Hear It Here

Bill Bruford Master Strokes 1978-1985

Featuring some absolutely stellar playing from Allan, the original Feels Good To Me and One Of A Kind albums seem to be out of print, but fortunately many of the tracks are gathered here. Check out Beelzebub, If You Can’t Stand The Heat… and One Of A Kind Pt 1. Though Allan grew tired of being almost exclusively a soloist during this period, it’s easy to see why he was requested to do so much of it!

Allan Holdsworth Road Games

With much more of a textural approach here, using chorus, harmoniser, compression and the whammy bar, Allan almost sounds like he is playing pedal steel at times! There is plenty of beautiful soloing, but with no keyboards at all featuring on this album, Allan pulls out all the stops (as it were) to keep the sound full, varied and interesting. Check out Tokyo Dream, Three Sheets To The Wind, and, of course, the title track.

Allan Holdsworth Metal fatigue

The title track continues with the tradition of including a few songs rather than purely instrumentals – not that Allan had any trouble holding centre stage with beautiful chord playing like that in Home and Devil Take The Hindmost. Lots of clever use of harmoniser here: who else has ever written a hooky riff with one set to a major 2nd? It would be hard for any serious player not to take something away from this…