What do experimental club rhythms have in common with progressive guitar-based rock? At first glance there wouldn't appear to be a great deal. But that's probably because, with the exception of an extremely small minority of artists, the world believes that the guitar and dance music don't mix. Included in that adventurous minority are the legendary Wishbone Ash, who have entered the debate with the disarmingly modernistic recording "Trance Visionary"

The "Trance Visionary" project came about due to a meeting between Wishbone Ash frontman Andy Powell and the award-winning UK-based producer Mike Bennett. Mike is not a man you would immediately associate with progressive guitar bands, since he made his name through a long-standing association with the Manchester agit-pop anti-group The Fall. In addition to his career producing The Fall, he's also been responsible for a deluge of first and second generation music in the genres of drum and bass, jungle, and trance, and has recently been responsible for acclaimed remixes of Bob Marley and the Wailers, Gregory Isaacs, Dennis Brown and dub pioneer Lee Scratch Perry.

Powell and Bennett expanded their original idea to embrace elements of trance, and drum and bass, while at the same time maintaining the project's originality. "Trance Visionary" is a brand new piece of work created in the Wishbone laboratory.

Any problem with the idea of fusing two disparate musical idioms is all in the mind. Critics will be anxious to categorize this album, when there's no real need to do so. What does it matter if people call it medieval dance or madrigal house? There are elements of drum and bass and trance in there, but they're really used as a backdrop to the Wishbone Ash guitar. Mike Bennett calls it "Guitar-based experimental music, with filmic qualities and evocative imagery". And when asked about the approach to the recording process, Bennett describes it as, "Deconstructing Andy Powell's acoustic and electric guitar structures, and then rebuilding them in a trance idiom." Die-hard fans will recognize the traditional values, the musicality and the otherworldliness of the compositions, while dance aficionados will see more than a hint of the Prodigy here and there. It will win the band a new following and enchant the existing fan base. Although "Trance Visionary" is different from anything this enduring group has done before, it is a logical extension of what they're about. Everything you hear is organic and real.