Aussie guitar virtuoso Chris Brooks has followed up his debut solo album from 2002 “The Master Plan” with a monster release called “The Axis Of All Things“. The interesting thing about the recording of this album is that Chris crowd-sourced the project using an online resource called Indie GoGo, you can check out the project page here http://www.indiegogo.com/Chris-Brooks-Axis, as you can see Chris reached and exceeded his goal of $4,200 to help with the following:

5 days of mixing the finished recordings in the studio
1 day of mastering
Pressing of the first 500 CDs

The cool thing about Indie GoGo is that you set up perks for the amount contributed by an individual such as a $15 pre-saler which is basically pre-ordering your copy, whereas $100 donation will also get you a personal thank you in the liner notes, a signed CD an HQ digital edition of Chris’ first album and thanks across his social networks. Donating $500 got you a custom guitar lesson on your choice of song from the album as well as all the other goodies etc.

Obviously this has paid off and there were enough fans of Chris’ music to get this album completed, mastered and pressed and it is due for release on September 25. Check out http://www.chrisbrooks.com for info.

The album opens with a track called “Prelude” that begins with some tasteful improvisation before launching into an adaptation of Marc-Antoine Charpentier’s ‘Te Deum’ (I had to look it up and found this YouTube video) Chris has taken the main melody and harmonised it with guitars in a similar vein to Steve Vai’s ‘Liberty’ from Passion & Warfare, a majestic statement to open the album before moving on to the title track ‘The Axis Of All Things‘. You notice straight away from this track how mature Chris’ playing is, he is not your typical rock shredder he knows how to step outside of the norm and create some great fusion lines. In fact the melody in this track reminds me a little of his good friend and fellow Aussie fusion master Michael Dolce, I guess both of them would then trace that back to Brett Garsed who features on the album trading solos on the track ‘In and Out of Dreams (Axis pt 2)‘. Chris shows in this track that he not only has amazing legato chops but he can alternate pick and sweep with the best of them. His solos are not only impressive from a technical point of view but also that they remain very musical and flowing.

The album moves in a few different directions throughout, ‘Transfiguration‘ for instance is a cool laid back jazzy fusion track with a catchy chorus melody and a groove that will have you instantly nodding your head. I love Chris’ tone on this album and this track shows in particular how great your guitar solos can sound without too much gain and contrast to higher gain guitars which he uses to slam the rhythm parts in the background to keep things stomping along.

Another departure from the rock and fusion tracks is ‘Wisdom Road‘ which features fingerstyle acoustic guitar with an electric guitar singing the melody over the top with keyboards which sounds very ethereal, it is a really nice way to break up the album and in fact sits about halfway just before the excellent cover of Kee Marcello’s ‘Hammer’s Heart‘ which is one of the highlights of this album for me.

My favourite riff on the album is ‘Feeding The Myth‘ which apparently Chris has been toying with since 1997, throwing it in at soundchecks etc. and finally built an excellent Funky Rock track around it with some astonishing playing, for me this track alone puts Chris up there with the best guitar players on the planet, such incredible technique, feel, tone and phrasing. The section with Chris and Rick Graham trading solos is really cool I’d love to see a video of these guys performing together.

This album is not just another shred album that shows off a players abilities rather than their musicianship, Chris has created a great album full of melodic rock and fusion that is both enjoyable to listen to and, as a guitarist myself, inspiring. It’s great to have such incredible talent on my doorstep.

http://www.chrisbrooks.com