Instant Coffey

Session guitarist extraordinaire Dennis Coffey bought effects like distortion, tape delay and wah wah to many of the Motown hits he played on, and his second solo album from 1974 continued his funk-guitar experiments, using all sorts of studio effects to produce synth-like tones, layering multiple effected guitar parts to create his thematic funk jams. If you were going to categorise Instant Coffey you could call it a funk-soul-jazz-fusion-Latin guitar instrumental album; it has seven mostly lengthy instrumentals, kicking off with jazz funk opener “Sonata” which includes lengthy vamps, orchestrated sections, breakdowns and thematic sections, as though it’s an entire film soundtrack in one song. Soul-jazz track “Moonstar” is equally elongated and ambitious as it moves through various moods and movements punctuated by a guitar made to sound like a synth. There’s super-tight cinematic funk aplenty with uptempo tracks “Chicano” and “Kathy” and a killer cover of the “Enter The Dragon” theme. For when you need a tripped-out, super-charged guitar-centered theme-funk album.