New Blues Old Bruise (John Mclaughlin ‘Industrial Zen’)

John Mclaughlin. The man Jeff Beck has called “the best guitarist alive”. He is certainly one of the greatest musicians of our time and right now he is definitely my number one. His recent projects have been absolutely spell binding.

Anyway, back to the track. This is my favourite track at this very moment. I absolutely adore this track. It’s got John Mclaughlin and Eric Johnson together! Of course I was going to love it. It only needed Adrian Belew to play a backward solo in it somewhere, Jeff Beck to flutter his whammy and Holdsworth to play a topsy turvy impossible run and I’d have wet my trousers. It takes a while to grasp the timing and changes in this track. There’s quite a lot going on in here. What a master JM is. And surprisingly, surprising to me anyway, Eric Johnson’s elegance fits right in. His sweet solo, with the band tripping out around him, fits absolutely beautifully. I’d like to hear him on more stuff like this. And if that’s not enough John follows Eric with an absolutely killer solo. I don’t think The Beatles considered what JM would be doing when he was 64. Oh how I would have loved to have been in that studio when they cut this track!!

To Bop or Not to Be (John Mclaughlin ‘Industrial Zen’)

Could this be the best guitar synth solo recorded to date? I can’t get my guitar synth to play like this I can tell you.

TAO (Al Di Meola ‘Consequence of Chaos’)

This was Al Di’s return to electric guitar I think. I love this album. He seems so comfortable and relaxed with his music in these later stages of his career. That said I’m not sure he’s ever done anything that could be considered anything other than excellent. He’s just not so eager to blind with a barrage of runs and the music is definitely better for it. He’s blending all kinds of things together on this album producing something quite unique. And, obviously, as with anything Al Di does, it’s littered with unbelievably good guitar playing!

Rhythmatist (Dweezil Zappa ‘Go With What You Know’)

Dweezil rocks! This whole album is fantastic. It would be hard to describe any single moment of it as there’s so much going on. If you’ve watched the Waves video with Dweezil showing how he used a few plugins on his mix then you’ve heard Rhythmatist.

Watch this amazing video where Dweezil talks about meeting Eddie Van Halen here

Beat Box Car (Adrian Belew ‘Side Three’)

This is a variation of the piece Beat Box Guitar from Side One. That track kind of reminds me of some of Jeff Beck’s work. There’s a lot of looping riffs going on. Guitar works soooooo well with that. This track, Beat Box Car, sees Adrian take it a bit further and I’d say it gets “Belew’d”! Side Three is an amazing album, probably the pick of the bunch.

Kimdracula (Deftones ‘Saturday Night Wrist’)

What an amazing riff this is! Riff-tastic!

Have a great weekend folks!
:o)