Customer Reviews

Camouflage

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Hendrix's legacy has been discussed and squabbled over by jazz and rock musicians practically from the day of his death - with each camp claiming him for their own. With this, their debut cd, Acoustic Ladyland gain some valuable ground for the jazz argument.
Not-so-much straight covers but re-workings of Hendrix tunes, tracks include the bluesy Some Other Sky - their take on JH's Up from the Skies; Angel is rearranged as Nagel ; Little Wing is transformed into the 'Coltranesque' Little Miss Wingate and Voodoo Chile (Slight Return) becomes the latin-infused Routinely Denied (No Return). This was apparently re-titled accordingly thanks to the Hendrix estate telling Wareham that all requests to use his material are "routinely denied".
These are thought out & structured compositions, with the melodies merging into the solo sections so that it's not completely apparent where one ends & the other begins. Pete Wareham's saxophone often evokes the spirit of Hendrix with use of feedback-like multiphonics, harmonics, growling & false-fingerings, complemented by the impressive Tom Cawley on piano, bassist Tom Herbert & drummer-of-the-moment Sebastian Rochford (check out Rochford, Herbert & Wareham's other project Polar Bear - where they're also joined by saxophonist Mark Lockheart)
This cd gets better & better with repeated listening, but catch them live if you can to become really "experienced".

Firstly,all concerned must be congratulated here for a highly origional and groundbreaking album.The influences here are quite varied with some being more obvious than others.Of course Hendrix's presence looms large but Wareham owes a debt to Coltrane with his aggresive soloing style and harminic approach. There is also an influence from the avant-garde/free jazz camp with some of the solos moving away from the basic structure of the pieces.
What they have done that is highly origional is to fuse the above influences into something new,fresh and exciting."Little miss wingate" for me, is the most rock influenced piece even more so than the Hendrix numbers while "Marching Dice" has a minor Latin rhythm to add something different and "Brave reply" is quite an emotional and moving slower number to show the bands all round musical awareness.
The soloists, both Wareham and Cawley are excellent with Cawley in particular abandoning his usual straight ahead boppish style that he plays with the Dave O'Higgins band and really lets his hair down with some accomplished and at times,quite free'ish solos.All in all great stuff from a band at the cutting edge of modern music.