Like protagonists from some epic western novel, EMT arrives on the contemporary music scene preceded by anxious rumors and curious anticipation.

A veteran of celebrated underground bands including Liar, the Eric McFadden Experience, Alien Lovestock and IZM, Eric McFadden’s sinister songs, vampiric vocals and flamenco-rock guitar improvisations have made him an icon along America’s western seaboard. Lest you dismiss the preceding as absurd hyperbole, consider the fact that McFadden has performed and recorded with the lordly likes of Bo Diddley, the late Joe Strummer, Widespread Panic, psychobilly rockers The Reverend Horton Heat, blues troubadour Keb Mo’, Rolling Stone Ron Wood, Primus kahuna Les Claypool and others. He was voted “Best Guitarist” by the New Mexico Weekly and “Guitarist of the Year” by San Francisco’s Zero magazine. And in 2000, McFadden was recruited as a touring member of George Clinton’s P-Funk All Stars, a distinction that thrusts McFadden into the pantheon of funk-rock guitar idols.

Now, McFadden has teamed with acoustic bassist James Whiton and drummer Paulo Baldi to form a trio whose electro-acoustic sound, impressionistic songs and virtuoso antics suggest an obscenely voluptuous hybrid of the Clash, the Jimi Hendrix Experience, Black Sabbath, Q.O.T.S.A., Tom Waits, Django Reinhardt and spaghetti western composer Sergio Leone.

Indeed, EMT recalls a now hard-to-imagine time when songwriting involved the realization of some well-conceived personal vision, and when musical mastery and experimentation were the order of the day. In James Whiton, McFadden has found an ideal musical foil. Performing on amplified acoustic double bass, Whiton employs techniques thoroughly unique to the instrument — percussive slaps, bowed flourishes reminiscent of a string orchestra, and electronic effects like wah, distortion and synth pedals. Drummer Paulo Baldi reconciles blistering rock rhythms with a sensitivity and feel honed on stages with some of the country