..:: audio-music dot info ::..


Main Page    The Desert Island    Copyright Notice
Aa Bb Cc Dd Ee Ff Gg Hh Ii Jj Kk Ll Mm Nn Oo Pp Qq Rr Ss Tt Uu Vv Ww Xx Yy Zz


Jeff Beck: Jeff

 A l b u m   D e t a i l s

Artist: Jeff Beck
Title: Jeff
Released: 2003.08.05
Label: Epic Records
Time: 51:30
Producer(s): See Artists...
Appears with: The Yardbirds, Rod Stewart
Category: Rock
Rating: ********.. (8/10)
Media type: CD
Purchase date:  2003.09.15
Price in €: 16,99
Web address: www.jeffbeck.com

 S o n g s ,   T r a c k s


[1] So What (J.Beck/D.Garcia) - 4:19
[2] Plan B (Aslan/J.Beck/Torn/White) - 4:49
[3] Pork-U-Pine (J.Beck/Holroyde/A.Wright) - 4:06
[4] Seasons (J.Beck/Butler/Irving/Syze-Up/S.Vaughan/Viera/A.Wright) - 3:48
[5] Trouble Man (J.Beck/D.Garcia/A.Wright) - 3:34
[6] Grease Monkey (J.Beck/Fisher-Jones/Gray/Gray) - 3:34
[7] Hot Rod Honeymoon (J.Beck/Fisher-Jones/Gray/Gray) - 3:33
[8] Line Dancing With Monkeys (Aslan/Torn/White) - 5:18
[9] JB's Blues (J.Beck/D.Garcia) - 4:20
[10] Pay Me No Mind (J.Beck/Martin) - 3:18
[11] My Thing (J.Beck/n.Sorrell/A.Wright) - 4:10
[12] Bulgaria (Traditional) - 2:00
[13] Why Lord Oh Why? (T.Hymas) - 4:41

 A r t i s t s ,   P e r s o n n e l


JEFF BECK - Guitars, Arranger, Mixing

ANDY WRIGHT - Arranger, Vocals, Producer, Engineer
TONY HYMAS - Mixing, Musician
STEVE BARNEY - Musician
THE LONDON SESSION ORCHESTRA - Musician
WILL MALONE - Orchestral Arrangements
SAFFRON - Vocals
BEACHED BOYS - Vocals
RONNI ANCONA - Vocals
NANCY SORRELL - Vocals
BAYLEN LEONARD - Vocals

DEAN GARCIA - Producer, Engineer, Mixing, Musician
JOHN HUDSON - Engineer, Mixing Engineer
4:40 - Producer, Engineer
JAMIE MAHER - Engineer, Mixing
JAMES BROWN - Engineer
DAVE BLOOR - Engineer
DAVID TORN - Mixing, Reproduction
MICHAEL BARBIERO - Mixing
HOWARD GRAY - Mixing
DAVID TOM - Mixing, Reproduction
ASHLEY KRAJEWSKI - Assistant
DAVID COLEMAN - Art Direction
GREG WATERMAN - Photography

 C o m m e n t s ,   N o t e s


2003 CD Epic 86941



"If the voice don't say it, the guitar will play it," raps Saffron on "Pork-U-Pine," the third track on Jeff Beck's minimally titled Jeff. And he does. Beck teams with producer Andy Wright, the man responsible for his more complete immersion into electronic backdrops on his last outing, You Had It Coming. This time the transition is complete. Beck used electronica first on Who Else!, moved a little more into the fire on You Had It Coming, and here merges his full-on Beck-Ola guitar heaviness with the sounds of contemporary spazz-out big beats and noise. Beck and Wright employ Apollo 440 on "Grease Monkey" and "Hot Rod Honeymoon," and use a number of vocalists, including the wondrously gifted Nancy Sorrell, on a host of tracks, as well as the London Session Orchestra on others (such as "Seasons," where hip-hop, breakbeats, and old-school Tangerine Dream sequencing meet the guitarist's deep blues and funk-drenched guitar stylings). As for atmospherics, David Torn (aka producer Splattercell) offers a shape-shifting mix of glitch tracks on "Plan B" for Beck to wax on both acoustically and electrically, and make them weigh a ton. But it's on cuts like "Trouble Man," a purely instrumental big drum and guitar skronk workout, where Beck truly shines here. With a rhythm section of Dean Garcia and Steve Barney — and Tony Hymas appears as well — Beck goes completely overboard: the volume screams and the sheer crunch of his riffs and solos split the rhythm tracks in two, then four, and finally eight, as he turns single-string runs into commentaries on everything from heavy metal to East Indian classical music.

The industrial crank and burn of "Grease Monkey" is an outing fraught with danger for the guitarist, who has to whirl away inside a maelstrom of deeply funky noise — and Beck rides the top of the wave into dirty drum hell and comes out wailing. For those who feel they need a dose of Beck's rootsier and bluesier playing, there is one, but the context is mentally unglued. "Hot Rod Honeymoon" is a drum and bass sprint with Beck playing both slide and Texas-style blues à la Albert Collins, letting the strings bite into the beats. The vocals are a bit cheesy, but the entire track is so huge it's easy to overlook them. "Line Dancing With Monkeys" has a splintered Delta riff at its core, but it mutates, shifts, changes shape, and becomes the kind of spooky blues that cannot be made with conventional instruments. His turnarounds into the myopic rhythms provide a kind of menacing foil to their increasing insistence in the mix. Before gabber-style drum and bass threaten to break out of the box, Beck's elongated bent-note solos tame them. "JB's Blues" is the oddest thing here because it's so ordinary; it feels like it belongs on an updated Blow By Blow. In all this is some of the most emotionally charged and ferocious playing of Beck's career. Within the context of contemporary beatronica, Beck flourishes. He find a worthy opponent to tame in the machines, and his ever-present funkiness is allowed to express far more excess than restraint. This is as fine a modern guitar record as you are ever going to hear.

Thom Jurek - All-Music Guide, © 1992 - 2003 AEC One Stop Group, Inc.



You've got to give him credit: Jeff Beck, guitar deity of the 1960s, has kept up with the times. Jeff builds on the musical trend that began with Beck's 1999 album Who Else! and continued with 2001's You Had It Coming: surrounding the hotshot picker with a techno-rock wall-of-sound that is less about band chemistry than the interaction of Beck and his producers. That the guitarist remains the center of attention is a testament to his still-fecund creativity and sheer technical flash. (The fact that vocals are incidental at best also keeps the spotlight firmly on the man of the hour.) Beck was always a daring player, and such tracks as "Grease Monkey," "Hot Rod Honeymoon," and "Plan B" burst with careening lines and the kind of on-the-edge fretwork that has characterized his playing since his days with the Yardbirds in the mid-1960s. But the tender side of this six-string stinger is also on display on the more contemplative "Bulgaria" and "Why Lord Oh Why." Contemporary studio wizardry may have changed the context of Beck's work, but this new sonic atmosphere has inspired this evolving rock icon.

William Pearl - Barnes and Noble



Niemand kann schlüssig erklären, wie der einst so unnahbare Musikant diese ganz und gar uns jeden Atems beraubenden Sounds herstellt, man weiß nur, er tut dies mittels einer handelsüblichen Stromgitarre, und das macht alles nur noch schlimmer. Mit Platten wie dieser lässt es sich endgültig erwachsen werden. Grandios!

S. Krulle in WOM Journal 8/03



Calling fabled guitar god Jeff Beck "mercurial" doesn't do justice to the word – or the legend himself. While this latest blast of maniacal Beckology seems to form a loose techno-centric triptych with its predecessors, by no means is the guitarist resting on his laurels here. If anything, his continuing collaboration with You Had It Coming producer Andy Wright (aided and deliciously sonically subverted by Splattercell's David Torn and Apollo 440) has yielded one of Beck's most muscular--if willfully challenging--collections of musical future shock. Save for the elegant, orchestra-backed take on the traditional folk of "Bulgaria" and introspective respite of "Line Dance with Monkey' and "JB's Blues," the guitarist seems to have little interest in traditional lyricism here, instead coaxing an inventive maelstrom of unearthly, metallic timbres and alien modalities from his instrument on the angular "Trouble Man," the hypnotic grooves of "So What" and the Torn-icated, melodic minimalism of "Plan B." On "Grease Monkey" and "Hot Rod Honeymoon," Apollo 440 playfully fold Beck's notorious car-culture fetishes into an ironic sonic origami of retro-samples and tense electro-rhythms, the latter highlighted by his neo-country chicken-pickin' and incomparable slide work. That track may be cast as mock Beach Boys car tune, but there's definitely nothing nostalgic about the evocative, often hard-edged mood here; it might as well be subtitled "Beck to the Future."

Jerry McCulley - Amazon.com



Jeff Beck, den legendären Künstler an der Gitarre "sprunghaft" zu nennen, ist nicht der passende Ausdruck und wird dieser Legende einfach nicht gerecht. Dieser neueste Ausbruch seiner Wahnsinns-Beckology scheint mit seinen Vorgängern eine locker verbundene Trilogie zu bilden. Aber auf seinen Lorbeeren ausruhen, das kommt für ihn nicht in Frage. Seine Zusammenarbeit mit Andy Wright, dem Produzenten von You Had It Coming (und dann auch noch von Splattercells David Torn und Apollo 440 gestützt und was den Klang anbetrifft auch gestürzt) erbringt eine von Becks energiegeladenen und bewusst provozierenden Sammlungen mit musikalischen Zukunftsschocks. Eine Ausnahme bildet hier die elegante, von Orchestermusikern begleitete Version des traditionellen Folksongs "Bulgaria" und die nachdenkliche Atempause mit "Line Dance With Monkey" und "JB's Blues". Ansonsten scheint der Gitarrist wenig Interesse an herkömmlichen lyrischen Ergüssen zu haben: Stattdessen entlockt er aus seinem Instrument einen kreativen Strom von unglaublichen Metal-Klangfarben und fremdartig klingenden Tonarten. Dies beginnt mit dem ruppigen "Trouble Man", den faszinierenden Grooves von "So What" und dem von David Torn geprägten melodischen Minimalismus von "Plan B.". Bei "Grease Monkey" und "Hot Rod Honeymoon" wird mithilfe von Apollo 440 auf ganz verspielte Weise aus Becks notorischem Auto-Fetischismus ein ironisches Klanggebilde aus Retro-Samples und eindringlichen Elektro-Rhythmen. Letztere glänzen durch ihr Neo-Country-Picking und durch den unvergleichlichen Slide-Stil.

Vielleicht mag eine Art Parodie auf die Automelodien der Beach Boys beabsichtigt gewesen sein, aber nostalgisch ist an dieser fantasievollen, oft schonungslosen Stimmung nun wirklich nichts; hier würde der Untertitel "Beck to the Future" wunderbar passen.

Jerry McCulley - Amazon.de



Jeff finds Jeff Beck taking a further step forward, just as 2000's You Had It Coming showed Beck to be a man on a mission to combine his renowned guitar wizardry with contemporary electronica. Now collaborating with the likes of Apollo 440 ("Grease Monkey", "Hot Rod Honeymoon") and Splattercell ("Plan B"), he refines his use of new grooves while still mercilessly wringing new sounds from his trusty axe--an instrument he often treats like an organic sampler. This is not to say he doesn't rock out.
The opening "So What" is thunderous in the extreme, while "Trouble Man" is a strange and edgy metal. There are other eclectic excursions, too: "Bulgaria" is a stab at traditional folk, complete with orchestra, while "JB's Blues", as the title suggest, takes Beck right back to his introspective influences. Where You Had It Coming featured the occasional vocals of Imogen Heap, here there are none, other than sampled pronouncements. But this doesn't detract from what is clearly a soulful personal document.

Dominic Wills - Amazon.co.uk

 L y r i c s


Currently no lyrics available!

 M P 3   S a m p l e s


Currently no Samples available!