| CD REVIEW Jim Davies |
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Band: Jim Davies Never heard of Jim Davies? Well, maybe you’ve heard of The Prodigy then? Okay…now Davies was the guy who gave that band’s biggest hits (remember “Firestarter”, for instance?) their guitar bite (first heard on The Prodigy’s tour of 1995, then on the ensuing 1997 album The Fat Of The Land). He then joined Industrial Punk act Pitchshifter, got involved in the recordings of 1998’s www. pitchshifter. com (which became their most critically acclaimed album to date) and 2000’s Deviant. In 2002 Davies recorded Psi, his last album with Pichshifter (he left the band after their legendary gig at London Astoria, later documented in the 2003 live album Bootlegged And Distorted, remixed And Uploaded…and got back together with The Prodigy, eventually to record the 2004 released Always Outnumbered, Never Outgunned. During a downtown, Davies recorded an album with The Prodigy’s Keith Flint. Produced by Youth (formerly bassist of Killing Joke), the album was never released due to label issues. In 2007, he recorded and released the self-titled Victory Pill, his first self-directed project on which he himself sang, played guitar, and did the programming…aided in the rest by Kieron Pepper and Pete Crossman for an album of vitriolic Industrial Rock that was quite remeniscent of Pitchshifter’s last! Well, this same Jim Davies now brings his first instrumental solo album, and a cranckin’ darn good one it is, too! Recorded and co-produced by Pete Crossman, Davies has played all instruments on this album, except for the bass on 5 tracks (3 done by one Tim Jackson, the 2 others by Mike Edmunds). Far from trying to emulate the kind of highly technical virtuoso play of the likes of Gilbert, Satriani, or Vai, this is the album on which Davies incorporates his love for electronic music into the world of the guitar instrumental. If at certain moments while listening to what’s posted at myspace.com/jimdaviesmusic (off this album, that’s two samples and two full-length tracks, one of which in its raw mix), you feel that a synth or keyboard had to be used to produce the kind of sounds you hear, forget it, because besides possible drum programming, no synths or keyboards were used on this album! In stead, Davies has used several effect pedals to occasionally emulate such noises, using the multi-track recording possibility to the max to put in extra layers in each track! Strictly speaking you might call the short and Funky “Hide The Effects” and “Vital Signs” songs, because both dó contain a short vocal part. Only, in the first case, the lyrics come as a short spoken sentence at the end, and in the second case there ain’t even any intelligible words (as they’re distorted by a vocoder)! Whatever…each and every track had an immediate attraction for this listener, an attraction which even endured the consecutive listening sessions I gave the album! I mean, there’s the instant attraction from the overall melody of things, and then this slightly more seasoned music fanatic gets drawn into analyzing the different layers Mr. Davies put into his music! He closes his album with the aptly titled “Rockers Vs. Ravers”, a track with an incredibly groovy drive, driven by an intense dance drum! The best of both worlds, that’s what this guy is! May he continue to make albums like this one in the future! I’ll be buying, in spite of all the “crisisses” the fucking money-mongering economists may engineer upon us! Album Of The Year material, at least in my book!!! 98/100 Tony. |