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Scott McGill's Hand Farm - Ripe

Artist:	Scott McGill's Hand Farm
Title:	Ripe
Label:	The Laser's Edge LE 1031
Length(s):	61 minutes
Year(s) of release:	1999
Month of review:	05/1999

Line up

Scott McGill - guitars
Chico Huff - bass
Vic Stevens - drums
Demetrios Pappas - keyboards on skwerbie and cause for an effect.

Tracks

1)	7-24	1.35
2)	The Ripe One	8.23
3)	Fred-O-Cal	8.04
4)	Un Monde De Incertitudes	1.43
5)	Skwerbie	7.46
6)	DDR	7.12
7)	Industrial Blowout	7.01
8)	Marcella	2.31
9)	Cause For An Effect	7.35
10)	Ong's Hat	6.40
11)	24-7	2.50

Try a sample of the album in

Summary

Scott McGill is probably better known to you as the guitar player of Finneus Gauge. He already recorded one solo album and now it seems he's taking it serious since he left Finneus Gauge to concentrate on his own Hand Farm.

The music

The first track, 7-24, sounds a lot like their almost label mates Gordian Knot. Very hazy music this. The Ripe One is a different cup of tea. Where Gordian Knot moves in a more avant-garde/Crimsonesque direction, the Hand Farm is a jazz rock outfit. The music is much less song-directed than Finneus Gauge and you can tell from the line-up that it is instrumental all the way. The song alternates between jazzrock and moody and atmospheric playing. The riff is quite driving and dark and has something of 21st Schizoid in it, but also a nod to Finneus Gauge. Fred-O-Cal is one of the longer tracks. High notes that are quite typical of McGill's playing alternate with dark riffs and neurotic sounding solo guitar. The track is rather similar in style to the previous track. The music can hardly be called energetic, which is too bad since I tend to enjoy it when the music is blistering and preferable has some ostentatious melody to it (THE example in my opinion is UK on their second album). This not much the case on this album. Un Monde De Incertitudes is an acoustic flit. With Skwerbie (a variant on Querty maybe?) we return to repetitive, but also at times soulful jazzrock of the second and third track. This track indeed has some rather strong keyboardplaying on it, making the song a bit more melodic and notwithstanding the rather meandering character of the playing, it takes the listener with it. DDR takes us back to the past, not only a few years, but also to earlier on this disc. It seems that I've heard it before, but I must say that on this track the melodies is quite good and the song as a whole subtle. If you listen around all the jazzy things going on, you can hear it well. Some fingerquick Spanish guitar on this one too. Industrial Blowout contains a tentative drumsolo, that becomes less tentative later on. After the restful acoustic Marcella (based on a piece of Bach) we come to the open tones of Cause For An Effect. After some soloing on guitar, the keyboards are also allowed to solo again in a rather wailing way. Ong's Hat opens a rocker, quite complex as always, with plenty of variation and multiple guitar sounds intertwined. In the middle we have a nice build-up and interplay between the rough guitar and well...something else. The track 24-7 closes the albums the way it opened. Again the Gordian Knot reminder.

Conclusion

This is jazzrock, no more no less. A little on the neurotic side, with the typical guitar playing of McGill, but on the whole I find it lacking in melody. It may be that this is my taste speaking here, but I just tend more to the melodic side of jazzrock. The moody parts I do like, but on the whole there was, for me, too little composition. As far as I'm concerned I like this one a lot less than the latest Finneus Gauge.