STEVE TIBBETTS

What a strange debut album! Maybe one of the most singular and mature album from a solo artiste who tried right from the start to create a music relatively free of constraints and musical rules/genre. Of all of ECM's (his future label) artistes, Tibbetts is surely the hardest one to pigeonhole and this probably suits him just fine. Graced with a very strange artwork, this debut album had finally received in 95 a re-issue on Cuneiform Records and this was more than timely.

While there are still obvious influences heard here and there (Page's acoustic Zep tracks on the opening Sunrise and Hendrix's backwards tapes and guitars on the closing Buddha), the album has a wide variety of music from almost hard rock to ambient moments, from folky to jazzy influences. Tibbetts plays all of the instruments on this album bar the percussion instrument that one of his long-time collab Tim Weinhold handles. One of the artistes he bears a fair bit of resemblances, in a weird way, is with Oregon for the folk root, but an ethnic flavour often induced by Weinhold's percussions.

Quite an excellent debut album, and the start of a long (but not really prolific) career, this album is really one of Tibbetts's crowning achievement.