Jazz Farm

Album Review

This Illinois-raised, Los Angeles-based guitarist's bluesy, blistering improvisational style reflects all the influences he has been favorably compared to — including Al DiMeola and John McLaughlin — along with his own personal hard rock heroes Van Halen and AC/DC. This short but hardly sweet (and intensely raucous) collection is a unique indie find in an industry that caters too often these days to convention and simplicity — but its audience will most likely be guitar students who gape at how hard and fearlessly he rocks, and at just how much can be achieved by throwing off the restraints. His oddball titles say it all about his daring and adventure (the locomotive "Grain Auger Amputee," the only slightly more restrained but heavily percussive "Chickens & B*****s"), and when he says "Eff-Yoo" to the play-it-safers, he does so with colorful panache and lots of notes and energy. It's not exactly jazz — more like crazy fusion traveling the heavy metal highway — and to prove that, he includes the fiery vocal "Manure Spreader," which features hardcore guitar throughout. In both his attitude and his playing, Scott Farr tends toward the gleefully obnoxious, but few who listen will forget their trip to the farm anytime soon.