Little Worlds
| Little Worlds | ||||
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| Studio album by Béla Fleck and the Flecktones | ||||
| Released | August 12, 2003 | |||
| Genre | Jazz fusion, progressive bluegrass, psychedelic folk, world fusion | |||
| Length | 153:32 | |||
| Label | Columbia | |||
| Producer | Béla Fleck | |||
| Béla Fleck and the Flecktones chronology | ||||
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| Professional ratings | |
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| Review scores | |
| Source | Rating |
| Allmusic |   |
| All About Jazz |  |
| Allmusic | |
| Ten from Little Worlds | ||||
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| Studio album by Béla Fleck and the Flecktones | ||||
| Released | August 12, 2003 | |||
| Genre | Jazz | |||
| Length | 52:59 | |||
| Label | Columbia | |||
| Producer | Béla Fleck | |||
| Béla Fleck and the Flecktones chronology | ||||
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Little Worlds is the tenth album by Béla Fleck and the Flecktones, released in 2003. The album was released as a 3-disc set. Ten tracks from the set were also released on a single disc called Ten from Little Worlds.
The album contains several tracks that are hidden at the beginning and end of Disc One and at the end of Disc Three. These hidden tracks present a short and humorous story of two men, voiced by Yankees outfielder Bernie Williams and Michael McKean (as David St. Hubbins of Spinal Tap), stuck in traffic and flipping through different radio stations. The songs they hear are songs from the album played in different styles and on different instruments. For example, the slow and soothing song "Poindexter" is featured but redone as a heavy metal song with each band member playing an instrument different from their ordinary one. The redone version is also complete with rhythmic screaming to which one of the men listening in the car makes the comment "I don't even know what they are saying."
In his Allmusic review, music critic Zac Johnson wrote the "three-CD concept album has ambitious intentions, but ultimately ends up feeling a bit scattered... Still, every note is impeccably played and pristinely recorded, and those Flecktones fans who like to pull apart their extremely technical pieces of music, analyze them, and put them back together will find hours of rabid discussion on Little Worlds."
Doug Collette, writing for All About Jazz praised the album's packaging, sound quality and conception; "Lest you think Little Worlds is an exercise in esoteric self-indulgence, pay attention to the way the album flows over the course of the three discs. While much of the early going insinuates itself gently through the recurring use of Celtic melodic themes, there’s a distinct if understated increase in the intensity of the music between the first disc and the second. The appearance of guitarist Derek Trucks... on “Pineapple Heart” ratchets up the visceral momentum of the music another level altogether, while “The Last Jam” brings this entire affair to an emphatic climax."
Critic Thom Jurek called the album an "outrageous exercise in self-indulgence... so excessive that Sony issued a single-disc sampler from the set hoping it would sell."
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Wikipedia