COMPOSERS: Various
LABELS: GRP
WORKS: Jazz
PERFORMER: Tony Rémy (guitar, programming, vocoder); Roger Beaujolais (vibraphone); Nick Cohen (bass); Peter Lewinson (drums); Karl van den Bossche (percussion), plus various guests
CATALOGUE NO: 97362
Like his former leader, flautist Philip Bent, Tony Rémy is one of the Eighties generation of UK musicians, as firmly rooted in funk and soul as in jazz, who has found a natural home with the US fusion label GRP. Chiefly known hitherto for his exhilarating guitar work with Desperately Seeking Fusion and his own more wide-ranging band Lateral Thinking, Rémy demonstrates on Boof! that while he is clearly indebted to jazz-fusion guitar masters like John Scofield, and completely au fait with the textural and rhythmic subtleties of funk, he also has a quite exceptional improvisational gift which owes as much to Jimi Hendrix as to anyone in jazz.
His late-Eighties work with young UK jazz figures ranging from Jean Toussaint through Jason Rebello to singers Ian Shaw and Carol Grimes has furnished Rémy with the experience necessary to produce a versatile and mature album. Encompassing hypnotic, taut groove music, more jazz-based excursions with his core band, and the occasional vocal track verging on pop, Boof! is a highly auspicious debut album by one of the UK’s most exciting prospects. Chris Parker