News: guitarstew: jim and jam the eg review

News:
17-03-2008:
While essential guitar is off line, I've republished my reviews for essentialguitarist.com

Guitarstew: Jim and Jam (Feat. Jacob Kjaer, Tonni Rahm and Mac Gaunaa)
Reviewed by Laurie Monk

Jim & Jam is a simmering guitar hot pot, cooked up by former band members from internationally recognised bands Royal Hunt, Narita and Prime Time. The guitarists Jacob Kjaer, Mac Gaunaa, Tonni Rahm prepared this palatable release over eight years of bourbon fuelled jam sessions, capturing piquant improvised solo's over preprepared
backing tracks.

Jacob Kjaer and Tonni Rahm wrote the songs and kept the mix fresh by only allowing the solo's to be laid down in final recording sessions. As a result you get a highly potent mix of well crafted melodic songs, lashings of lush keyboards and outstandingly cool guitar interplays,that are guaranteed to wow most rock guitar fans.

A prime example of this winning formula is the opener "Changes". Starting with a simple piano melody, overlaid with scratched record samples, transitioning into seductively swaggering solo's. The middle section features a Tangerine Dream style sequenced keyboard layer and crunchy chords. Finally returning with more awesome, steaming slabs of guitar histrionics. This is destined to be a genuine classic of the genre.

"Indian summer","Silver Wedding" and "Tonni's Twin Peaks" are more straight forward in execution. Each is imbued with a distinct, catchy pop melody. Each features, intelligent repeated themes, over light consonant keyboard lines, with stylish solos, hinting at their rock and bluesy guitar influences. The smoothness transitions between solos often makes you feel there is only one guitar player. That said, all of them are catchy as hell and well worth a listen.

"The Mission" is really a tale of two songs. The first consists of a jaunty keyboard bass driven tune with interchanging, some times mercurial, solos, plus sensitive use of the bar producing a Holdsworthian legato feel. Out of the blue, four minutes in, we are treated with gorgeously fluid, phrased, solo work over a reinterpretation Pink Floyd's High Hopes melody, from the Division Bell album.

Both "Shake the groove" and "Loops and Frames" have funk orientated back beats, deep synth base and delectable keyboard swells. Each guitarist rounds out the grooves with voluptuous funky phrasing and pinched harmonic squeals. There is also room on the Loops track for a more adventurous, juicy, jazzy approach, in places, reminding me of TJ Helmerich.

"JK's Courvosier" was recorded after a post bourbon hangover interlude with the drummer from Royal Hunt. I was left wishing my drinking sessions resulted in music of this quality. Clean, tasty solo guitar over simple key changes, in a similar vein to Becker and Friedmans Jewel.

There are weaknesses, for example the appropriately titled "Road to Nowhere" is the sort of "galloping horse" riff, sing-along, fodder you would expect from the likes of Scorpions, Europe et al.

Also, like the taste of vegetables cooked in a stew, all tracks suffer from the use of the same, over driven signal processing effects which often make it difficult to tell the players apart. This could have been rectified by the use of sleeve notes that indicate timings and ownership of solo's.

This album may not rate with those seeking the next guitar messiah. However, many guitar acolytes could learn a lot about writing catchy melodic songs from the GuitarStew crew. For the most part, this is the sort of stuff AOR dreams are made of. You may even want to dust off your tennis racket to play along after buying this record!

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