RIPE

This is energetic Jazz Fusion at it's finest. This album clearly takes a lot of influence from 70's Brand X and Dixie dregs with lots of fast guitar playing, synth backing and fast tempo'd Jazz Fusion all through it's duration. And the main issue is the duration. Over an hour which is a long time to be listening to music that stays quite similar through out, this is where this fantastic album falls down and is the case with a lot of albums from this period of the late 90's where albums were drawn out just too fill the C.D's. If you wish too get through this album in one sitting it requires a lot of patience but it is definitely worth while. Scott Mcgill's guitar playing is absolutely astonishing all through offering the perfect Jazz Fusion experience.

Songs like The Ripe One, Fred-O-Cal and Skwerbie all offer a similar sounding Heavy chord based Jazz Fusion with lots of distorted guitars and incredible shredding accompanied by some great keyboard solos, and a great keyboard solo featured in Skwerbie, which is one of the most exciting tracks on the album. DDR is a similar track to the afore-mentioned 3 with great chord progressions but features a slower tempo'd feel closer to the sound of Return to Forever and an all together Ali-Di Meola style. Industrial Blowout is the heaviest track on the album featuring prominent electric guitar riffing that would fit straight onto a Steve Morse album, and less guitar soloing featured in the track, with an impressive Drum solo in the middle.

The album also features acoustic guitar solo tracks in Un Monde De Incertitudes and Marcella which clearly take a lot of influence from Ali Di Meola with the fast playing style and unusual chord patterns. 7-24 and 24-7 which open and close the album show an experimental side featuring guitar noises creating with clean and distorted sounds which offer a good intro and outro to the album.

This could be a 5 star album given just a little more focus, but hey if you wanted focus you wouldn't be exploring such an obscure level of Jazz Fusion, I give this one 4 stars as it is one of the most energetic Jazz Fusion albums I have heard from recent years and will be enjoyed by anybody who loved the classic era of boundary pushing Jazz Fusion particularly fans of Dixie Dregs and Return To Forever