Formerly known as the Len Patterson Trio, Flowtilla is a Bay Area based groove unit. Featuring Patterson on guitar, his wife Ellen Schoenwetter on bass, and Jan Jackson on drums, Flowtilla has grown leaps and bounds from their first CD (which was already pretty damn good). Here the all-instrumental group dives even deeper into the groove than they have in the past. Perhaps it is the combination of the facts that the left-handed Patterson learned to play a right-handed guitar upside down as well as his deep knowledge of jazz chords that leads to such interesting sounds and ideas from him. Meanwhile the rhythm section is up to the challenges Patterson lays down. Schoenwetter digs deep on the bass, while Jackson's drums are informed not just his jazz and groove work with groups like Will Bernard and Motherbug, but also the beats of his hip hop work with The Coup. These fine grooves offer as much to tickle to synapses as they do to get the booty shakin'.

Flowtilla is a three-piece band out of the Bay Area. Its members are Len Paterson on guitar, Jan Jackson on drums, and Ellen Schoenwetter on bass. This is a great disc to get a party going. The group takes a theme or a rhythm and they run with it. The guitar soars along over Jackson and Schoenwetter's sometimes jazzy, sometimes funky, sometimes driving grooves. Len, Ellen, and Jan all definitely have some serious playing ability. I especially enjoyed the first half of this disc. Fun band.

LEN PATERSON TRIO, "SUNNY CLOUDY" (Len Paterson) - A Bay Area guitarist who is obviously steeped in the tradition of Grant Green and Wes Montgomery, Len Paterson has made a fine jazz / acid jazz debut with "Sunny Cloudy." Paterson's chords and notes are played clean, with a minimum of effects or processing, while the rhythm section, which consists of his partner, Ellen Schoenwetter on bass and Jan Jackson (Will Bernard & Motherbug, The Coup) on drums, swing mightily no matter what tempo they choose. The band may have been influenced by Green and Montgomery, for example, but they are not simply recreating their sound. Rather, Paterson introduces other elements from music at times, such as the African rhythms in the title track, the restless, angular grooves of "Joviality," the loping, horse-drawn-carriage-around-the-tropical-island feel of "Attitude Is Everything," and the Latin rhythms of "The Nomad," reveal Paterson and company to be painting from a large conceptual palette. As good a guitarist as he is, most people will not want to look to his hands for fingering ideas; Paterson is left-handed, and taught himself to play on a regular guitar, so everything is upside down. Upside down or not, this is a very tasty collection of music.

Sophisticated but not stuck-up jazz delivered in the ever wonderful trio setting. Paterson possesses a big trick bag that has him sounding like everyone from Grant Green to the Tortoise boys. His rhythm cohorts know how to follow where he's going like the Blue Angels, moving in clean, intricate formations across the blue sky. The tunes have brightness to them, some even feel like the instrumental counterparts to Steely Dan's Aja. Wouldn't mind hearing how a spoonful of darkness thickened things up but in the meantime their mood swings nicely between the words in its title.