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Jef Coker Music from the Clouds
Jeff has been one of the most consistent figures on the Avalonian cafe/pub music scene in recent years, it's good to see some more solid evidence of this man's talents. Music from the Clouds has a promisingly well designed cover, albeit with a slightly bewildered picture of Jeff on the inside.

The album begins with an avalanche of hardcore flamenco, 'Granadinas'. I don't know much about flamenco, so it's hard to say whether it's good or not, but some pretty impressive sounding guitar work, by anyone's standards. This gives way to a more rhymic piece, 'tempo', which acts as a base to more atmospheric acoustic noodling. The title track, 'Music from the Clouds' involves more fretwibbling, this time to a background of new age ambience - actually i quite like this one, it's a bit mysterious with lots of spacey bubbling noises in the background. I keep expecting to catch tumbleweed rolling across my living room floor, hang on a minute was that the guitar? somewhere between inspired and dribbling. Suddenly the band strikes up with 'Jaya matakali' - a furious gypsy kings style romp!
'Bulerias'I&II i assume are these next two classical red cloaks and funny hats at dawn kind of tunes played with a kind of inspired manic brilliance. More flamenco full on-ness from Jeff, this man must have more than one pair of hands! The album rounds up with two acoustic tunes 'Light of the world', a light breezy jazz tune played on the acoustic guitar, alittle over recorded, but nonetheless perfect summers day easy listening. - and a gentle trucking melody,'Fisher King' held between two acoustics, giving Jeff ample opportunity to display his fine digital agility.

This is a collection of fine acoustic guitar based instrumentals, showing Jeff clearly as a guitarist of great technical merit and musical versatility, all put together in the best looking package yet from picture records.

 


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