Press

 

Madhouse and the Whole Thing There album review - London Evening Standard, Saturday 5th July 2008

 

*****

Northern guitar heavyweight Mike Walker, overlooked by arts-funding bodies but never by musicians, makes a stunning debut here as leader. As always his solos are brilliant but so too is his writing. A collage of original verse, nutty voiceovers and hip fringe-jazz elements (Sergio Mendes, BB King, Steely Dan) blends into one ecstatic, deep-grooving whole. A True Embrace is a sexy samba for female voices and Iain Dixon's tenor sax. Dad Logic and I'll Tell 'im are absorbing jazz-rock modes, and an elegant brass miniature is incongruously called Still Slippy Underfoot. A Mancunian masterpiece.

 

JACK MASSARIK

 

See the review.

 

'Mad For It' - Jazzwise Feature July 2008

 

Highly regarded by his peers but woefully under-recorded, guitarist Mike Walker finally makes his debut this month. Stuart Nicholson talks to Mike about the struggle to get the album out.

 

See the full feature.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Madhouse and the Whole Thing There album review - Jazzwise Magazine July 2008

 

For such an accomplished musician as guitarist Mike Walker, with a CV replete with names form the very top echelons of the music that include George Russell, Anthony Braxton, Dave Holland, Arild Anderson, Kenny Wheeler, Mike Gibbs and Mark-Anthony Turnage, it is astonishing to realise that ‘Madhouse & the Whole Thing There’, is in fact, his debut album. Suffice to say it’s gestation was long and fraught, but seldom can there have been a more impressive debut in British Jazz than this. Walker has an imagination of enormous sweep but also the skill and taste to realise his vision. From the opening ‘A Real Embrace’ a Brazilian samba with echoes of CTI and Claus Ogerman, to the freely improvised trio romp ‘In Two Minds’ to the album’s centrepiece ‘I’ll Tell’im’, which succeeds in cramming much detail into small spaces, this is an album to hunt down right away.

 

Stuart Nicholson

 

See the review.

 

 

 

Madhouse and the Whole Thing There album review - The Guardian Friday May 23rd 2008

 

Mike Walker is one of the most powerful jazz guitarists in Europe, but a surreal intelligence, extra-musical talents and a teaching career have kept him from the stardom his skills could have brought him - and still might. Walker is 46 and has never left his native north-west England. This is his first album under his own name but, far from sounding like an insular personal journey, this debut is a soaringly confident piece of idiosyncratic contemporary fusion, with brief borrowings from what sound like radio monologues and pub singalongs dropped into the thick-textured, backbeat-smacking grooves. Walker doesn't dominate, but has put the narrative shape of the venture first, as well as the changing colours and grooves of a taut group (at times a little unwavering in its drum patterns) augmented by all manner of guest specialists. Saxist/clarinettist Iain Dixon is magnificent throughout - Stan Getzian on the Latin opener and as ghostly as Benny Maupin's Bitches Brew bass clarinet on I'll Tell 'Em. Walker delivers a slashing, free-electric guitar tour de force on In Two Minds, and Nikki Iles's piano drifts tantalisingly in and out of the jazzier Dad's Logic.

 

John Fordham

 

Read the review on the Guardian website.