Who Else!

1	What Mama Said 3:23
2	Psycho Sam 4:56
3	Brush With The Blues 6:25
4	Blast from the East 4:44
5	Space For The Papa 7:42
6	Angel (Footsteps) 6:30
7	THX138 6:15
8	Hip-Notica 4:36
9	Even Odds 3:26
10	Declan 4:02
11	Another Place 1:48

Barnes & Noble

Classic-rock guitar-god Jeff Beck has said his first album in a decade, WHO ELSE!, has a "robotic, hypnotic attitude." And just as old fans may be a bit shocked to hear that one of England's truest, bluest rockers has moved into the millennial world of ambient techno, youngsters will be amazed to hear how well the 55-year-old former Yardbird has adapted his style to the sounds of Tomorrowland. Aided by producer-keyboardist Tony Hymes, Beck places the music of the Mississippi Delta in orbit as he welds nimble, searing fretwork to the fiery drum 'n' bass of "What Mama Said" and the pumping industrial of "Psycho Sam." When he finally returns to earth for the live blues number "Brush With the Blues" and a solo performance of the Irish ballad "Declan," the bridge he's built between the past and future holds the strongest music he's made since his 1974 chart-topper BLOW BY BLOW. Jon Dolan

All Music Guide

Jeff Beck has never shied away from following trends, at least as far as the musical styles he uses to back up his signature guitar sound. Back in 1969, in a sleeve note on Beck-Ola, he noted that he hadn't come up with "anything totally original," and instead made an album "with the accent on heavy music" at a time when the "heavy music" of the Jimi Hendrix Experience and Led Zeppelin was all the rage. In 1975, at the height of the jazz fusion movement, he made a jazz fusion album, and a good one, too. In both cases, however, the fashionable genres only provided a contemporary-sounding context in which his playing could flourish. If anyone has ever needed to be inspired to work, it's this recluse. So on his first regular studio album of new material in ten years, Who Else!, Beck, on at least a few tracks, solos over heavily percussive techno tracks reminiscent of Prodigy. But whether he's piercing such a rhythmic wall, rearranging the blues on the live "Blast From the East," or floating over an ambient soundscape on "Angel (Footsteps)," it's the same old Beck, with his stinging and sustained single-note melodies, his harmonics, his contrasting tones, his drive. And the man who played "Greensleeves" straight on Truth in 1968 is the same one who is faithful to the Irish air "Declan" here. Older fans who haven't been spending time at raves in recent years may want to program their CDs to avoid the electronica, but they should at least give those tunes a listen -- are they any heavier than the "heavy music" of 1969? William Ruhlmann