Customer Reviews

3d

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

The third release of the blues/jazz/fusion supergroup Jing Chi is an amazing mixture of the afore mentioned music.
'3D' brings together again blues guitarist Robben Ford, bassist Jimmy Haslip of the Yellowjackets and Zappa drummer Vinnie Colaiuta. These three veteran musicians together is just a great musical combination.
Just like Jing Chi's previous releases; their self-titled debut album and their live album, these guys are always putting out an outstanding and distinctive sound.
You can tell that with each CD they release they sound better each time.
This disc in my opinion, is their best to date.
From the opening track 'Colonel Panic' to the final number 'Wires Tangled Up'this disc will blow you away.
There's also a guest vocal by blues great Robert Cray on 'It's Nobody's Fault But Mine'.
This disc has me looking forward for the next one. Check it out!

Truth be told, this is not an album for everyone. However, being a musician, it has been continuously pleasurable over many listenings. Robben and Vinnie are as good as they come. It's a fabulous recording audio-wise, but it might be tough to dance to...that's not what it's for..This group strikes me as a coming together of three fabulous musicians doing a project that is driven by their own tones and desires, and not commercial popularity. This is very evident by the skeletal nature of many of the tracks on both studio records, and extrapolation over those musical vehicles taken to extremely groovy places. Strongly recommended if you like to listen to great musicians having an obvious blast making strange, beautiful noise....

If you like any of these outstanding musicians, you will simply love this album! Well worth the money, and several listens. I bought this one after purchasing the first one, without sampling the audio at all. It is friggin' fantastic!

Give your ears a present!

JING CHI

Being a musician myself I must admit it's a musician's album but others would like it as well. But if one would ask me if this is original music, my answer would be not at all.

The song Chi Town reminds me very much to a song written by Simon Phillips on one of his solorecords with Andy Timmons on guitar. As I can say of other songs too. F.i. Hidden treasure has many simularities to SP's work.

Over all it's a nice album to hear but if you're looking for something more original then I would suggest "keep on searching".

I lament buying this album on a whim but from listening to the sound samples it sounded pretty good. For the most part, this album is all repetetive guitar solos that just don't do it for me; nothing especially catchy that sticks with you. One minute the band is sonically rising to a guitar squealing climax then 2 seconds later it somehow switches to an out of context ambience. Sure there are some decent songs that don't resemble a "dime a dozen" club jazz band such as "Blues Alley" and "Chi Town." As for the rest of the tunes, they just lack a characteristic that would set them apart from other rock/jazz fusion bands. To me it seems as if the members of Jing Chi were to say one day 'hey lets switch to jazz so we can be cool.' Try Carl Orr's albums "Mean it" and "Absolute Freedom" if you are into great jazz/rock/funk music.

Personally, I liked their eponymous first cd better than this one. It was a bit more even, and sounded overall more spacey and inventive to me. Having said that, I also think that there are 4 or 5 songs on "3D" that are better than many of the songs on that first cd. Only problem here is, I really don't like the OTHER half of "3D" very much! (Are you confused yet, or is it just me? ;-)

When these guys hit it just right, as they do on "Colonel Panic", "Chi Town", "Hidden Treasure" and "Tangled Up", it's phenomenal! Their unique brand of fusion produces a really cool sound that you don't find anywhere else. And Colaiuta's phenomenal drumming is showcased a lot more on this cd.

On the negative side: Even though I love the bluesy tone of Ford's guitar, I'm just not a classic blues lover; so the lengthy "It's Nobody's Fault But Mine" brings that part of the cd right down for me (and that's partly the fault of BOTH of us I guess!). At other times, they seem to get a bit lost in their jamming. I also don't go for some of the near-metal sounds that creep in a couple times on some of the other tracks.

If these guys could have made just one cd that included most of "Jing Chi" and the best parts of "3D", it could have been a CLASSIC in its genre.

I value interesting music that is played and recorded well. This cd's rating was based on:

Music quality = 7.7/10; Performance = 8.5/10; Production = 8/10; CD length = 9/10.

Overall score weighted on my proprietary scale = 8.1 ("3-1/2 stars")