Baker’s Treat

Soft Works: Elton Dean (alto sax, Fender Rhodes), Allan Holdsworth (electric and synthesized guitar), Hugh Hopper (electric bass) and John Marshall (drums). From the album Abracadabra (2003).

In 1989 Holdsworth set up his own recording studio, which he called The Brewery and used during the 1990s, and released Secrets (1989), considered a masterpiece in which he culminates his legato technique and the SynthAxe playing. The SynthAxe is not an electric guitar or a synthesizer controlled through one of them, but a unique instrument that provides the guitarist with exceptional performance. Then he appeared on the jazz fusion guitarist Frank Gambale Truth in Shreading (1990), as well as Forty Reasons (1991) and The View (1993) by drummer Chad Wackerman.

In 1992 he published Wardenclyffe Tower, in which he continues to play the SynthAxe, but also baritone guitars built especially for him by the luthier Bill DeLap. He also created his own guitar model with the company Carvin. During those years he shared the stage in festivals with jazz and fusion legendary musicians like Billy Cobham, Stanley Clarke and Michael and Randy Brecker among others, and in 1994 he launched Hard Hat Area. In 1996 Holdsworth recorded Heavy Machinery in a trio with Jens Johansson on keyboards and synthesizers, and his brother Anders on drums. That same year he participated again with Gordon Beck in None Too Soon, composed of jazz standards and songs written by the pianist.

In 2000 he released The Sixteen Men of Tain, which was the last album he recorded in The Brewery, the first in which he is backed up by an acoustic rhythm section, and which is dedicated to the Scottish whisky distillery Glenmorangie. In 2001 he issued Flat Tire: Music for a Non-Existent Movie in which he plays jazz fusion alone with the SynthAxe, an electric guitar and a drum machine, supported only in two tracks by electric bassist Dave Carpernter; this was his last studio-recorded album.