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There seems a bit of a jazz guitar revival at the moment with Lee Ritenour’s 6 String Theory (an album that by co-incidence actually featured the Sting/Miller composition ‘Shape Of My Heart’) and Nguyên Lê as Miller reveals a lot of 70s jazz fusion heritage on November.

This might be a surprise to his fans as he’s known for his acoustic guitar expertise. As well as being a sort after session musician, in-between his other solo albums are First Touch, Second Nature, Third World, Fourth Wall since the late 1980s and has been involved in every album by Sting.

So perhaps that’s why he opens his debut electronic album with a track that’s downtempo and contains both acoustic and electric guitar. It’s a little reminiscent of GRP at its peak and it’s called ‘Solent’. Solent? Perhaps he inspired whilst travelling to see Mark ‘Level 42’ King on the Isle of Wight as it’s he who is the bassist on the album! And also joining him is his Level 42 keyboard player, Mike Lindup and other notable session musician Ian Thomas (Eric Clapton, Seal, Paul McCartney, Tom Jones) on drums.

This is the core four-piece band but you’ll also find guest appearance by other jazzers like Israel-born pianist Yaron Herman (who has his own new album coming out soon), fellow Sting band member Jason Rebello on keys (who was also recently in the South), flutist Dave Heath, British jazz sax stalwart Stan Sulzmann (including Neil Ardley’s classic Kaleidoscope Of Rainbows to Gwilym Simcock’s Perception with Kenny Wheeler, Michael Brecker, NDR Big Band and loads of others in-between).

With this array of talent, it’s perhaps a little surprising that the interpretations of Miller’s compositions sound effortless. The album tracks mainly fall into the mellow downtempo of ‘Solent’, ‘Still’, ‘Gut Feeling’ or the heavy jazz rock funk of ‘W3’ and ‘Rippled Nylon’ (both are classic Jeff Beck Wired/Blow By Blow period; that’s fantastic to younger readers) and Beck’s in town this week too!

Miller has lived in London for some time now and he says one of his problems of having a band without a vocalist is that “One runs the risk of sounding like a second rate fusion or jazz-rock band. God forbid!” We’ll I can’t see that happening with this line up - god forbid King singing but there’s nothing second rate about ‘Racine’ (on which Lindup synth is almost like a delicate vocal) or the dirty low down funkin’ on ‘Sharp Object’ (with Herman’s synth solo like some sort of plucked metal comb) - love these two.

‘Chanson I’ and ‘Chanson II’ are really laid back with II being more of a classical guitar study whilst ‘Marignane’ falls between the downtempo and the jazzy funk with Sulzmann’s gentle (and short) solo.

When you talk about great bassists, you must mention Jaco (of course) but you’d be mean not to include King and it’s great to hear him again (but particularly in this setting) but for all the guitar heads, the name in town is Dominic Miller.

The CD ends with the title track ‘November’ on with the band seems to be able to absorb all the previous elements of the other ten tracks in an autumnal glow of sound.

Reviewed: Dominic Miller - November (Q-rious Music) Cat. No. QRM113-2 Release date: 20th September 2010.
Tracklisting:
1. Solent (4:58)
2. W3 (3:32)
3. Still (4:34)
4. Gut Feeling (5:36)
5. Ripped Nylon (3:25)
6. Racine (4:21)
7. Sharp Object (4:05)
8. Chanson I (4:32)
9. Marignane (3:33)
10. Chanson II (3:06)
11. November (5:40)

Links:
dominicmiller.com
www.myspace.com/leeritenour
Jazz Chronicles with Simon S, Martin Gordon and Gerry Hectic First Saturday of the month, next up Saturday, 6th November at 3:00pm @ Sixty Million Postcards
www.myspace.com/60millionpostcards
Level 42 30th Anniversary Tour - Bournemouth Pavillion Thurs October 2010 - Paul Stevens’ Interview with Mark King Bournemouth.co.uk/news/video/podcast
Jason Rebello, Pino Palladino, Jeremy Stacey and Paul Stacey
Champions Bar - 51 Norwich Avenue West, Bournemouth BH2 6AJ tel: 01202 757 000‎
Web: www.myspace.com/championsvenue
The Bournemouth International Centre (BIC) and Bournemouth Pavilion present
Jeff Beck -Windsor Hall, Friday 15th October, £36.50, NO concessions available
bic.co.uk