Simple ain't easy, as the greats would attest and nobody expresses that better than Frisell, notably in his solo work. With 16 cuts in a gnat's crotchet short of an hour's music, Frisell somehow fills these miniatures with an epic scale of emotions: tender, gentle, but also passionate. Music IS finds Frisell joining jazz with a country feel in a mode that should be so well known to us, yet the guitar man continues to surprise and delight. Take ‘Winslow Homer’, named after the American land and seascape artist hailed as the essence of America: but Frisell's song is no down-home rustic paean: instead it's almost Monk-ish in its wit and bounce. ‘The Pioneers’, however, does evoke the wide open plains as Frisell gets on his acoustic, which is not otherwise prominent on IS. Instead, Frisell favours his Frisellitronic meditations, as on the sad and lonesome ‘The Rambler’. But he can also play his electric unadorned, as on the spaced blues of ‘Ron Carter’. If they ever send another Voyager to the far flung ends of the universe, may it please have some Frisell tunes on board: aliens happening upon such delights could only sigh and wonder that, screwed up as these Earth guys are, their hearts are in the right place.