Sure, Canadian guitarist Jim “Kimo” West is best known for his guitar work with “Weird Al” Yankovic, but don’t let that make you think that this album with percussionist Joss Jaffe is a collection of musical satires. Far from it!
One of the masters of slack key guitar, West joins with Jaffe(who plays a wide range of things like the handpan, table and other things that go bump in the night) for a collection of exotic moods melding ideas from The Cumberland Gap to Southern Asia. The fusion of sounds works well, evoking ideas similar to the more acoustic ideas from Weather Report, on their South American idea “Badia”.
West creates harplike strums over the dreamscapes of “Rainbow Body” while echoes of Monument Valley mystique meld flutelike dreams on “Dream Path”. Rural Tennessee combined with Asian percussion and synthy frames create a misty “Shadow Play” with the two create a theme that relaxes, inhales and keeps on returning on the back porched “Sun Rain”. Almost banjo-like are the strings on the Pan American “Monkey Forest Road” whereas dots and dashes of Tumeric and shaken over the strings of the blue highway of “Tranquility Drift”. Nothing seems rushed or forced, the mastery of the guitar tones by West’s fingers are used to serve the sound, and not to create a spotlight on himself. Energizing encounters.