Back in September 1968, Jimi Hendrix was touring the US West Coast with The Soft Machine and Eire Apparent. Vanilla Fudge’s mafioso managers thought they should also be that tour. An offer was made that could not be refused and The Fudge was on the bill. Carmine Appice has told many stories of all the times he played with Jimi and Fudge bassist Tim Bogart at soundchecks and late night jam sessions. No tapes of these mythical jams have surfaced, but the new album from Tia Carrerra called The Quintessential would probably fool most people if you told them it was.Hailing from Austin, the dirt weed capitol of Texas, this is Tia Carrera’s fifth album but first for Small Stone. According to a post on their myspace page, they spent about a year and a half “tracking, procrastinating, getting high, weeding out jams and finally mixing” The Quintessential. A year and half is actually a pretty short time when you consider that most of these songs tap into the endless boogie that began when primitive man first discovered the majic of combining flame and lotus.
The majority of this album is comprised of lengthy instrumental space jams. “The Unnamed Wholeness” is 22 minutes and probably sounds like what Jimi heard through his 3rd eye as he watched the Hawkwind at the Isle of Wight. “Gypsies” is relatively brief at 6 minutes. It fades in mid jam and has the feel of the Band Of Gypsies playing after hours. The 15 minute long “New Orleans” is a slow blues that Johnny Winter might have played if he got strung out on LSD instead of heroin.
The album is bookended with two short songs. “Home” is the opener with a trippy, mystical feel. Lots of controlled feedback and mallets on the cymbals. The closer is a different story. The acoustic guitar on “Hazy Winter” sounds almost shocking after all the fuzzed out wahwah freakouts. And there’s even some vocals from guitarist Jason Morales that are obscured in effects as he tells us we took the wrong steps years ago.Tia Carrera plays it tight but loose and should be huge on the jam band circuit, but their fuzzed out filth would flip the lids of trust fund kids who want to play hacky sack to Dave Matthews. Their loss is our gain. Turn up, drop in and blast off.
http://www.myspace.com/tiacarrera
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