on a first listening, and reveals itself even more fully the 15th time through: "Perceptual" is the decade's first perfect headphones disc, of any genre.

Brian Blade, a former Joshua Redman sideman with a resume boasting sessions and/or stage time with McCoy Tyner, Kenny Garrett, Brad Mehldau, Mark Turner, Bill Frisell, Elvis Costello, Joni Mitchell, Bob Dylan and Emmylou Harris, among other high-profile artists, has turned in nine interrelated sonic sculptures that owe as much to folksy Americana as to heady post-bop. Soaring melancholy guitar leads, rambling rhythms and an aural spaciousness, nodding to the Pat Metheny Group, bump up against slinky, richly textured pop with attitude, ala Steely Dan.

Much of the music, written by drummer Blade, keyboardist Jon Cowherd and saxophonist Myron Walden, is deeply evocative, even cinematic. "Evinrude-Fifty (Trembling)," inspired by the leader's memories of childhood boating trips with his father in Shreveport, La., has various electric and acoustic strings and woodwinds buzzing in tandem for what might be the revving of an outboard, and then it's on to an airy saxes-and-guitars melody, urgent piano-trio maneuvers and, later, Dave Easley's tangy pedal-steel turn. Sliding, slippery pedal steel, as played by noted producer Daniel Lanois, also adds to the eerie atmospherics of the final "Trembling," and Blade offers breathy, high-pitched vocals: "Trembling, Mama's baby is trembling."

Mood, as might be suggested by those lyrics, is paramount here, and the mood is decidedly somber, with two pieces in part reflective of recent incidents of schoolyard bloodshed: Melvin Butler's shivery soprano signals the start of the rising and falling "Reconciliation," penned by Paducah, Ky., native Cowherd, and Mitchell drops in stark images of sacrificed innocents on the luxuriously unreeling, fuzz-edged "Steadfast."

Individual parts, though, are mostly subservient to the whole, and that communal approach feeds every composition, from the shape-shifting title track to the pastoral "Crooked Creek" to the three-movement "Variations of a Bloodline," a plea for the cessation of inter-ethnic strife around the globe. Even without the social conscience, the immediately appealing tapestries of "Perceptual" would add up to the ideal cocooning companion. Plug me in.
- PHILIP BOOTH

(This review originally appeared in Down Beat. The magazine is available online at http://www.downbeatjazz.com)