Earl Slick Fist Full Of Devils (2-LP, 180g Vinyl, Ltd & CD)

(Schnitzel Records) 11 tracks, gatefold cover, 180g audiophile vinyl and CD, limited edition.

The 11-track album is not a retread of Slick's 40-year career as a professional guitarist, but an audible demonstration of a virtuoso still digging deep into the blues roots of rock'n'roll. The instrumental album, Slick says, is acrobatics without a net. Some of the tunes on Fistful were ideas that had been floating around in his head for decades. Some were completely new. The sombre "Black", for example, seemed to spring out of the ground when they entered the studio, he says. It was "written in maybe 10 minutes," he said. "It's gritty." Contrast that with the soaring, descending number "Vanishing Point". That came out of a lick he had saved almost 30 years ago and only recently rediscovered in a sound file. When he wrote it, he didn't know what to do with it, so he put it away. But now, "all these years later, I've come at it with a different head than I did then".