Dr. Ika Tribute To Miles Davis and John McLaughlin

Any fan wants more of what they love, from those cutting floor gems to whole fantasy albums bursting with never before heard songs from your favourite artists. Tributes don't need to sound like those they honour, but sometimes it helps to doff the musical cap to a characteristic style, and here the versatile Dr. Ika [guitar, guitar synth, vocal], backed by a whole bunch of equally proficient musicians: Valeri Piltakjan [trumpet], Michael Kachkachishvili [bass], Nodar K [bass], Nodar Eqtimishvili [bass], Gia Gudadze [sax], Gia Devdariani [keyboards], Abraham Kozlik [keyboards], Gia Salagishvili [drums], Ahmet Ashish Khan [drums], David Japaridze [percussion] (why aren't these names on the tips of everybody's tongues?), fools you into thinking that you might just be listening to something that just turned up from the vaults - well it happened for The Lost Trident Sessions didn't it!

Although 'Miles & John' is more like something from We Want Miles than the similar era Miles albums with JM, You're Under Arrest and Aura, this first track tells you that you're in for a treat from the outset. It's got the Marcus Miller bass, Miles' muted blowing, and, hmmm ... is that Stern, Scofield or McLaughlin?

Johnanism leaps out at you with that Mahavishnu melodic line that distinguishes ripping it up from shredding. The bassline walks a little too far to have been fired from the Laird/Armstrong canon - it's got the pulse of Dark Prince (Electric Dreams). The premature fade out is frustrating, only because it robs us of hearing more from this piece.

I'm not sure where Funk Up comes from. It's the kind of uncomplicated disco pop that Santana have been guilty of in their post-Fillmore days, thankfully avoided by Miles and our man, unless you count Half man - half cookie (Adventures In Radioland). But hey, Dr. Ika's free to do his own thing, and perhaps I'm missing something here.

Next is the short Love You, the type of interlude sketches heard on several Miles and JM albums. Love you too. But wait a minute! Here comes George Benson on the next track, a slow reggae called L'il Garden, replete with self-accompanying scat. Dr. Ika is certainly showing us the full range of his ability, and in doing so, the delta blues instrumental Rainy Evening perhaps gives us a glimpse of Dr. Ika's more typical style on his other recordings with The Grapevine Blues Band.

Sensitive guitar synth on the The Gate sets the aural vista for the Sketches of Spain horn blowing in on the Andalucian breeze. That is before it is decimated by an unfortunate hard rock guitar solo twister that crunches in from nowhere, and is equally annihilated by some weird landslide of sound effects.

Faith is quickly reinstated with Old Clock, a slow ballad that could have been a duet from JM and Jonas Hellborg, in a mellifluous mood.

The blues get another airing in the fun bass-driven Grapevine, before the closing Dusty Road's opening keyboard crunch slips you into Amandla mode, but in the end it's jazzy vocal blues - pleasant enough listening, but a little out of place.

The tracks that are true to the MD or JM 'sound' could easily be from a number of their albums, together and otherwise. Dr. Ika's other influences, blues, funk and reggae are given an airing too, so that this eclectic Tribute to Miles Davis & John McLaughlin could certainly claim to draw from among the many musics that the two great men have influenced.

I'm not sure what either MD or JM would make of it, perhaps a comment that the album's style grazing is a little confusing to the ear, nonetheless, I'm sure that it would be an honour to be glorified with such great playing.

If you're wondering about the album cover, well, Dr. Ika spent 18 years as a neurobiologist specialising in brain tissue transplantation. Do you understand now?