Mike Valeras

Mike Valeras Group: The Mike Valeras Group

by Todd S. Jenkins
August 1, 2001

This collective of Berklee grads harkens back to the heyday of fusion, offering an update of Eleventh House, Weather Report, the Headhunters and other such groundbreakers. Valeras and company illustrate the real promise for the future of jazz-rock on this debut disc.

Valeras' guitar tone is appropriately acidic and overdriven much of the time, recalling McLaughlin and Coryell. He positively burns on “Lo Phat", which also features the fleet-fingered bass of Jonathan Stoyanoff and a wild, flatulent keyboard solo from ...