(3 / 5)
Belgian blues-rock singer and guitarist Joost de Lange delivers a blistering power trio format live album of a dozen cuts – a mix of originals and covers.
He takes no prisoners with his incendiary fretboard style and goes down the Jimi route with his off-piste forays; while his trusted mates Mitchell Goor and Ramses Donvil provide a reliable anchor on bass and drums.
They cover two Hendrix songs, “Voodoo Child (Slight Return)”, and “Little Wing”, and the blues standard “Going Down” – wrongly attributed to Freddie King on the CD track listing here, and misspelled as ‘Freddy’ not Freddie. While King did record the song and many treat that as the best version of many, many covers, it was written by former Mar-Keys sax man Don Nix, not by King. Joost de Lange and his two pals also cover the Rory Gallagher tune, “Bad Penny”.
A decent job they make of all four covers. The original material is a fairly even listen. They are not reinventing the wheel or breaking new ground, but as far as blues rock albums go, I’ve heard a lot worse. His vocal does the job overall but is not as consistent in quality as his guitar work, which is of a very good standard.
But I longed for a little less notes and more space at times with his playing, to be honest. But when he does pull back and provide more light and shade, he has a lovely touch. You can hear the heavy nods to his influences more on some tracks than on others.
Joost played in several bands before forming his own”Rock/Blues Experience” in 2014. He was was part of the top Zeeland band ‘Yes You Did’ who recorded five albums and won a major award. Joost and drummer Ramses knew each other from their music studies in Antwerp, and had worked together on several projects around the Flemish music scene.
Joost cut his debut solo album in 2010, “Outlaw”, a fully instrumental work. He mixes the styles on that record, from Eric Johnson to Steve Vai. Covering tunes from the likes of Joe Satriani and Freddie King.
A year later he released, “Change It”, where he debuted as a singer and guitarist. Hos own band began life with this record. In 2013 he dropped “Crazy Times”, and a well received music video for the song “My Way”.
The next album, “Magic Crow”, his fourth and the band’s third, was released in September 2014. It won very positive reviews and spawned a single which got decent radio spins, “The Night Train”, a track which prompted a second promo video.
By Christopher Weston
(1 / 5) ‘Dull Zone’
(2 / 5) ‘OK Zone’ (3 / 5) ‘Decent Zone’
(4 / 5) ‘Super Zone’
(5 / 5) ‘Awesome Zone’
