From Bagatellen.com / Feb 2005

“The fox knows many things; the hedgehog knows one big thing.” Nowadays, jazz guitarists tend to be stylistically eclectic foxes, but William Ash is a hedgehog: not a copycat by any means, but an unapologetic Wes Montgomery acolyte nonetheless. He’s already released a few discs on Japanese labels, but this new trio album (with bassist Dwayne Burno and drummer Mark Taylor) is his first for an American label. The pleasure of listening to The Phoenix is the pleasure of hearing something simple done right. It’s all about sound, pace, and mood: the elemental guitar/bass/drums set-up; the dark-chocolate live-in-the-studio recording; the originals crafted around terse call-and-response patterns and no-tricks chord changes; the stripped-down but faithfully rendered standards (including a fat-free “Sidewinder”). His playing is direct, undramatic and in-the-moment: there are no climaxes, beyond the inevitable development from plainspoken single-note lines to choppier passages of octaves and chords. It’s as “pure” an album as any Cool School document: not a disc to go to if you’re looking for heart-on-sleeve playing, but a terrific album if you’re looking for something as simple and as pleasurable as a glass of ice water.

-- Nathan Dorward