5/5 Not your Momma's tartan!
  by Holly Reynolds
The world lost a great one this year with the passing of Rufus Harley. He took his bagpipe to the world of Jazz and made it work! Oh if only it could always be that "when worlds collide" the result is something as transcendent.

5/5 amazing
  by William R. Nicholas (Mahwah, NJ USA)
I don't know who this guy was or where he came from, but he is brillant. Who would think of mixing bagpipes with 70s Jimmy Smith/Larry Young style organ.

Well, Harley did, and the results are phonomanal. Part of the hook here is that he is not using bagpipes the way you would normally hear them. Harley somehow makes these things take on a droney, middle eastern tone. He extends a few notes and draws them out, and so the pipes work as ambience.

When I was a kid, my dad was in a pipe and drums band, and I was forced to listen to a lot of traditional bagpipes music. Freudian or not, I HATE the bagpipes.

But in this context, their use is just increadible. Rufus Harley is thinking so outside the box here--I mean, who the hell would want to try this-that it makes for outstanding and facinating music



3/5 Truly bizarre
  by Carl A. Maniscalco (San Diego, CA USA)
Trust me on this--you ain't ever heard anything else like "Re-Creation of the Gods." You may not ever want to, either. Even as a fan of both jazz and the pipes, it took me several (widely-spaced) listening sessions to get through this disc all the way and, unfortunately, the audio quality did not help at all. This is one of the worst-produced discs since the early days of CDs.

As for the music, well, you're either going to love it or wish to god for your fifteen bucks back; it's hard to say which. This certainly is not a CD for someone without a wide-open musical mind. I would place myself in that category but , still, I don't find myself spinning this disc very often.

If you're the daring type, you might give it a try. Otherwise, it's not the choice for you.

1/5 Funky, but poor sound makes this a waste of money
  by P-Star (UK)
As with so many reissues (er...bootlegs?) of soul, funk and jazz LPs these days, the tapes are unavailable for a multitude of reasons. Regardless, I am sick to death of being fleeced with this kind of rubbish. Transferred from a poor copy of the vinyl LP, with absolutely no attempt made to restore a distorted, crackly mess.

The music? Couldn't check out much of it, though I really liked what little I could bear to listen to. Looks as if I'm going to have to shell out for the original LP, then.