Producers includes: Dean Garcia, David Torn, Andy Wright, Apollo 440, Jeff Beck.

Principally recorded at Metropolis, Apollo Control and BFD Studios, London, England.

"Plan B" won the 2004 Grammy Award for Best Rock Instrumental Performance.

Personnel: Nancy Sorrell, Beached Boys, Ronni Ancona, Baylen Leonard, Andy Wright , Saffron (vocals).

Audio Mixers: David Torn ; Dean Garcia; David Tom; Howard Gray; Jamie Maher; Jeff Beck; John Hudson; Michael Barbiero; Tony Hymas.

Recording information: Apollo Control, London, England; BFD Studios; FRS; Metropolis Studio, London, England.

Photographer: Greg Waterman.

Unknown Contributor Role: David Torn .

Arrangers: Jeff Beck; Andy Wright .

"If the voice don't say it, the guitar will play it," raps Saffron on "Pork-U-Pine," the third track on Jeff Beck's minimally titled Jeff. And he does. Beck teams with producer Andy Wright, the man responsible for his more complete immersion into electronic backdrops on his last outing, You Had It Coming. This time the transition is complete. Beck used electronica first on Who Else!, moved a little more into the fire on You Had It Coming, and here merges his full-on Beck-Ola guitar heaviness with the sounds of contemporary spazz-out big beats and noise. Beck and Wright employ Apollo 440 on "Grease Monkey" and "Hot Rod Honeymoon," and use a number of vocalists, including the wondrously gifted Nancy Sorrell, on a host of tracks, as well as the London Session Orchestra on others (such as "Seasons," where hip-hop, breakbeats, and old-school Tangerine Dream sequencing meet the guitarist's deep blues and funk-drenched guitar stylings). As for atmospherics, David Torn (aka producer Splattercell) offers a shape-shifting mix of glitch tracks on "Plan B" for Beck to wax on both acoustically and electrically, and make them weigh a ton. But it's on cuts like "Trouble Man," a purely instrumental big drum and guitar skronk workout, where Beck truly shines here. With a rhythm section of Dean Garcia and Steve Barney -- and Tony Hymas appears as well -- Beck goes completely overboard: the volume screams and the sheer crunch of his riffs and solos split the rhythm tracks in two, then four, and finally eight, as he turns single-string runs into commentaries on everything from heavy metal to East Indian classical music.

The industrial crank and burn of "Grease Monkey" is an outing fraught with danger for the guitarist, who has to whirl away inside a maelstrom of deeply funky noise -- and Beck rides the top of the wave into dirty drum hell and comes out wailing. For those who feel they need a dose of Beck's rootsier and bluesier playing, there is one, but the context is mentally unglued. "Hot Rod Honeymoon" is a drum and bass sprint with Beck playing both slide and Texas-style blues à la Albert Collins, letting the strings bite into the beats. The vocals are a bit cheesy, but the entire track is so huge it's easy to overlook them. "Line Dancing With Monkeys" has a splintered Delta riff at its core, but it mutates, shifts, changes shape, and becomes the kind of spooky blues that cannot be made with conventional instruments. His turnarounds into the myopic rhythms provide a kind of menacing foil to their increasing insistence in the mix. Before gabber-style drum and bass threaten to break out of the box, Beck's elongated bent-note solos tame them. "JB's Blues" is the oddest thing here because it's so ordinary; it feels like it belongs on an updated Blow By Blow. In all this is some of the most emotionally charged and ferocious playing of Beck's career. Within the context of contemporary beatronica, Beck flourishes. He find a worthy opponent to tame in the machines, and his ever-present funkiness is allowed to express far more excess than restraint. This is as fine a modern guitar record as you are ever going to hear. ~ Thom Jurek

For JEFF, legendary guitar god Jeff Beck reunited with Andy Wright, the producer for Beck's prior effort, 2001's YOU HAD IT COMING. In keeping with the creative theme of his last album, the Wallington native avoids being hidebound to the kind of classic-rock rut into which so many of his peers have fallen. Instead, he maintains his edge as an innovative string-bender by embracing new sounds and technological advances at the risk of alienating traditionalist fans. For this particular go-round, collaborators include experimental guitar/electronics cat David Torn of Splattercell fame, and Liverpudlian electronic trio Apollo 440.

Bashing rhythms provide the impetus for much of Beck's high-energy guitar work, with Apollo 440 doing the biggest degree of pushing on the crash-and-bang of "Grease Monkey" and equally intriguing "Hot Rod Honeymoon," both alluding to Beck's well-known love of muscle cars. The first song finds Beck's guitar screaming and singing over the cacophony of Chemical Brothers-sized beats while the latter tune features bluesy riffs, clattering rhythms, and occasional Beach Boys-like harmonies. The former Yardbird also shines on calmer fare including the ethereal "JB's Blues" and "Bulgaria," a majestic folk song featuring accompaniment by a 40-piece orchestra and some of Beck's most poignant playing.