VERNON REID, most famously known as the visionary guitarist for Living Colour, will be releasing his highly anticipated new solo album ”Hoodoo Telemetry” on October 3, 2025.
If you’ve followed the beats of his half-century career, you’ll know Vernon Reid as an artist who paints in every color. Depending on the era you dive into and the album on your turntable, you’ll find the New York polymath pinballing between metal, jazz, funk, electronica, cutting heads with collaborators as eclectic as Mick Jagger and Public Enemy, endlessly shedding his skin yet always speaking his truth.
Globally celebrated as a giant of electric guitar (he was recently hailed by Rolling Stone amongst the top 50 players of all-time), Reid’s Grammy Award-winning records with trailblazers Living Colour still sound as fresh and fierce as when Cult Of Personality hijacked the Billboard chart in the late-’80s. But to take the pulse of the zeitgeist as he sees it – and hear his fearless musicality in microcosm – you need only drop the needle on his new solo album.
”Hoodoo Telemetry” isn’t a linear piece, but a thrillingly tangled tapestry of genres, collaborators and material from different time periods.
If there was an opportunity to summarise 50 years in just over an hour, then Reid has managed it here. As well as some searing trademark guitar work, the music explores some of the many genres that Reid has immersed himself in.
There are elements of funk, electronica, hip-hop, and, of course, songs with a Metal edge all here in some shape or tangled form, for this is an album that is uncompromisingly fierce. It is evident that the fusion of sounds and colours that were present in Reid’s New York upbringing are etched deep in his psyche.
”Hoodoo Telemetry” is an album to sit back and enjoy. The switching styles may jar at first, but once you immerse yourself in the chaos that unfolds, then you will begin to appreciate the intelligence and creativity.
From the ferocious fretwork on Door Of No Return that opens the album, this is a journey that feels great. There’s no warm-up, no mercy. Vernon cuts straight into the strings, leaving scorch marks across the air. He isn’t playing; he’s dismantling, and my guitar is now dismantled courtesy of the wall.
We have the aptly titled Freedom Jazz Dance, which is a freeform jazz movement that comes in early and immediately throws a curveball of chaos into the mix. The playing here is quite phenomenal, even if jazz is not your bag.
Good Afternoon Everyone sees the tempo change, a calmer drive in comparison to the frenetic jazz burst and is followed by the laidback funk of The Haunting, which has some of the first vocals on the album.
There are fourteen songs to enjoy on this record, some are extremely mellow, Dying to Live and there are others, Black Fathom Five with its drum n’ bass undertone, that make the hairs stand up on the back of your neck. However, what you’ll appreciate most is the creativity and intelligence of each song, which can be summed up by one of the songs called Beautiful Bastard. It’s hypnotic, smooth, relaxed with an ethereal vocal by guest .
The first single on the album, it has got a strong nod to Prince. “I’m a huge Prince fan and there’s some of who he was in that song’s DNA,” Reid says. His tribute to DJ Logic on Bronx Paradox tips the hat to the hip-hop of his home city. “Everybody considered the Bronx a wasteland, a warzone,” Reid says. “But with hip-hop, those kids created the final original music of the 20th century.”
With his first solo album, Mistaken Identity, arriving nearly 30 years ago, and his last one over 20 years ago (Mistaken Identity was released in 2004), the time is right for more of Reid’s solo work. “Y’know, the world is a ball on a pendulum,” he says. “It swings. Right now, we’re living through unprecedented times, and not just in America.”
Vernon has stated that this album’s “Like a piece of my all-over-the-place mind”. That’s one f@cked up mind and a stupidly talented one at that. If you can open yours and allow yourself to embark on your own trip, you will find that Reid’s scrambling may well be more in tune than you know.
HIGHLY Recommended
1. Door of No Return
2. Freedom Jazz Dance
3. Good Afternoon Everyone
4. The Haunting
5. Bronx Paradox
6. Or Knot
7. Dying to Live
8. Politician
9. Black Fathom Five
10. Beautiful Bastard
11. Meditation on the Last Times I Saw Arthur Rhames
12. My Little Zulu Babe
13. In Effigy
14. Brave New World
Vernon Reid – Hoodoo Telemetry 2025, MP3+FLAC
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