Search - Various Artists :: Christy Doran, Fredy Studer, Phil Minton, Django Bates, Amin Ali Play The Music Of Jimi Hendrix

An unlikely tribute

N. Dorward | Toronto, ON Canada | 07/31/2001

(3 out of 5 stars)

"I can understand why this album earns the hatred of those unfamiliar with the names of the musicians & who thus buy it on the strength of Hendrix's name without knowing what they're getting into. The band is an odd mixture of players from several countries & from a variety of backgrounds. The guitarist Christy Doran is a fine jazz-rock guitarist, born in Ireland but living most of his life in Switzerland. He recorded a lot of albums for Hat Art: I'm especially fond of a trio with Han Bennink & Ray Anderson which recorded _Cheer Up_ & _Azurety_, the latter album a perfect combination of delicate free improvisation, heavy rock workouts, a blues tribute & Ellingtonia. The drummer Fredy Studer is a frequent companion of Doran's, with a wide experience of rock, jazz & free-improv musics but basically a rock drummer. Keyboardist & occasional horn player Django Bates is best known for his work with the English group Loose Tubes. Electric bassist Amin Ali is the brother of Coltrane's drummer Rashied Ali; he's done brilliant work with James Blood Ulmer's Music Revelation Ensemble. Phil Minton is the oddest inclusion here: he's an English vocalist (& also a trumpeter, though he doesn't essay any playing here) whose work tends to split into two kinds. First, the rather "literary", lyrics-based work he's done with Mike Westbrook (e.g. his performance of William Blake poems on _Bright as Fire_) & Lindsay Cooper (_Oh Moscow!_) & in some of his own projects (the _Finnegans Wake_ performances on _mouthfull of ecstasy_). Secondly: free-form vocal performances which often contain as much "noise" (burps, gurgles, shouts, gargles, clicks, groans...) as pitched notes--a good example is his work on _dada da_ with Roger Turner. He is truly an astonishing vocalist--besides using throat-singing techniques, he also can distort his vocal cords in order to produce two notes at once. Still, I tend to mentally class him with Eugene Chadbourne & Han Bennink as one of those musicians who inspires a rabid cult following about some people (the Ben Watsons of this world) while to my mind his effectiveness can greatly vary depending on the musical situation. Sometimes he's just a trickster figure, verging on the annoying--on other occasions, as in _mouthfull of ecstacy_, I think he's done something truly remarkable.OK: so what about this disc? There's a long tradition of jazz musicians paying homage to Hendrix, going back to Gil Evans & Miles Davis in the 1960s & 1970s. This tribute is not radically revisionary--the treatments are floridly psychedelic rock renditions of the tunes, though with the odd disruption (notably the bizarre, hilarious acapella Minton solo in "Manic Depression"). The treatments are fresh ("Manic Depression" kicks off with a nice new guitar riff, while "Hey Joe" is one of the album's high points in its slow, cooled-down arrangement), while not radically departing from the originals--that's to be expected, I suppose, given that the instrumention isn't too far from that of the original Experience albums, except for the keyboards. That said, the album's take on psychedelia is deliberately campy, especially in Minton's completely over-the-top renditions of the lyrics & in Bates's cheesy keyboards.The main problem here is that the album doesn't seem to be able to make up its mind about how seriously it wants to interrogate the Hendrix canon. It would really have benefitted from more unconventional instrumentation & arrangements (cf. the fashion for Hendrix arranged for string quartet, e.g.); instead, Minton sticks out like a sore thumb because of his parodically overwrought vocals, while Christy Doran plays things absolutely straight. Too much of the album is simply self-indulgent--virtually every track is in the 7-8 minute range, rather than keeping to the pithiness of the original versions. That said, it's nice to hear Doran's take on Hendrix, & the album is at least memorably odd. It'll appeal to those with a strange sense of humour--probably more Zappa fans than Hendrix fans will like this."

Jimi would have loved it!

Ian Naismith | FL | 04/19/2000

(4 out of 5 stars)

"It has been said by Jimi's fellow musicians/lovers/fans/etc. that he had a wonderful sense of humor. This album is done in fun - THEY ARE HAVING FUN... If any of these guys were true Hendrix practitioners, they would have been trying to play as "Hendrixy" as possible and would have started trying 25 years ago. All of these musicians are incredible in their own and in other projects. For those of you who cannot see the humor AND MORE IMPORTANTLY cannot hear the musicianship in these FUN interpretations, PLAY THE HENDRIX STUFF and stop trying to find imitators. JIMI WOULD HAVE LOVED THIS CD..."