Album: Ibiza Mayhem Twenty Twelve

“Technically breath-taking” Guitar Techniques

“shred-vibed guitar set to dance beats” Guitarist

“Scott is a genuine innovator.” CityLife

May 2012

Star Rating 3/5

One of the biggest problems that every guitar-playing virtuoso faces is how to make all that instrumental expertise and technique appeal to more than a handful of dedicated followers. Well perhaps this Guitar Mashing, download only, release from the highly talented Tim Scott can provide at least one solution. Here seven highly intricate instrumental tracks have been given a solid dance back beat and a remix that makes them fun to listen to, and even if you're not about to spend the night in a sleazy club in Ibiza this is guaranteed to bring a smile to your face. What's more it's still technically breath-taking so none of the expertise is lost, it's just made accessible to a much wider audience. On the downside, nothing really stands out but when it's all such a high standard there's nowhere left to go. But well done Tim, it's about time someone turned this into an art form.

Rodger Newell

March 2012

Star Rating 3/5

Don't let the title put you off - no, really. Instead of mind-numbing club music requiring disco pharmaceuticals just to get through (Volume XIV), Tim Scott gives us an album of expressive, shred-vibed guitar set to dance beats. At times it sounds like Pendulum with extra whammy and harmoniser. There's even, dare we say it, a touch of Brian May in his cascading melodic runs, while super-swift tapping joins standard funky, tropical beats on tracks such as Rio Gold Dust.

January 20, 2012

Star Rating 3/5

Stockport's own guitar maestro Tim Scott could easily have been one of the many legions struggling to sustain a career in the shadow of Joe Satriani and Steve Vai - still the only purveyors of virtuosic rock guitar instrumentals that the man and woman in the street could pick out of a line-up. Instead, Scott took his guitar where, hitherto, the guitar had not exactly been welcome… clubland!

He began attaching his bewilderingly fine guitar-noodling to the kind of rhythms you would expect to hear in a Balearic club rather than a rock venue. It was a cunning move. Although you will hear some familiar cheesy Ibiza synth sounds here and some floor-quaking beats, you will also hear something more musically eloquent than usual dance fare.

It is good to hear this kind of fast and furious guitar playing set against this kind of rhythm too; the one complaint I've had about the likes of Satriani in the past is that, rhythmically, they are sometimes not very adventurous. The Spanish flavour here lends itself to a kind of turbo-charged flamenco, which Scott does very well indeed.

Perhaps we could do with a little more at a lower tempo, like the slightly less frenetic One Life which demonstrates a lovely touch from Scott, worthy of Satch himself.

But you wonder whether this album may fall between two stools: too clubby for the guitar nuts, too axe-heavy for the clubbers. That would be a shame, as Scott is a genuine innovator.

Paul Taylor

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