A New Experience: An Acoustic Tribute to Jimi Hendrix

Obscure British guitarist Roy Mette covers 14 Hendrix songs with instrumental acoustic guitar arrangements on this CD. His selection sticks to well-known songs, including "Purple Haze," "Voodoo Chile," "The Wind Cries Mary," "Hey Joe," "All Along the Watchtower," "Fire," "Little Wing," "Stone Free," and "Foxy Lady." Actually it's not quite the unplugged thing you might expect from this kind of concept. Mette overdubs to create a layered effects, using as many as 16 guitars at some points, and although he's using acoustic guitars, he sometimes amplifies them in ways that make them sound more like electric ones. Thus, the casual listener might not automatically assume this is an acoustic album. And for that matter, the arrangements are sometimes so different than the familiar Hendrix originals that you might not immediately, or ever, recognize what song Mette is interpreting. All that adds up to considerable ingenuity. As music, though, it's unexciting -- the rearrangements are considerably mellower, duller, and more low-energy than the originals.