With an unfiltered Players usually clasped between its fourth and fifth digits, the "Chasidic Hendrix"'s paw seemed to strum the strings like a rhythm guitarist, yet wildly spiraling Arabic melodies spun up and away out of all visual relationship -- screwed-tight Oriental outbursts punctuated by distant echoes of the electric-guitar pantheon, from Clapton to Zappa to Mahavishnu John.

...this latest version of the Piamenta band integrates the recently formed, unorthodoxly orthodox Chasidic New Wave ensemble, consisting of Israeli drummer Shlomo Deshet and bassist Bentzi Gafni of the local fusion band Esta, Frank London, and saxophonist Gregory Wall.

...Yossi's original music delves deep into the Sephardic-Oriental tradition, as heard by someone weaned on singer Oum Koulsoum and Arabic composer Abdel Wahab, and filtered through the musical breakthroughs of late Hendrix and early Weather Report; fusion and prog-rock seem natural extensions of the technical expertise that already constitutes such a large part of the Jewish musical tradition, and the spiritual party prerogative persists.