You may recognise James Norbert Ivanyi from playing with Australian Prog-Metal band Paradigm, you may recognise him from his facebook videos that have been capturing the writing and recording process of his debut solo album Aphasia over the past year, you may even recognise him from this stunning product video that he recorded for the Suhr Modern Satin. One thing is for sure, very soon everyone will recognise James because he is one of those incredibly talented Metal guitarists like Andy James for instance who can shred for hours without dropping a note and he has amazing technique, speed and just to top it off and make me hate him even more he is a talented composer too! I don’t hate him, I envy him, his hard work from years of study is about to pay off.
I use this word far too often when talking about albums but Aphasia truly is an eclectic mix of music, the opening track ‘Olivia‘ for instance is not searing metal leads and fast riffs, instead the opening track features James playing fingerstyle acoustic guitar accompanied by Roxana Mallous Neisemann on Violin, a beautiful composition that you may think a risky move to set as an opening track when many people are expecting some crazy metal lines but it really displays James’s compositional and fingerstyle talents.
The second track on Aphasia which by the way was recorded by James at his private studio in Sydney, Australia, is called ‘Reawakened‘ shows Ivanyi’s liquid melodic style where he takes melodies all over the fretboard sliding notes and using legato. This is a contrast to his solos which display his incredible alternate picking speed mixed in with string skipped arpeggios. ‘Reawakened’ is a very melodic track with dense orchestration. The next track ‘Apperception Prism‘ begins with some acoustic slide over warbly hammond organ which once again took me by surprise on initial listen but the way that James segues into the distorted guitar section after a minute or so and builds the track with synths and backing effects is fantastic. The mood changes from a reflective sounding Ry Cooder intro into a fierce progressive metal track full of lightning speed riffs and solo playing, which also includes the odd slide line.
‘Proprium Assent‘ is the kind of track I was expecting to hear when listening to Aphasia, a Periphery/Animals As Leaders style rhythm guitar part with virtuosic fluid guitar playing, the solo playing on this track is jaw dropping and the little Fusiony breakdowns set his music apart from straight forward metal. ‘Ubuntu‘ once again shows the eclecticism of Ivanyi’s compositional skills beginning with a piano intro in fact you can hear a pre-production version of this track here - http://youtu.be/xnbb6y0UDUg. By about the 1 minute mark you think you have this track pegged and then all hell breaks loose with blast beats and machine gun riffs, love the juxtaposition of styles.
The final track on Aphasia is called ‘Resolute Enmity‘ which you can hear in James’s demo of the MI Amplification Megalith Gamma Amp, which is another slow builder that turns into a metal onslaught showing off Ivanyi’s incredible technique. I honestly think that James is going to go on to do amazing things, his playing is world class but his compositional skills are at a level that crosses boundaries and that to me is a very exciting prospect. Aphasia is a stunning debut from the young Aussie talent and I hope he gets the recognition he deserves because he is definitely something special, the likes of which don’t come along that often.