Israeli-born guitarist Oz Noy has released his strongest solo album to date - a fine collection of jazz and funk instrumentals entitled Fuzzy (Magnatude Records, a division of Magna Carta). Joining Noy on this recording are Anton Fig, Will Lee, Keith Carlock, James Genus, Jimmy Johnson, Vinnie Colaiuta, Jim Beard, George Whitty and Shai Bachar. Based in New York, Noy is an in-demand session player with numerous television, film and album credits on his resume.

His solo albums are where he really gets to spread his wings though, and Fuzzy is undoubtedly his most creative effort yet. Noy’s previous releases, Live (2003) and Ha! (2005) (both on Magnatude) were, for the most part, stripped-down raw productions. On Fuzzy , Noy takes a different approach. Each song is augmented with sound effects and loops to add texture to the music. As a result, Fuzzy turns out to be a very unique-sounding album.

While these songs would have worked fine as straight-up performances, the post-production enhancements make things more interesting.