He built the perfect beast and witnessed the end of the innocence with The Eagles' Don Henley, and he helped stitch together the musical fabric known as Tapestry by Carole King.

Since the mid '90s,  ace session man and producer Danny Kortchmar has been developing a project known as Slo-Leak with hotshot guitar slinger and gravel-voiced partner Charlie Carp.

The duo's new album, New Century Blues, will be released in late October. We here at Goldmine got an early listen, and it is a groove-oriented, funked-up monster of dark, down-and-dirty electronica and traditional blues-rock. So hot and steamy it practically sizzles, the record melts asphalt, and its cautionary tales of excess and retribution are laced with a gallows humor that's charming and funny.

A story on the Kortchmar-Carp partnership is being prepped for the Oct. 24 edition of Goldmine. in the meantime, we thought we'd introduce you to Carp, a one-time 15-year-old prodigy who left school to play with Buddy Miles and has recorded with the likes of Meatloaf, Aerosmith and David Johansen.

"I met Charlie when I moved to Westport, Conn.," says Kortchmar. "I'd been in L.A. for about 23 years, and I moved my family to Westport, Conn. This is in the early '90s. And as soon as I got there, the people I knew there started talking about Charlie, about this great guitar player Charlie Carp. So, I'd been hearing his name, hearing his name, and he probably had been hearing my name when I moved to the area. Finally, we met up and started talking about music, and I immediately dug him. He's a great cat, and we had a lot in common musically in terms of our taste, so we started playing together, just the two of us, and then we decided we'd do some gigs. It just grew out of a mutual kind of love of the same kind of music, which is roots music — roots, R&B and blues."

With both men having similar tastes and being guitar players of similar styles, they hit it off immediately. As for the division of duties for this upcoming release, Kortchmar constructs a lot of the background sounds and Carp is out front, that deep, whiskey-soaked voice lending menace to Slo-Leak originals like the funky "Taillight," "Death By Hollywood" and the bluesy "Sold For Parts."

"The album is a lot of programming by me and then both of us playing guitars, and then Charlie singing," says Kortchmar.

Of the record, Kortchmar explains its unique character.

"It has kind of a traditional feeling in the melodies of it, and the vocal of it, that delivery. It has a more modern feeling in the production of it. It grooves like an old record. It grooves like mad. And that's the part that counts in my opinion."

For more on Korthmar and Carp, and their new record, visit www.sloleak.com